1982

Christmas was peering out from its normally forgotten room. Dottie sighed with despair. She wasn’t looking forward to this particular Christmas. Her friends and family were scattered from California to Illinois to New York. Dottie had nobody to share Christmas with.

Still she had outdone herself. A four foot Christmas tree stood in the highest place of honor she could bestow upon it: the living room table. No matter where in the room she sat, the little Christmas tree twinkled it’s happy lights. Shiny garlands draped every doorway. Christmas ornaments hung from chandeliers and windows. Lights twinkled throughout the apartment framing every available opening. Though it was beautiful to look at there was no meaning to be found in the glitter. An empty feeling crept into her heart. Dottie felt very alone.

Always with a ready smile and a Merry Christmas, to the world Dottie appeared to be jolly with the spirit of Christmas. Santa Claus pins, candy cane earrings and little ringing bells adorned her. Outwardly she exuded a happy face but inwardly, the loneliness was overwhelming. Dottie never told a soul how lonely it felt to face the holidays by herself. She put on a happy Christmas face and hid her sadness.

At work they normally drew straws to see who’d be stuck working Christmas Day. She knew that the other two bartenders, Jessie and Polly, had places to go and families to share the holidays with.

Jessie had pulled the short straw the year before and had worked while her husband and son visited family in another state. That had been a miserable Christmas for Jessie. Dottie couldn’t bear to see her friends suffer that way so she offered to work a double shift Christmas Day. Jessie and Polly could be with their families and Dottie would be better off out of the house on Christmas Day.

Dottie spent Christmas Eve opening the presents sent from her far away family as she watched Miracle on 34th Street with her cat. Loneliness engulfed her.

Christmas morning dawned and Dottie pulled herself wearily out of bed. Depression touched every corner of her soul and getting ready for work was a supreme effort of will. She dressed in green pants, a white blouse and tied a red ribbon around her neck. The ribbon felt like a noose.

Dottie couldn’t help but imagine what the rest of the world was doing. Visions tormented her of families sitting cross-legged around the Christmas tree laughing and sharing hugs and kisses and love. Her eyes filled with tears.

She prayed that a few lonely souls would somehow find their way into her bar. She knew that her hopes were empty ones. It was going to be a long twelve hours of trying to look cheery for what she knew would be her only customer: Pat, the dining room waitress. All the hotel guests were back home and the only customers would be families eating Christmas dinner out.

Jessie, one of the bartenders who Dottie was working for, had previously instructed Dottie that there was a present locked in the cupboard for Pat, who’s name Jessie had drawn from the hat.

In the cupboard stood a tiny Christmas tree next to a box full of presents, all gift-wrapped with colorful paper and ribbons and bows. Jessie sure had gone all out for Pat. Dottie took the tree and the presents out of the cupboard and found to her greatest surprise that the tree had her name on it! The tree was a foot tall, twinkling with lights and sporting a yellow star on top.

She took a closer look at the box full of presents. The first one had Pat’s name on it but all the rest were for Dottie! Awe and wonder danced across her face. For her? They’d done all this for her?

Tears filled Dottie’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She put the tree on the bar and arranged all the presents around it. Jessie and Polly had been so grateful that she’d volunteered to work that they’d engineered a surprise visit from Santa.

That little tree became huge in Dottie’s eyes. It became the symbol of the true Spirit of Christmas. Dottie could feel their warmth and their love embracing her as she sat spellbound watching the lights blinking on the tree. Tears of despair turned into tears of joy. This is what Christmas was all about: the warmth, the caring, the thoughtfulness, the sharing between people, not of presents, but of themselves. It was a piece of Jessie’s heart and Polly’s heart warming the bar all around the tree, chasing Dottie’s loneliness away.

Suddenly Dottie didn’t feel so alone. Their friendship had reached out into the lonely bar and lit it up with joy. This was the real Christmas, the Christmas that gets lost amid the hustle and bustle of parties, the mountains of presents, the hoards of food and the glitter of tinsel.

