CarmenJimersonCross
Bio
proper name? CarmenJimersonCross-Safieddine SHARING LIFE LIVED, things seen, lessons learned, and spreading peace where I can.
Read, like, and subscribe! Maybe toss a dollar tip into my "hat." Thanks! Carmen (still telling stories!)
Stories (113)
Filter by community
A KENNEL
CRUSTY ARTISAN BREAD, FRESH FRUIT, BOILED EGGS AND AMARETTO SPIKED COFFEE set before me by my own hand in lieu of a plan to be drawn however slowly throughout the morn. I needed to draft a business outline. The farm took a sudden veer in this alternate direction. It must become a kennel. "It is not enough to designate as farm in any manner which the board can find fit. What you can do is have a kennel... or something along that line. Maybe you should plan a hobby farm...worms or something." The mocking tone of the county zoning officer echoed in back of my mind as I rushed through numbers pressed onto newsprint and catalogs. I traced out a basic format on copy paper listing purpose and starting a list of itemized means. We had a truck and were expecting a trailer to be delivered to our purchase point some hundred and fifty miles south. Kennel cages and kennel fencing would cost a pretty penny but if we got a few before heading out to the land we could make it work. There was no building on the land handed down through family and sold to me as the only interested party, but I had a house plan that included room for a detached kennel and kennel run. The best thing about it all was the openness of the area. There was a bird aviary off in the distance, about a thousand feet out from our spot. There was also a small wooded area littered with evergreen... Northern Pine of a tree farm. The closest neighbor. an older couple with a brick house situated on the corner of the main roadway, was one thousand feet in the opposite direction. The older couple were acquainted with my grandparents and were actually anticipating our arrival as new neighbors. I made note of the perfect fit of such business to the area.
By CarmenJimersonCross4 years ago in Petlife
CERBERUS leWalaad
WE HAD JUST FINISHED A ROUND of pool. The holiday was wearing down and the pups, second litter of FOCCE', were rampant with mischief. She'd been returned to minimize the havoc instigated by her, a street bitch with all the mannerisms to support the title. She was a ruddy red brown pit bull standing height at 23 inches, a lower case mastiff being babysat for the year her owner was out of town. Lucky for her our bull mastiff was coming of age and found her to be most aromatic in addition to ever inspiring with her fence chasing antics. She could never be mistaken for proper. FOCCE' ran the fence all day if left outside. Ran along the fence barking and pouncing at the neighbor dogs. The other side of a four foot fence presented two papered German Sheppards with low crouched pace and perked ears, one pitch black and the other standard brown with black patching. The odd lot in that yard was a small commander of the two larger dogs. He was what resembled a Griffon... mottled grey and black sized to fit a man's boot box if he'd ever be in need of a casket. The latter idea wrought by the attitude of unwilling yard mates in their disinterest at being commanded by something so small and bossy. The Griffon nipped at their heels, bit the length of their tails and yapped his own opinion as to three response to the noisy neighbor in our yard. FOCCE' loved the confusion it all brought about. In less than eight months she was sagging low in her belly with a soon to be household addition put by BLU the bull mastiff Cane Corso gifted to our household one year prior. BLU was more laid back than FOCCE'; laid back and appreciated for being so. FOCCE: was street wise and it showed. She seemed to show him the ropes of mating egging him on at every opportunity until she had him caught and until she was showing a swaggered belly as her cast inside grew. Within a few months we had puppies. Ten grey and white reproductions of BLU, his first litter. He would be the origin of our kennel. A start of the old world extension of the molossus, a now extinct mastiff-type dog. Ours, a Cane Corso breed with origins in Italy traceable to ancient Roman molossus. BLU was calm until agitated. The first litter grew and were dispersed among family and friends for the most. The second litter was started almost unbelievably within weeks, almost as if by insemination. It brought ten healthy pups with owners ready and waiting. The following year brought BONITA and BINTA both impregnated within weeks of the other whelping a total fourteen pups of which only seven survived. Bonita lost most of her litter which sprung forth in the early morning hours supervised by her unwilling caretaker for his mother. Bonita was a bossy 2nd litter female owned by a family member who rarely stepped into our home but left her son and her dog in house. Her son resented the task of caring for the pregnant pooch. When whelping began pups were strewn across the entire basement area including beneath two shelves of tools and hardware. By the time anyone else was notified of the birthing event most puppies were already out; the last causing a shock syndrome which developed from the stress of birthing and the trauma of walking, climbing on in and around variant furnishings of the tool bench and woodworking equipment. There was blood and tissue torn and spilled on saw blades, screwdrivers and boxes of nails and fixtures. The whelping bitch was not calmed enough to stay on the prepared pad in an old pool which would have controlled any pups strong enough to move around after being born. Instead, puppies were collected from among those rough elements on and underneath workbench item and shelves. The basement was scoured under bright overhead lights and flashlights to find a total count of seven pups born and one potentially trapped in the vulva with Bonita straining to breath through pushing it and the umbilical free from herself. She died trying to free that last issue, her caregiver