Layli Maria Miron

Writer, Educator, Researcher

Rat a tat tat

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Layli Maria Miron

It was Friday morning, and I was on my way to the office. As usual, I knocked on Sergey’s door (a few floors downstairs) to pick him up for the daily commute. He opened the door. “Can you come in for a moment?” he asked. “I have something to show you.”

Now, the last time Sergey said that, he had a bouquet of roses waiting for me inside. This time, it is a rat. I don’t want to read too much into what this means about the progress of our friendship, but…perhaps some backstory is in order.

First, Sergey and I had watched Ratatouille, which I find an unbeatably adorable movie. I mean, a French foodie rat with family problems? So cute.

A few days later, the movie really came to life.

Apparently, Sergey’s version of the gourmand critter flew/climbed in through the kitchen window. Yeah, Israeli rats climb walls and break into apartments. He and his flat-mate, upon discovering their guest, hid nearly all the food and dish ware and sterilized the kitchen. They left out sticky traps, peanut butter scented, to catch the beast. But this rat was smart, and, while avoiding the traps, went for the real peanut butter, nearly gnawing through the lid. I had to admire its palate and persistence.

The final weapon in the weeklong battle of man versus rodent was old-fashioned rat traps. That is how on that Friday morning there came to be one terrified rat cowering piteously in the corner of a trap on the kitchen counter as I looked on. Seriously, it was so pathetically afraid–trembling, big beady eyes panicked, squeaking whenever Sergey spoke or moved.

In the abstract, I don’t think retaining vermin is wise. Rats carry all sorts of pestilence and are a health danger to humans. But, watching this creature, clearly so afraid to die, how could we do anything besides give it freedom? So outside we went with this pet, and released it into some bushes. It ran off without so much as a backward glance.

TO A RAT (apologies to Robert Burns)

Small, worm-tailed wee creature,

with dirty paws your concerning feature,

why do you choose to live

‘neath this ancient fridge?

At quiet hours you grow spunky

and gnaw a banana like a monkey

leaving your marks of hunger

for us in the morning to discover.

I am sorry that we curse your life,

tempting you with cruel delights,

tidbits luring you into traps like sirens,

rewarding your desire with a prison.

But, wise rat, you chose well your abode

for herein dwells a gentle landlord

who cages and evicts you without pain or loss–

though perchance you will miss this kind host.

Check out “To a Mouse” for the classic rodent ode.

Farewell, puppy

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Layli Maria Miron

Shadow Amerson, 2004-2014

My family’s dog of a decade passed away.

I’m not even sure where to start with writing what I guess is an obituary for her. Ten years is a long time, at least for a 22-year-old. I’m not sure how people manage to condense a human life into a newspaper column, because I really struggle to write this.

We got Shadow directly from a breeder. I remember this lady as rather brusque and slightly racist, which are perhaps common features for someone with such passion for purebreds. If I recall, Shadow’s father was an actual German German Shepard. I’m sure she had a proud lineage, and in fact, her family tree is probably better mapped than mine. But as German Shepards go, she was of the longhair variety, considered inferior and inadequate for a show dog, which made her affordable.

Unfortunately, her pedigree didn’t serve her health. Even in puppyhood, she was a sickly dog. I won’t go into the details–in fact, I can’t even remember all her various sicknesses and emergencies. Suffice it to say that her cone became a frequent accessory.

I have some memories of puppy behavior class at PetSmart. Mainly I recall one gentleman who, to our distress, insisted on ruffling her ears. Growing ears should be handled with utmost delicacy so they grow erect and regal, but she had one ear that insisted on flopping over. As the years went on, she acquired more physical eccentricities. The extraction of a broken canine left her long, mole-specked tongue lolling out of one side of her mouth. An affliction in her eyes made them droopy and bloodshot. But she was a beautiful dog, weighing in at 100 pounds, massive for a female.

Shadow in the snow

Oh yes, remember that behavior class? Well, she didn’t either. As Shadow grew bigger and stronger, it became difficult for Jasmine and me to walk her. Any understanding she had of the command “heel” dissolved at a sighting of a squirrel or passerby. Our walks reached their inevitable culmination when, one day, walking her in the prairie behind our house, a jogger stepped out from behind a bend and Shadow, surprised, lunged. I was pulled to my knees and hung on with all my might (which wasn’t much) as she pulled me along in her pursuit of the jogger. It was rather like water skiing if the boat were a dog and the water was grass and no skis were involved. Finally we got her under control, and I got up, my knees grass-stained and shaky. Really, big dogs should come with brakes installed. From then on, it was choke collar–which didn’t do much with her thick fur–or the halter.

