Thurber Tonight: The Pet Department (6)

We reach, finally, our final installment of "The Pet Department," following Parts (1), (2), (3), (4), and (5). -- Ken

The Pet Department

Q. After a severe storm we found this old male raven in the study of my father, the Hon. George Morton Bodwell, for many years head of the Latin Department at Tufts, sitting on a bust of Livy which was a gift to him from the class of '92. All that the old bird will say is "Grawk." Can ravens be taught to talk or was Poe merely "romancing"?

MRS. H. BODWELL COLWETHER

A. I am handicapped by an uncertainty as to who says "Grawk," the raven or your father. It just happens that "Arrk" is what ravens say. I have never known a raven that said anything but "Arrk."

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Q. I have three Scotch terriers which take things out of closets and down from shelves, etc. My veterinarian advised me to gather together all the wreckage, set them down in the midst of it, and say "ba-ad Scotties!" This, however, merely seems to give them a kind of pleasure. If I spank one, the other two jump me -- playfully, but they jump me.

MRS. O. S. PROCTOR

A. To begin with, I question the advisability of having three Scotch terriers. They are bound to get you down. However, it seems to me that you are needlessly complicating your own problem. The Scotties probably think that you are trying to enter into the spirit of their play. Their inability to comprehend what you are trying to get at will in the end make them melancholy, and you and the dogs will begin to drift farther and farther apart. I'd deal with each terrier, and each object, separately, beginning with the telephone, the disconnection of which must inconvenience you sorely.

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Q. My husband paid a hundred and seventy-five dollars for this moose to a man in Dorset, Ontario, who said he had trapped it in the woods. Something is wrong with his antlers, for we have to keep twisting them back into place all the time. They're loose.

MRS. OLIPHANT BEATTY

A. You people are living in a fool's paradise. The animal is obviously a horse with a span of antlers strapped onto his head. If you really want a moose, dispose of the horse; if you want to keep the horse, take the antlers off. Their constant pressure on his ears isn't a good idea.

TOMORROW NIGHT: The Ladies' and Gentlemen's Guide to Modern English Usage: V. Whether, and VI. The Subjunctive Mood


THURBER TONIGHT: Check out the series to date

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Thurber Tonight: The Pet Department (5)

More from "The Pet Department," following Parts (1), (2), (3), and (4) -- Ken

The Pet Department

Q. My oldest boy, Ford Maddox Ford Griswold, worked this wooden horse lose from a merry-go-round one night when he and some other young people were cutting up. Could you suggest any use for it in a family of five?

MRS. R. L. S. GRISWOLD

A. I cannot try the patience of my public nor waste my own time dealing with the problems of insensate animals. Already I have gone perhaps too far afield in the case of stuffed birds and cast-iron lawn dogs. Pretty soon I should be giving advice on wire-haired fox terrier weather vanes.

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Q. Mr. Jennings bought this beast when it was a pup in Montreal for a St. Bernard, but I don't think it is. It's grown enormously and is stubborn about letting you have anything, like the bath towel it has its paws on, and the hat, both of which belong to Mr. Jennings. He got it that bowling ball to play with but it doesn't seem to like it. Mr. Jennings is greatly attached to the creature.

MRS. FANNY EDWARDS JENNINGS

A. What you have is a bear. While it isn't my bear, I should recommend that you dispose of it. As these animals grow older, they get more and more adamant about letting you have anything, until finally there might not be anything in the house you could call your own -- except possibly the bowling ball. Zoos use bears. Mr. Jennings could visit it.

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Q. Sometimes my dog does not seem to know me. I think he must be crazy. He will draw away, or show his fangs, when I approach him.

H. M. MORGAN, Jr.

A. So would I, and I'm not crazy. If you creep up on your dog the way you indicate in the drawing, I can understand his viewpoint. Put your shirt in and straighten up; you look as if you had never seen a dog before, and that is undoubtedly what bothers the animal. These maladjustments can often be worked out by the use of a little common sense.

TOMORROW NIGHT: The Ladies' and Gentlemen's Guide to Modern English Usage: IV. Only and One


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Thurber Tonight: The Pet Department (4)

Here's another paperback edition of The Owl in the Attic, which contains "The Pet Department," of which we have our fourth installment tonight, following nos. (1), (2), and (3).

The Pet Department

Q. The fact that my dog sits this way so often leads me to believe that something is preying on his mind. He seems always to be studying. Would there be any way of finding out what this is?

ARTHUR

A. Owing to the artificially complex life led by city dogs of the present day, they tend to lose the simpler systems of intuition which once guided all breeds, and frequently lapse into what comes very close to mental perplexity. I myself have known some very profoundly thoughtful dogs. Usually, however, their problems are not serious and I should judge that your dog has merely mislaid something and wonders where he put it.

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Q. We have cats the way most people have mice.

MRS. C. L. FOOTLOOSE

A. I see you have. I can't tell from your communication, however, whether you wish advice or are just boasting.

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Q. No one has been able to tell us what kind of dog we have. I am enclosing a sketch of one of his two positions. He only has two. The other one is the same as this except he faces in the opposite direction.

MRS. EUGENIA BLACK

A. I think that what you have is a cast-iron lawn dog. The expressionless eye and the rigid pose are characteristic of metal lawn animals. And that certainly is a cast-iron ear. You could, however, remove all doubt by means of a simple test with a hammer and a cold chisel, or an acetylene torch. If the animal chips, or melts, my diagnosis is correct.

TOMORROW NIGHT: The Ladies and Gentlemen's Guide to Modern English Usage: III. The Split Infinitive


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Thurber Tonight: The Pet Department (3)

More from "The Pet Department." (Here are the first and second installments.) -- Ken

The Pet Department

Q. My husband's seal will not juggle, although we have tried everything.

GRACE H.

