Monthly Archives: November 2020

Stump Spirit Thanksgiving

A sense of place, Benefits of Rural Lifestyle, Holiday Nostalgia, Life During The Covid-19 Era, Life On The Ranch, stump spirit, Thanksgiving November 24, 2020 Comments: 6

While I’ve forgotten exactly when or even why the local tradition began, the residents living on Blue Jay Way years ago began to decorate a particular stump nearby our common road. We call it, Stump Spirit. Tradition has it that those Denizens of the Way who decorate the stump, do so when no one else is around, often after the sun sets behind the hills and mystical spirits leak out of the hills and hollows (or perhaps, after having been imbibed).

While the stump mysteriously becomes decorated for all major holidays and special occasions, Thanksgiving has always been especially well represented. Look closely below for the chicken figure partially hidden behind the “Eat Mor Chickin” sign and the turkeys in their bibs, holding their eating utensils.

A turkey theme carries over from a prior year when a turkey with bulging eyes suddenly spots a gun toting hunter who is lurking behind a tree with turkey-cide intent .

Thanksgiving for the Hutton clan is about family and giving thanks for our bounties and good fortunes. During the year of the Covid-19 Pandemic, these plans unfortunately have had to change. Our Thanksgiving table will host vastly reduced numbers of people this year. This is painful for us all, especially for my wife, Trudy. Hopefully next year we will return to the large, raucous celebrations of prior years. Think of a cross between a Medieval banquet and Animal House.

The above image was taken a number of years ago when our grandchildren, Graham and Ramsey, were much younger. Nevertheless, I just had to work in a picture of our beloved grandchildren visiting an earlier rendition of a Thanksgiving Stump Spirit. Our efforts are meant to fashion a sense of place for our grandchildren, as well as for the older denizens of Blue Jay Way.

The Denizens of the Way are wonderful neighbors. A lot of creativity goes into decorating Stump Spirit or about anything else that stays put for awhile. Such was the case when a hired man’s tractor broke down in my pasture. It sat, and sat, and sat some more, waiting for its inevitable repair. Finally Fall arrived and the following enhancements to the tractor showed up. Now this is real pasture art!

Other holidays get their due. Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Veterans Day are marked by decorating the stump and its surrounds with American flags and patriotic memorabilia. The stump on Labor Day receives hard hats and related tools.

Halloween gets recognition with ghouls, ghosts, and goblins.

The slow parts of the year represent a creative challenge. This is especially true for the hot, sultry days of late summer. But even the dog days of summer often sees an occasional theme appear as demonstrated below.

The result of the collective efforts of those who decorate the humble stump is to bind the neighbors together in a feat of whimsy and friendship. It is fun. It allows for creative expression. The world needs more of this.

Those of us at Medicine Spirit Ranch and the Denizens of the Way wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving. Please be safe and stay healthy. The vaccine is on its way. Let’s all buckle down and continue to wear masks, social distance, and wash our hands until immunity to this virus is attained. Wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and continued good health!

Creatures of Habit

animal behavior, dog behavior, Life On The Ranch November 15, 2020 Comments: 4

We all have habits or routines that we have fallen into, be we humans or animals. I’ve become more aware of these behaviors in my dogs following the death of our senior Border collie, Buddy. Little Jack, our erstwhile Texas Brown dog, following a suitable interval has taken to lying under the coffee table where Buddy exclusively laid.

Bella previously had adopted the routine of lying just outside “Buddy’s Office” which was a dog bed placed in a corner of the living room behind a decorative Oriental wooden screen. Buddy would nap in his office while Bella laid just outside the entrance to his “office”. Now she has left her prior “secretary’s spot” just outside and sleeps on Buddy’s prior dog bed in the “office”.

Buddy in his younger days

I suppose this means Bella’s period of mourning has passed. I am convinced she sorely missed Buddy after his death. She just didn’t act like she normally did. She was still anxious to ride in the pickup but frankly acted droopy. Of course Bella was the same breed of dog as Buddy and had always had her big friend around. This was quite a change for Bella, not nearly so much for Little Jack.