She was the ultimate family dog, protecting us with spit-flinging barking fits from any delivery person who dared ring the doorbell, or worse, friend who dared to step into her territory, and entering panic mode when we were absent. One thing you need to know about Shadow was that, underneath the stoicism (instead of seeking affection, she seemed to resign herself to my insistence on petting and baby-talking her) and the fierceness was a profound sensitivity.

Shadow: “Stop…touching…me.”

(I write that, and then I think about her lifelong greeting: goosing me. Well, sensitivity takes many forms.)

As a puppy, she was once outdoors taking a bathroom break during a storm when an enormous clap of thunder scared her nearly to death. From then on, she retained a phobia of thunder and similar booms like fireworks–we cursed Hometown Days with its lengthy grand finales that made our dog tremble and whine piteously–and later on any remotely bass sound. The grumbling motor of the garbage truck terrified her, turning Mondays into the Day of Whimpering. When she was young, we would sometimes spend the day in Waukesha with our grandparents, leaving her in the basement tornado shelter as a makeshift kennel. One of these times, a storm passed over Verona. Driving home through the puddled streets, we had no way of anticipating the mess we’d find in the shelter. Great bloody streaks ran down the door with bits of fur embedded from when she had tried to claw her way out. It was like something from a horror movie entitled “Separation Anxiety.”

Shadow had her quirks, her phobias, and her ailments, yes. Her eccentricity was only rivaled by the lead character in Marley and Me (go read it!). Nevertheless, my fondest memories of her are relatively normal: playing in our backyard. She had a big red ball that we would roll across the grass and she would chase and even dribble it with gusto, tripping over it with her big paws.

A rare slightly athletic member of the Amerson clan

In the winter she bounced through the snow, ignoring the ice-balls that would gather between her toe pads, leaping, diving, chomping up snowballs. I remember her eagerness, waiting for a ball to be tossed, her body poised and taut in anticipation, sometimes uttering a yip if we made her wait too long. Even in her dreams she would play–or at least that’s what I imagine she experienced as her legs twitched and she emitted adorable sleep-woofs. Later on her dream life progressed to scratching at the floor as she dozed, and sometimes I would wake up to the sound of her scratching downstairs. I wonder what she was digging up.

When I said goodbye to her this summer, I knew there was a good possibility I wouldn’t see her again. But still the loss stings. How strange to imagine my house without all the sundry arrangements we made for her–the water dish in the downstairs shower with the curtain hemmed high enough to let her under, the toddler gates, the doghouse in the kitchen. The strange emptiness there must be without her sounds, her scent, her doggy presence.

Shadow, girlie, I will remember the smell of your ears, that waxy sweet fragrance hidden in the soft fuzz and sticky skin of those keen, twitching sensors, the way I still remember the dusty, salty scent that clung to the feathers of Skippy, my parakeet. I will remember kissing your dry, rough nose. I will remember burying my hands in the warm, luxurious fur around your scruff. I will remember your canine language of woofs, whines, whimpers, growls, groans, and barks. I love you. Like so many pets, you helped teach your humans new ways to love.

The Fast

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Layli Maria Miron

Today, my groggy eyes are presented once again with a stunning sunrise. The sun peeks up at 5:52 like a fiery tangerine hoisted from its nest behind the mountains. I lift a hand up to protect my eyes, and it is stained orange by the light. Some of the clouds look like mountains that have simply detached from the earth; both land and sky are permeated by the same pink glow. Two minutes after the sun rises, on schedule the lights at the seaport switch off.

Climbing onto my bed with a prayerbook in hand, pulling up the curtains, and assessing the sunrise has become one of my fasting rituals. Most days, a layer of clouds obscures the sun now that we’re finally getting rain, but every once in a while, I am treated to this splendid feast of colors.

The first sunrise of the Fast

For me, the Fast forces heightened consciousness about time and habits. I’m not saying my focus gets sharper during the Fast; the afternoons are always a struggle between my desire to take a long nap and my need to keep working. The other day, I bumped into a friend who told me that during the rest of the year, our souls are slaves to our bodies, but now our bodies are slaves to our souls. An interesting theory, but my stomach is certainly an ill-behaved thrall, kicking and screaming for food.