A. Most seals will not juggle; I think I have never known one that juggled. Seals balance things, and sometimes toss objects (such as the large ball in your sketch) from one to another. This last will be difficult if your husband has but one seal. I'd try him in plain balancing, beginning with a billiard cue or something. It may be, of course, that he is a non-balancing seal.

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Q. We have a fish with ears and wonder if it is valuable.

JOE WRIGHT

A. I find no trace in the standard fish books of any fish with ears. Very likely the ears do not belong to the fish, but to some mammal. They look to me like a mammal's ears. It would be pretty hard to say what species of mammal, and almost impossible to determine what particular member of that species. They may merely be hysterical ears, in which case they will go away if you can get the fish's mind on something else.

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Q. How would you feel if every time you looked up from your work or anything, there was a horse peering at you from behind something? He prowls about the house at all hours of the day and night. Doesn't seem worried about anything, merely wakeful. What should I do to discourage him?

MRS. GRACE VOYNTON

A. The horse is probably sad. Changing the flowered decorations of your home to something less like open meadows might discourage him, but then I doubt whether it is a good idea to discourage a sad horse. In any case speak to him quietly when he turns up from behind things. Leaping at a horse and crying "Roogie, roogie!" or "Whoosh!" would only result in breakage and bedlam. Of course you might finally get used to having him around, if the house is big enough for both of you.

SUNDAY NIGHT: The Ladies' and Gentlemen's Guide to Modern English Usage: II. Which


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Thurber Tonight: The Pet Department (2)

Our second installment of "The Pet Department" (which began here) leads off with the "letter" that furnished the name for the book in which the series was published, The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities. -- Ken

The Pet Department

Q. My wife found this owl in the attic among a lot of ormolu clocks and old crystal chandeliers. We can't tell whether it's stuffed or only dead. It is sitting on a strange and almost indescribable sort of iron dingbat.

MR. MOLLEFF

A. What your wife found is a museum piece -- a stuffed cockatoo. It looks to me like a rather botchy example of taxidermy. This is the first stuffed bird I have ever seen with its eyes shut, but whoever had it stuffed probably wanted it stuffed that way. I couldn't say what the thing it is sitting on is suposed to represent. It looks broken.

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Q. Our gull cannot get his head down any farther than this, and bumps into things.

H. L. F.

A. You have no ordinary gull to begin with. He looks to me a great deal like a rabbit backing up. If he is a gull, it is impossible to keep him in the house. Give him his freedom.

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Q. My police dog has taken to acting very strange, on account of my father coming home from work every night for the past two years and saying to him, "If you're a police dog, where's your badge?," after which he laughs (my father).

ELLA R.

A. The constant reiteration of any piece of badinage sometimes has the same effect on present-day neurotic dogs that it has on people. It is dangerous and thoughtless to twit a poice dog on its powers, authority, and the like. From the way your dog seems to hide behind tables, large vases, and whatever that thing is that looks like a suitcase, I should imagine that your father has carried this thing far enough -- perhaps even too far.

TOMORROW NIGHT: Our first installment of "The Ladies' and Gentlemen's Guide to Modern English Usage"


THURBER TONIGHT: Check out the series to date

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Thurber Tonight: The Pet Department (1)

In this holiday season, I thought some DWT readers might welcome, well, a different sort of seasonal "spirit." So this month we're going to dip into some of my favorite material by my favorite writer, James Thurber, some of it well-known and some of it not so much. (By way of introduction, tentatively scheduled for Sunday night we've got perhaps my favorite of his self-profiles, "My Fifty Years with James Thurber," the preface to the 1945 anthology The Thurber Carnival. For anyone who's unfamiliar with the background to Thurber's, er, art, we've already had E. B. White's famous explanation, from the preface to their 1929 literary collaboration Is Sex Necessary?, as well as Thurber's confirming version in his preface to the 1932 collection of his "artwork," The Seal in the Bedroom.)

Tonight we kick off with a first installment of "The Pet Department," which appeared in book form first in The Owl in the Attic (1931) and then in The Thurber Carnival. -- Ken

The Pet Department

Q. I enclose a sketch of the way my dog, William, has been lying for two days now. I think there must be something wrong with him. Can you tell me how to get him out of this?

MRS. L. L. G.

A. I should judge from the drawing that William is in a trance. Trance states, however, are rare with dogs. It may just be ecstasy. If at the end of another twenty-four hours he doesn't seem to be getting anywhere, I should give him up. The position of the ears leads me to believe that he may be enjoying himself in a quiet way, but the tail is somewhat alarming.

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Q. Our cat, who is thirty-five, spends all of her time in bed. She follows every move I make, and this is beginning to get to me. She never seems sleepy nor particularly happy. Is there anything I could give her?

MISS L. Mc.

A. There are no medicines which can safely be given to induce felicity in a cat, but you might try lettuce, which is a soporific, for the wakefulness. I would have to see the cat watching you to tell whether anything could be done to divert her attention.

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Q. My husband, who is an amateur hypnotizer, keeps trying to get our bloodhound under his control. I contend that this is not doing the dog any good. So far he has not yielded to my husband's influence, but I am afraid that if he once got under, we couldn't get him out of it.

A. A. T.

A. Dog are usually left cold by all phases of psychology, mental telepathy, and the like. Attempts to hypnotize this particular breed, however, are likely to be fraught with a definite menace. A bloodhound, if stared at fixedly, is liable to gain the impression that it is under suspicion, being followed, and so on. This upsets a bloodhound's life, by completely reversing its whole scheme of behavior.

THURBER TONIGHT: Check out the series to date

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