It touched Dottie deeply that they’d thought of her there all alone and she realized that she wasn’t really alone after all. Jessie and Polly had filled her Christmas with their outpouring of love. For years after, whenever she put up the little Christmas tree, Dottie remembered her friends at work who had given her the most wonderful gift of all
– The Spirit of Christmas.

To Jessie and Polly wherever you are, almost thirty years later I still remember what you did for me, and it still makes me cry. Thank you!

Tags: christmas, christmas alone, christmas angel, christmas joy, christmas spirit, little christmas tree, lonely christmas, real christmas, secret santa, spirit of christmas, surprise santa, tiny christmas tree, true christmas

Category: Pay It Forward

Can a dog change his spots?

There are many reasons for a dog’s skin color to change. An aging dog’s nose may start turning pink. In cold weather some dogs get Winter Nose or Snow Nose, causing their nose to turn pink. There’s a long list of nasty dog diseases that cause changes in skin color from mange to thyroid problems to cancer. Dogs can get vitiligo, the disease that causes people to lose skin pigmentation. Another dog disease is called Black Skin Disease. Pomeranians are particularly prone to Black Skin Disease but any dog can get it. A dog’s coat can become dull with a low quality food. Even for a dog, you are what you eat. A dog with a plastic water bowl will sometimes have discoloration of their nose due to an allergic reaction. But none of these explanations fit Dakota.

For our Australian Cattle Dog/Husky mix (also known as an Ausky) it was pure genetics. Several dog breeds such as the Australian Cattle Dog, the Husky, Dalmatians and other breeds are born white or near white and develop their coloring over time. Nobody tells you exactly by what age they stop changing. What follows is the pictorial tale of one dog’s changing skin color AFTER the age you would have expected it to stop changing.

Dakota was a year and a half old in June 2008. You can see the wide path of pink across the bridge of her nose.

Dakota was well past two when a black dot appeared on her nose. The black dot appeared in early 2009. It was the size of a pencil point. I watched in amazement as the dot grew bigger and bigger, evolving into a small, black island with a second dot appearing next to it. In addition, the black areas above and below the dots started expanding, growing toward each other as you can see from the photos. Look how much the black dots grew in a single month from April to May.

When the first pencil point dot appeared, I pointed it out to my husband and nephew but neither seemed overly interested in a dot on a dog’s nose. I was fascinated. At two year’s old I did not expect our dog to be changing colors. At two and a half years old the dots were still growing and the black areas were still expanding.

By September 2009, one of the dots had become part of the main black area, connecting the upper and lower black areas like a bridge. Dakota turned three years old on December 1, 2009 and her coloring was still changing.

I kept a photo diary of the changing colors on our dog’s nose which continued to change even as she turned three years old. By December 2009, both black dots were fully connected to the other black areas. Most of the pink on her nose was now black.

Dakota is considered a red merle. Not being a full blooded Aussie dog, I’m presuming that means her Aussie parent was a red merle. Color changes in merle colored dogs often continue thru adulthood causing the dog to become darker in color, particularly where the light merle areas are. Blue merles end up looking like black tricolors. Red merles who’ve darkened may be mistaken for red tricolors. Red merle dogs can lighten to blonde when they’re in the sun much like a human sun bleached blonde. Sun bleached color changes are not permanent. New hair growth will be the original coat color.

Of what use is this information? Unlike my dog training articles, probably not much. But any dog nerd would surely see the fascination in watching the dot on a dog’s nose grow bigger. Will it ever stop growing? I don’t know. Dakota just turned three on December 1, 2009 and her nose is still changing. Maybe a leopard can’t change it’s spots but Dakota is living proof that a dog can!