Bella enjoying a ride in the Gator
Little Jack in his favorite place (note the two pillows)

What gives? I know we all have our preferred places at the dinner table, favorite comfortable chairs, and habitual coffee mugs. In the case of my dogs I had assumed their “habits” were a dominance thing. That is, even at his advanced age Buddy was the dominant dog and had the favored spots in which to snooze. For the most part, the other dogs did not intrude on his space. Toward the end of Buddy’s life, I noticed Little Jack begin to take license with Buddy’s spots. But just maybe, like humans, these were learned routines that they had fallen into.

My two horses will almost always go to a specific end of the trough and await my pouring of their portions of feed. The chosen spots may in part be because Fancy, the Paint horse, will dictate the end of the trough she wants and run the gelding, Dandy, off. I assume she takes a glance at the mounds of feed and, if his feed looks more attractive and catches her eye, she none too subtly “relocates” him. Yes, this sounds like a dominance thing.

Fancy, our dominant female Paint horse
Dandy while larger than Fancy, tends to defer to her (the secret to a happy equine marriage?)

Other dog behaviors exist as when my dogs watch me get dressed in the morning. They particularly scrutinize me when putting on my ranch clothes, but not so when I pull out the golf togs. In the case of ranch clothing Bella becomes very excited and begins to bark vigorously. Her behavior proves quite annoying for me and Trudy. Little Jack’s role is to come between Bella and me and attempt to block her from excitedly jumping up on me. Both dogs clearly recognize patterns to my dressing and have their separate routines as how to behave.

With cattle I have also noticed a feeding “pecking order.” Quite predictably certain cattle (the younger Longhorn and one or two of the Black Baldies) will head pall mall for the feed sack as I begin to pour. They stake out the beginning of the feed line. Other cattle jostle for intermediate feeding positions with the calves and certain Black Baldies ending up at the end or in the case of younger calves not in line at all. I always attempt to make a particularly long line of range cubes so that all the cattle will feel comfortable getting in line for the range cubes. Clearly an ordering exists in the bovine food line.

You may not be able to tell us apart. but we sure know which of us are in charge

I’ve assumed this behavior in cattle was an act of pure dominance. Those will horns have a clear advantage, if not too old to do minor combat. Why some of the full grown Black Baldies end up as “Tail End Charlies”, I don’t know. I’ve assumed they are not quite as big or strong or perhaps were from a smaller herd when they joined my herd and haven’t been completely accepted as yet.

I would love to hear comments from readers as to the behaviors of their animals and how they mirror or interact with their humans. Remember our pets are always studying us, just like we study them.

If you haven’t already read my book, Carrying The Black Bag: A Neurologist’s Bedside Tales, please consider picking up a copy. It is available via Amazon or your local bookstore. It is a fun read, demonstrates a lot of humanity and courage from patients, and has been well reviewed. I would welcome your thoughts.

Carrying the Black Bag book

A Longer View From Medicine Spirit Ranch

Benefits from close association with animals, Benefits of Rural Lifestyle, Covid-19 Pandemic, Presidential election, Public Health November 1, 2020 Comments: 4

When I established my blog many years ago, I hoped a focus on a tranquil rural lifestyle that emphasized animal behaviors, natural beauty, and an attitude of positivity would create a few tranquil moments for my sometimes harried blog readers. Views From Medicine Spirit Ranch also provides the opportunity for me to share my thoughts and ruminations with my wonderful and highly indulgent readers. This blog tries to provide a sense of normalcy that comes from both less stressful rural living and from the close contact wild animals, stock animals and pets afford us.

Come on Rancher Tom, you must know my wants and needs.
What about a Gator ride?
Or a ride in the pickup?
Bandit who not only provided great emotional support and distraction, but also relocated two busy, unhappy professionals to a new retired life in the Texas Hill Country (a story as yet to be fully told)

Well, 2020 has proved to be anything but normal. The Covid-19 pandemic has swept our nation and world, impacting life in ways no one could have imagined. Additionally, we are in the midst of a hard fought presidential election in the USA with rancor unrivaled in recent memory. These two major stressors have unsettled most of our lives and given rise to our existential angst.

