Oh joy a rice cake thanks.

Usually I’ve learned to accept gifts with grace by saying thank you: “Kamsa hamnida“, and immediately stashing the gift in my drawer, either to be consumed later if it’s a tangerine, or offered to students (or the food trash receptacle) if it’s a rice cake.

I was offered the strangest gift of all today: a dog. A Yorkshire terrier, to be exact.

Let me back up – a few months ago, I had written an essay for the school yearbook. My co-teacher wanted me to write something summarizing my first year in Korea, so I wrote briefly about my experiences, bonding with the students, yadda yadda. I think I had written something about feeling lonely and isolated when I first arrived, as almost every foreigner feels. Anyway, apparently that line really stuck with one of the other teachers, who came up to me and mentioned that she “felt concern for [my] lonely,” and though I insist that I am doing okay now, she still mentions it every other time we chat. She’s a really sweet lady.

Anyway, we were chatting briefly after lunch today, and she talked about her dogs. She has seven of them, and one recently had puppies. “Wow,” I said, “what are you going to do with all those puppies?” She said she’s going to keep them (no, not for stew, har dee har har), because she has a big property in a pretty rural area. Anyway, I wonder if she maybe mistook my interest in what she was going to do with those puppies, for an interest in said puppies, for then she suddenly offered me a dog. “I feel that you are lonely, so I want to help you!”

“Oh, thaaaanks,” said I, a little flabbergasted. Uh…I like dogs and all, but I kind of don’t really want a dog. Not just yet, anyway. (Think how the hedgehog would feel). I was moved by her gesture, but the responsible animal owner aspect of me is just always shocked whenever someone offers another person a pet as a gift – what if the recipient can’t properly take care of the pet? What if the recipient doesn’t want the pet (as in my case)? Though she meant it very sincerely, and it was really quite sweet. She’d take the dog back when I go back to the States, so there wouldn’t be the issue of me dumping it off at the pound (or bosintang restaurant) I’m actually friends with another foreign teacher who would LOVE to have a substitute dog while she’s here, but I’m not sure if the woman will be offended if I pass off her very heartfelt gift to a stranger.

What’s interesting is that she didn’t offer me one of the puppies; she offered me her Yorkshire terrier, who’s about 7 years old, and from the way she talks, he might be her favorite dog. She also mentioned that I might have to re-potty-train this dog, since he’s become accustomed to running around this huge property and might have forgotten how not to poo on the floor and stuff. I, never having owned a dog – only felines, who generally know where to put their business – haven’t the foggiest idea of how to train one. Sometimes even taking care of the hedgehog is overwhelming to my exhausted self; the thought of cleaning the poop off her exercise wheel is a little less exciting than studying Korean grammar or a DIY root canal, you know?

I told her that I’d never owned a dog, and that I was really more of a cat person, but I’m not sure she really understood, because she said “expect a dog when you return from your vacation!” and left the room. Hoo boy. This isn’t exactly the sort of gift I can just stash in the drawer and toss in the bin later. Again, this setup would be perfect for the friend I know who wants a dog while she’s in Korea, but I’m not sure how to propose this without offending.

There are two types of dogs in this country: those wearing clothes, and those in stew. This would be a very patriotic example of the former.

Tipsy and stuffed to the brim, where else would we go but E-mart? I’m pretty sure I even said “this time, I’m not going to get much, just bread and water and maybe a plant or something.”. We confidently picked up one basket each, thinking that maybe this time, we would escape the consumerist fluorescent maze with our wallets unscathed. And then, on my way to the booze, I walked by the pet area and of course I had to take a gander*. Hark – what was this? The price under the hedgehog display was now 40,000 won less. Double checked the Korean and yes, “go seum dochi” were now a mere 80,000 won. I still shrugged and committed to pass on this purchase, until I had time to check out the bargain pet area of the chaotic Dongdaemun market in Seoul. I saw Eli, already overstuffing his basket with Emart wares (it’s that damn maniacal song) and informed him about the sale.

“Let’s get one!” he said.

“It’s still a bit pricey. We might check out Dongdaemun first…”

“Well there’s no harm in just looking at it.”. I relented, and we hauled both our now-leaden baskets over to the hedgehog cage, where an Emart employee came over to help. I tried to ask him something in my infantile command of Korean – “yeoja? Namja?” and he responded in flawless australian accented English. On top of that, he was a hedgehog expert and knew quite a bit about handling them. How likely is that? How could I not buy the hedgehog after such auspicious alignment?