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Tags: acd, ausky, ausky dog, aussie dog, australian cattle dog, australian cattle dog husky mix, australian cattle dog red merle, can a dog change his spots, cattle dog, cattle dog husky mix, dog changing colors, dog nerd, dog's skin color changing, dog's skin turning black, dog's spots changing, dog's spots growing, dogs that change colors, husky, husky dog, red merle, red merle aussie mix, red merle australian cattle dog

Category: Dog Tails of Adventure

Only in Georgia do you find every manner of bizarre and nasty bug imaginable and our one acre seemed to house the worst of them. We’d found two inch long dung beetles, scorpions, black widows, Cow Killer wasps, fire ants, Arrowhead spiders, and other assorted bugs that bite, sting or are just interesting. This time it was a brightly colored caterpillar.

The caterpillar was breathtaking with his vivid lime green blanket and well defined brown saddle ringed with white. The edges of the blanket had tufts of tan colored hairs or spines tipped with black. His horns were spiny, too, and he had two horns on both the front and back.

His rear end offered the perfect camouflage with two great big lime green eyes. Only they weren’t eyes, they were green spots designed to make his rear end look like his head to confuse predators. His rear end even had a mouth, making his fake face complete.

Having discovered that the wonders of my own backyard made great blog entries, I ran for the camera. Our little Sony Cybershot took great photos and even movies with sound. The green and brown Saddleback Caterpillar did not disappoint except that I failed to get the movie I wanted.

As we watched his head, he puffed out what we thought was his throat and out popped a turd. We had witnessed a caterpillar pooping! And we realized that this was his rearend, not his head. Try as I might to get a movie of the Saddleback Caterpillar pooping, he didn’t do it for me again. I did, however, get several photos of his posterior in various stages before and after pooping. It was truly mesmerizing.

Saddleback Caterpillar getting ready to poop.

Here comes the turd.

He wasn’t hard to find on the internet. My very first try was to type in Saddleback Caterpillar and I hit paydirt. Our caterpillar, scientifically known as Sibine stimulea or Acharia stimulea, would go on to become a plain brown moth with tiny white spots someday. But today he was of the family of slug caterpillars that are found in Eastern North America from Massachusetts down into Mexico and west to Missouri and Texas from June to August in the cooler climates and almost all year in the warmer climates such as Georgia. He was feeding on a thornless blackberry bush in September.

Saddleback Caterpillars feed on a wide variety of plants and trees. People have found them on trees such as cherry, oak, elm, plum, apple, poplar, chestnut, maple, redbud, crepe myrtles, dogwood, rose of sharon, banana trees and palms. Plants include corn, blackberries, blueberries, tomatoes, green beans, hydrangeas, azaleas, elephant ears, ivy, holly, amaryllis, irises, gladiolas and peonies. In other words you can find them on just about anything. More often than not they are found on the underside of leaves where you can brush up against them and be stung before you’ve even spotted them. Other common names include Packsaddle Caterpillar and Stinging Hair Caterpillar.

In my quest to make him poop for the camera I came very close to touching him. Thank God I didn’t because the hairs are venomous and pack a nasty punch. Each hair has a poison sac at its base and the sting is reputed to be much like a wasp sting. The pain and swelling can last for days and is often accompanied by a rash, nausea, cold chills, sweating, headache, dizziness, tingling and numbness. One person described the pain as “burning like fire” and some folks experience heart palpitations.

Use cellophane tape to remove the stinging hairs. Ice packs help reduce pain and swelling and swimming in a chlorine pool helps to diffuse the venom. Any bee sting remedy such as Benadryl, Camphophenique or other treatments for bee and wasp stings may help but be prepared to suffer for days from the sting of this colorful brown and green caterpillar.

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Tags: acharia stimulea, brown and green caterpillar, caterpillar, caterpillar pooping, caterpillar that stings, caterpillar with green eyes, georgia caterpillars, green and brown caterpillar, horned caterpillar, packsaddle caterpillar, saddleback caterpillar, sibine stimulea, southern caterpillars, stinging caterpillar, stinging hair caterpillar

Category: Wild Kingdom