One advantage that comes from sitting on a hill in rural Texas is observing the world as it unspools its events on a grand stage. This is not to say we in the countryside are immune to what is going on around us, as such is certainly not the case. Nevertheless, we may not be as constantly bombarded or impacted as severely as those who live in denser population centers or who are more influenced by modern goings. I like to think of myself as a retired cowboy sitting on his hill, viewing the world through a broad lens.

The birth of rational thought occurred well over a thousand years ago with the teachings of the Budda, Confuscius, and Socrates. Each of these great thinkers were willing to depart from established dogma and the comfortable allure of the old ways to establish trust and belief in human rationality. These great thinkers advised trusting in what we can determine, rather than relying on sacrifice, incantations, and the old traditional ways. This rational approach took courage to follow and rattled more than a few cages.

In some ways the establishment of the USA shows a similar trend. Even the American Revolution had about as many people who favored maintaining the American Colonies within the British Empire, as it did revolutionaries, wishing for self-government and American liberty.

Our American experiment has lasted about 250 years and has vacillated between progressive eras (think emancipation of the slaves, women’s suffrage, child labor laws, and civil rights) and periods where more traditional-minded voters needed time to incorporate, assimilate, and at times roll back progressive instincts. Such swings of the pendulum undoubtedly helped to establish a semblance of societal equilibrium.

I view the partisan views of the Covid-19 pandemic in the USA in this light. The coronavirus doesn’t care if the party in power has a “R” or a “D” on its lapel. The coronavirus is entirely nonpartisan in whom it attacks. It is an equal opportunity pathogen. Speaking of the pandemic in partisan fashion simply leaves me mystified.

Worrisome is the fact that science has been disparaged to the benefit of fitting a political dogma with anti-science screeds, disparagement, anti-physician bias (“idiots, self-serving as they make more money if people die”). Even more surprising is that during this partisan year, some people accept such disparagement and even push for avoidance of frustrating mitigation strategies to establish “herd immunity.”

Dr. Paul Klotman, President and CEO of Baylor College of Medicine, took on the Dr. Scott Atlas’ of the world by issuing a prediction, based on current data, that such an approach to abandoning proven mitigation strategies until our population is vaccinated would lead to over 1.2 million American deaths. This calculation is three times the deaths that occurred to Americans during World War II and also during the Spanish Flu pandemic. These are huge and shocking numbers.

Lets also keep in mind that the coronavirus will continue to circulate and science does not yet know how long immunity will last, be it naturally acquired or vaccine induced. Just imagine what such a deluge of Covid-19 patients on our health system would cause.

For starters our hospitals and health care providers would be overwhelmed. People with other illnesses in need of hospital treatment, would not find services available, leading to secondarily related deaths. Routine healthcare and screenings would be diminished. Such an outcome for our country and for our public health strikes this retired physician as totally unacceptable.

Knowing that we all suffer pandemic and political fatigue, I harbor no illusion that I understand how the American election will turn out or the extent of change relating to Covid-19 that will result from the election. While I hope for a healing of our partisan divide along with a strong uniform national policy for mitigating the pandemic, Tuesday’s election will determine our course forward. Following the election let’s hope our citizens can unite behind our common beliefs in America. Let’s be prepared to move ahead.

Our national experience in historical terms is fairly short. We are bound by our amazing Constitution and our Declaration of Independence and much less so by ethnic, religious, and common experiences. Let’s believe in our American system with its rights, freedoms,values, and responsibilities. Lets be prepared to heal the political divisions, no matter who is elected President, and look forward to a brighter future than has been the year 2020.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to write about those rural aspects that fascinate me and look forward tp sharing those stories with my indulgent blog readers.

I must confess to a special distraction that has enthralled both Trudy and me this year- the birth of a new grandson- Teddy O’Neal. There is nothing like new life to provide an uplift for sagging spirits. This gift has greatly benefited our emotional equilibria this year.

The newest calf on Medicine Spirit Ranch (young Teddy in his Halloween costume)

Please continue to protect yourself and others from the coronavirus by wearing a mask, by social distancing, by avoiding crowds, via hand-washing and, yes, DO NOT FORGET TO VOTE.