Thursday, February 08, 2007
Jumping and barking
I am sitting in my kitchen looking out my back window. My dog Kona is barking intently at a live oak tree.
The tree is rooted in my neighbor's yard, but a few large branches hang far out over my yard. My neighbor's house is an orchard house—one of the houses that was here since the thirties. The land my house was built on was once citrus orchard land, and the owner of the orchard house would have been the owner of the orchard. In the fifties, the value of housing eclipsed the value of orchard land, and this owner must have sold the orchard to a developer, because the contemporary ranch styling of my house matches that of others which ring the orchard house and stretch to the east. The tract is also linked by a cinderblock wall, the concrete of which has a distinctive salmon color. If the wall ever needs repairs, I do not think I will be able to find cinderblock to match.
The salmon colored wall stands between my dog and the base of the live oak tree, just a couple feet from the wall on the other side. Every day, squirrels stroll out the branches of the live oak to gather the nuts, and my dog Kona barks at them. Sometimes she jumps, her squat dachshund legs carrying her only a foot or so into the air. She does not know that the squirrels interest her because although she is a mutt she is clearly a hound, and her ancestors were bred to chase small game. She does not know how to catch these squirrels, because she never sees them except high overhead. I don't think she knows that on the other side of the wall, the tree meets the ground, and that on occasion, the squirrel does the same. ¶ 1:26 PM
The tree is rooted in my neighbor's yard, but a few large branches hang far out over my yard. My neighbor's house is an orchard house—one of the houses that was here since the thirties. The land my house was built on was once citrus orchard land, and the owner of the orchard house would have been the owner of the orchard. In the fifties, the value of housing eclipsed the value of orchard land, and this owner must have sold the orchard to a developer, because the contemporary ranch styling of my house matches that of others which ring the orchard house and stretch to the east. The tract is also linked by a cinderblock wall, the concrete of which has a distinctive salmon color. If the wall ever needs repairs, I do not think I will be able to find cinderblock to match.
The salmon colored wall stands between my dog and the base of the live oak tree, just a couple feet from the wall on the other side. Every day, squirrels stroll out the branches of the live oak to gather the nuts, and my dog Kona barks at them. Sometimes she jumps, her squat dachshund legs carrying her only a foot or so into the air. She does not know that the squirrels interest her because although she is a mutt she is clearly a hound, and her ancestors were bred to chase small game. She does not know how to catch these squirrels, because she never sees them except high overhead. I don't think she knows that on the other side of the wall, the tree meets the ground, and that on occasion, the squirrel does the same. ¶ 1:26 PM