How could I not buy the hedgie, after holding her in my hands and letting her lick all the sushi and chicken remnants off my fingers? (I’ve since read that one is not supposed to do this, as the hedgehog may then acquire a taste for human flesh. Doh). After encountering my peculiar new scent, she proceeded to engage in this quirky hedgehog process known as “anointing” – basically foaming at the mouth and then rubbing it on here quills. It’s…unique, but not a bad sign according to the Emart hedgeguy.

After work today, I picked her up and as soon as she was over being mad at me for disturbing her sleep, she proceeded to climb all over me and try and tunnel through my cardigan. As I type this, she’s nestled in my sweater against my chest. She’s the softest little spiky death ball I’ve ever encountered.

* – not literally, as my local Emart does not stock geese in its inventory.

She's a sweet and curious little hedgie. Licked the remnants of our sushi dinner off our fingers.

I picked the Harry Potter nerd name, Eli picked the German word for ‘adventure.’ Also thought about just calling her “Dochi” because the word for “hedgehog” in Korean is “ko seum do chi.”

Setting: Eli’s parents house, about 2 a.m. on Saturday. We had just gotten back from a friend’s birthday party, and Eli still had to go deliver a promotional movie he’d made for this organization. He wanted to test the movie before he dropped it off, so he put it in the DVD player. I actually heard him gasp while I was in the kitchen:

“Oh god. Oh man. I had no idea what sick, depraved stuff my parents were into…”

“Uhh…should we be looking at this?” I said, as he gestured me over to look at the DVD.

The title read: “BARKLINGTON: A Movie for Dogs.” Underneath the title, distributed evenly across the surface of the DVD, were elaborately detailed cartoon dogs of various breeds and poses, some with sunglasses, some with outfits, all in various states of frolicking, across a pastel green lawn and a crudely painted movie theater. In short, it was the most demented art I’ve seen in some time.

We put it in, and immediately one of the dogs trotted up to the TV and stared, transfixed by the selection menu, which featured cartoon bones stamped onto the screen to the sound of a doorbell ringing repeatedly. A black and white terrier casually perched atop a horse, sauntering across a hyper-green lawn. We had an errand to run, so we decided that was the appropriate time to flee the house and let the dogs watch their movie.

When we returned, the dogs were busy chewing on what appeared to be an elk femur, instead of watching their movie. Well, whatever. We each took a dog outside for a quick pee in the yard. It was cold, and I was shivering standing there, waiting for my dog to relieve itself, chatting with Eli about something when Eli looked up. He had seen some fleeting shadow out of the corner of his eye, but dismissed it initially as an artifact of poor vision. Then the shadow became more definite.

“Whoa, there’s another dog over there,” he said. I looked over. Now we had both a beagle / harrier mix, a dog who happens to have a very keen sense of smell (she had actually found a $20 bill earlier when I took her out for a walk!), and a little shih-tzu mix, who looks like an infant Ewok. Both are the opposite of intimidating, and neither dog saw the interloper at first: a big beast of a dog, probably a Doberman pinscher from the looks of him. The most unsettling thing, apart from his size, was how silent the dog was – it was as if he had materialized from the shadows of the house. He raised his ears and started gamboling towards us.

“Ahh!” I said, and one of my unfortunate instincts when confronted with something I fear is to shut my eyes, cover my head and HIDE. This is probably just about the worst reaction anyone can have, in any threatening situation, ever. Like, what is a rapist murder psycho going to do, go “RAAAR, RAAAR, hey wait a minute. Where’d that girl go? Oh well, off to the next victim.” Anyway, I need to work on honing my defense insticts. My dog finally noticed the interloper and, as he was a little shih-tzu with more balls than brains, started baring his teeth and barking at the hulking shape (the second worst reaction in this particular scenario). Luckily Eli had his wits about him, grabbed both leashes and dragged the non-demon dogs away from the hell beast, who’d decided he’d had enough of teasing the mortals – for now – and slinked off into the night.

Later, as we were pondering the appearance of hell beast, I wondered: “Did Barklington summon him?”

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A tiny and amazingly intact bird lay on the ground. I figured from the noise of the impact, it would have brains and other entrails oozing out of it, but no. Despite my professed hatred of birds, I thought it quite beautiful, and a little pitiable.