There is no other time of the year when sunrise and sunset hold so much sway over my habits. In fact, usually I rarely see the sunrise. But I also notice other things–for example, over the past two weeks, my sugar cravings have declined, and I have survived on a nominal half-cup of coffee in the mornings. And getting up at 5:15 gives me so much quiet time before going to the office in which I can write. I think I might be a closeted earlybird.

I’ve also realized just how close my office is to the upper terraces, the Bahá’í gardens that climb up Mount Carmel. Without the routine of coffee breaks in the morning and afternoon or the daily trip to the lunchroom at noon, I find myself with more time to go outside and enjoy the scenery and sunshine, which is a form of sustenance in itself. On one of my photosynthesis strolls with Sergey, I spotted a big praying mantis sitting motionless at the bottom of some terrace stairs, and crouched down to watch this alien-looking creature. (Have I mentioned I like creepy-crawlies?) It was the first time I’ve seen a “wild” mantis in ages. A few days later, we saw what appeared to be an otter scampering through the gardens. He clarified that it was not a landlubbing otter but rather a mongoose. All my mongoose knowledge stems from the 1975 movie Rikki Tikki Tavi, which I remember watching on one of my parents’ compiled VHS tapes of children’s films. It was pretty great to see one in real life, long, sleek, and tawny, though with no apparent cobras in tow.

In fact, many office workers have the same idea and emerge these days. I wonder if the local gardeners think it’s funny, this yearly exodus of winter-pale Bahá’ís to the outdoors, sniffing the fresh air and clambering up the staircases of our Eden. Where else in the world would I get to fast with so many other Bahá’ís, who all experience the same hunger pains, sour breath, and low blood sugar afternoons?

The tamarins of Tel Aviv

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Layli Maria Miron

Rhea!

Blue sky, warm sun. The burbling hum of hundreds of excited children, the pungent musk of animals.

This is the second zoo I’ve been to in Israel. The other is in Haifa. My clearest memory of it is the single honey badger pacing furiously in its small enclosure, swinging its head back and forth, all in an eternal oscillating search for an exit. Oh, and the hobo kittens living with the otters. Then there were the pop songs pumping over speakers, because apparently listening to the sounds of the animals would be much too boring for zoo patrons. Needless to say, I wasn’t overly impressed, and I left feeling guilty about all those trapped creatures.

The Tel Aviv zoo, Ramat Gan Safari, however, provided a far happier vista. It boasts the largest collection of animals in the Middle East, a Noah’s ark in the midst of an urban sea.

To enter the zoo, we first drove through an expansive park where herds of African savannah animals roam–zebras, antelopes, elands, wildebeest, scimitar horned oryx, hippos, and rhinos, among others, including the greedy ostriches that poked their bald heads toward the drivers’ windows of the passing cars. It was pretty neat to watch a whole herd of hippopotami nap standing up like boulders in the sun.

Sleeping in, hippo style

The most impressive scene was, of course, the lions, which played, stalking and ambushing each other, even leaping over one another, in an exhilarating game of big cat tag.

Within the zoo, the most striking exhibit was Israeli family life. The paths were flooded with children and their parents to the point that I was concerned about moving too fast for fear of accidentally trampling a toddler. Then there were the frequent stroller traffic jams. I felt a bit out of place without a child, or at least a stroller, in tow.

The kids…haha, pun!

Besides the impressive collection of homo sapiens cubs, there were the monkeys–so many primates! Tamarins, baboons, capuchins, orangutans, gorillas, lemurs, colobus, monkey A, monkey B, monkey see, monkey do… One orangutan sat still on the edge of his enclosure’s moat with a hand outstretched as if waiting for a long overdue gift. On the whole, they were better behaved than the children.

Hand it over…

It was an apt time for me to visit a zoo, having finally finished an excellent book my mom recommended to me years ago called The Zookeeper’s Wife. The prose in this vividly written history was so delicious, I wanted to slurp it up. The story, on the other hand, is one of sorrow and struggle, as it follows the true story of a zookeeping couple in Warsaw through World War II as they survive the destruction of their city at the hands of the Nazis and help to hide Jews on the grounds of their zoo. I shan’t say more, because you should really just read it yourself, but Diane Ackermann’s painstaking research introduced me to the complex politics of zoos. For instance, even this Ramat Gan Safari has some involvement in the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. After a Palestinian zoo in the West Bank, Kalkilya Zoo, lost three of its zebras to violence, Safari gave it several animals in a gesture of peacemaking. Animals are not spared in war, but their return can, it seems, help to rejuvenate a nation.