arguing that he, "...did not want to watch the damn dog anyway!" His mother's dog died from the resentment and disinterest. The pups died one after another from exposure and then from lack of nourishment. There was no mother to suckle from. After the last death count and disposal by burial in the far back end of the yard space, the son left, staying out of the house for a week or more. Before he could return and within days of Bonita's episode, BINTA began her whelping stage lucky to be under a bit more watchful eye and care for her outcome. Her puppies survived. They survived despite her weakened disposition near the end of the birth of a sixth pup. She was given an herbal convulsant, herbs chosen and blended at home on partial advise from a veterans clinic. No offices open or scheduled to open due to holiday weekend. The herbs were readily available in our kitchen except for one ingredient accessed from a local Natural Foods Store... FOOD FANTASIES held there in ample supply. The convulsant was to help with pushing the afterbirth. When she seemed overly lethargic after a seventh pup and placenta rushed from her body, she was given herbal antibiotic tucked between her teeth and lip; and simulated IV in form of Pedialyte by eyedropper. Where she had been on the verge of death, the herbals and sterile waters revived her to where she could eat and drink on her own. She performed her own life actions including loving the pups. After weeks of reviving BINTA and supplementing milk for the puppies with MOTHERS MILK, a substitute for lactating dogs that can not provide enough milk for new pups. In six months there were dogs everywhere running the fence, climbing atop dog house and dog run and crawling out of dog pens. Dogs running across the top of a yard parked vehicle and springing from the teeter totter black wire trailer in the back yard. The year before found us lucky enough to have erected a six foot fence so that only the sounds emitted from the action in our yard could be reacted to by the three dogs next door. They were no longer of concern. No longer the fear for unexpected intrusion by walk over on that four foot divider. They could not attend what they could not see. In six months the third litter of pups were being fended out... but slowly. Their lengthened familiarization with the home front and their learned skill at climbing brought indoor fiascoes surely unknown to other dog owners. The pool table was one major curiosity due to human interaction thereon. We could be seen leaning over what looked like the food scrap table, the place where if conniving, patient and willy enough, any one of them could pick up a scrap of bacon, steak or roasted beef. They could find sliced apple with peanut butter... their favorite. The table was the place to go even if searching it "in person" had to be tasked. The dining table once... but the pool table often, was where what seemed to be a dog version of KING OF THE HILL played out. CERBERUS and BINTA Boy took turns manning the table with the first leap victor nudging away any second tier challenger. CERBERUS was the all time winner for his knack with the leap, a one try effort. It was as if he could simply step up and be on top like the tallest of hurdle jumpers in a field event at the Olympics.
By CarmenJimersonCross4 years ago in Fiction
WHAT IT IS IN THE BARN
I'd come running back at the imagined, hopeful calling out of my name from the distance across the hundred or so feet from the near barn where the small tractors were kept. My library of "run abouts" set there like a diamond in a man's fedora as far as hobby collections go. Tractors... mostly red, the official tractor color. Red tractors were from my grandpa and his group of proud fellas. The collection was the best of broadcast and word of mouth. The entire collection gloss finished and the barn spit clean. It was my pride, the display kept there in pristine condition. The barn itself was custom made for the purpose of showing and sheltering what all the other guys.. the other farmers out this way, helped in such high respect. It held the history of my father, grandfather and most of some of their own family men. we were manly men. Farm handling was beneath the description of our lives; we were the motor trend of agriculture. My barn spoke for every one of them and I knew it. I was back inside from there only because the shouted sound of my own name was as good as an alarm to awaken me from a momentary snap and fein mental block of potential danger. There was something fluttering about in the rafters. Someone suggested it was an old barn owl. A barn owl what could wreck a paint job.
By CarmenJimersonCross4 years ago in Fiction
INGRAVED
IT WAS AS THOUGH HE WERE INVITED BY THE HAUNTING ECHO OFF THRU THE FOGGED EVE, "Hoohoot hoohoot." Along the road were hand etched headstones. Engraved with the likeness of a carcass. A carcass of the previous person who was now reduced to nothing except a pile of slimed flesh reminiscent of things already long buried. Flesh which would soon resemble a layer of ash. Flesh once subtle with life giving juices. The fluid of life that runs dry with time. Flesh leaks fluid and eventually sags into self until there is nothing. Nothing but dust. Dust is to dust, and ever shall be. As the fog crept thick about them, mother and children huddled tightly awaiting notice of the man's return. He had stepped out of and away from the car suggesting that he would seek help for the stalled engine. He stepped away just before the first low "Hoohoot... hoohoot" pierced the heavy fog. Owls were common in the rural preserve, as such the sound never startled him. The overgrowth of plants hung low, never shorn for keeping what was inside them. This night nothing of substance was visible, including the man in his departure. Nothing except the occasional emergence of an outline of a headstone. He had stopped the car and stepped away. He'd not raised the hood or set a blinking caution light. He'd simply stepped away.
By CarmenJimersonCross4 years ago in Fiction