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When E took the dogs out for a wee walk, he had to restrain them from desecrating the remains. I decided that a proper burial would have to take place quickly. At first I thought maybe we should bury it in a shoebox, since that seems to be the standard makeshift coffin for tiny household pets – but we did not have any on hand, and the bird was a bit small for one anyways. So I tried this instead:

We ended up ruling that out since it was clunky, and anyway it would probably decompose faster unbagged. E located a spot in the yard that was not likely to be tilled by gardeners or torn up by dogs (hopefully):

Last rites for the interred bird.

Mourners at the funeral.

E the grave digger.

The spot E had chosen happened to have a ceramic angel figurine wedged at the foot of the tree! Perfect for the headstone of a tiny mourned bird – although, now that I think about it, I sure hope that wasn’t meant to be the headstone for a previously buried dead critter. Ah well, E should have known if that spot was free, right?

Goodbye birdie! May flights of angels wing thee to thy rest, although I guess you could probably do that yourself. Hope there are no walls in birdie heaven.

Two degrees outside = very cold house = cats in sweaters!

His friend, who looked like he was in better spirits, did not seem to be intimidated by my cat Buddy’s presence on the other side of the window. In fact, I thought the little guy might have been a bit lovestruck! You can judge for yourself from the evidence:

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!

Instead of doing a writeup about my trip to Colorado this weekend (because I’m too busy kicking ass at Scramble right now), here’s a video! These are two elks playfully butting heads in Rocky Mountain National Park. We sat and ate lunch as they butted. I didn’t think elk fighting would be so adorable!

The thing that struck me as odd, odder than a raccoon in daylight of course – it had not been fazed by the cars zooming past it in the slightest. Of course it kept to the side of the road, keeping the parked cars between it and the curb. It wasn’t until it saw Big Bad Me, the lone pedestrian, that it got spooked.

This guy is the closest one to looking like my raccoon on google image search.

I tried to play raccoon psychologist during the rest of the walk, and musing over the circumstances, maybe I can see why the raccoon would be more scared of cars than of people. I noticed this same behavior in Lily the beagle, a shelter dog adopted by E’s parents. Lily had spent some time wandering the streets before the beagle rescue had picked her up, and was known to be wary of people. We decided to take her for a walk through downtown, to help get her more accustomed to people, and that turned out to be an utter disaster. Any time a group of people approached, she would tremble and try to hide between my legs (tying me up with the leash in the process). The most troubling thing she tried to do was to run towards cars. Moving cars. E and I could not figure out how a dog like that could survive on the streets with such wrong instincts! It was a very lucky thing that she found a loving home.

The notion of cars vs. people reminds me of a short story or maybe a discussion I read once about how, if aliens landed on our planet now, they might mistakenly think that automobiles are the dominant species. We as humans, apparently the lesser species, fight wars to gather the necessary resources to appease our automotive masters. I wonder if the same idea could be applied to animals as well – do animals think of cars as big, strange, smelly animals that go really fast? And if they did think of cars as other animals, which species would they prefer to hang out with, cars or people?

Cars are deadly, sure. The first sign of spring’s arrival is the line of littered corpses along the mile markers on the highway. In a match-up between raccoon and car, even a teeny compact SmartCar, car wins. Raccoon vs. human? If the human is particularly out of shape or small, the outcome is a little more dubious.

Still, there are some reasons why my little raccoon acquaintance might be less uneasy around cars than humans.

1. Cars are predictable. For the most part, they stay on the roads. They tend to behave in a relatively orderly fashion – in cities, they will often move together in big clusters because of traffic light patterns. They move in straight lines and angles. There are obvious exceptions to this, of course (see: drunk drivers, the elderly) but on the whole, cars behave consistently.

Humans, should raccoons ever encounter them, are far less predictable. Sure, they provide food, but usually not willingly. Sometimes a human will be moved to chase the raccoons away from trash bins, or in more rural areas, shoot them with pellet guns. Friendly humans can come off as aggressive, approaching too closely to take photographs (blinding raccoons with flash bulbs). Very young humans, in particular, are prone to shrieking and chasing the raccoons in an attempt to pet them, which comes across as aggression. Which leads me to point two:

2. Cars are generally not aggressive. When a car hits an animal, it’s not intentional; aside from a handful of bored rednecks, most drivers don’t swerve to try and hit the animal. As long as the raccoon stays off the roadway, it’s safe. Humans are another story.

3. Parked cars can provide shelter. Once a car stops moving, it ceases to be a threat to the raccoon (aside from attracting scary humans, of course), and turns into a resource.

4. Cars are colorful and shiny. Raccoons are known to like shiny things.

After going through these reasons, I still think that raccoon was crazy (and possibly rabid). But it was still super cute!