Time to take a break

This will be my last AnimalBeat post. I had hoped to “make the world a better place” for animals with this blog – reasoning with readers, effectively persuading and converting through sheer “rightness.”    

It didn’t happen. AB didn’t even attract steady readers, as far as I could tell, except for drivers of horse-drawn carriages. Dubious distinction: I did get their attention!

I could go on forever with blog posts about animal issues that interest, sadden and often enrage me, but without numbers of readers and some positive re-actions, there was no point. So a couple months ago, I decided to call it quits on May 30 – exactly three years from the first post in 2009.

But that couldn’t happen either. Soon after my April 16 post about Harry’s birthday, I saw that Google will soon change everything about the system I had so laboriously learned to use. I can’t go through that again – and still need numbers of readers if I’m to do any good.

Besides, after almost 440 posts, would I be saying anything new? 

So, my thanks to anyone reading this post and others before it. I invite you to try www.nj.com/pets, where I’ve been posting entries about pets since last fall. 

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(The poem that follows was reprinted from today’s Writer’s Almanac [newsletter@americanpublicmedia.org]. It seemed like a fitting last poem here.)

How to Foretell a Change in the Weather

by Ted Kooser 

Rain always follows the cattle
sniffing the air and huddling
in fields with their heads to the lee.
You will know that the weather is changing
when your sheep leave the pasture
too slowly, and your dogs lie about
and look tired; when the cat
turns her back to the fire,
washing her face, and the pigs
wallow in litter; cocks will be crowing
at unusual hours, flapping their wings;
hens will chant; when your ducks
and your geese are too noisy,
and the pigeons are washing themselves;
when the peacocks squall loudly
from the tops of the trees,
when the guinea fowl grates;
when sparrows chip loudly
and fuss in the roadway, and when swallows
fly low, skimming the earth;
when the carrion crow
croaks to himself, and wild fowl
dip and wash, and when moles
throw up hills with great fervor;
when toads creep out in numbers;
when frogs croak; when bats
enter the houses; when birds
begin to seek shelter,
and the robin approaches your house;
when the swan flies at the wind,
and your bees leave the hive;
when ants carry their eggs to and fro,
and flies bite, and the earthworm
is seen on the surface of things.

(from Flying at Night, University of Pittsburg (sic) Press, 1985)  

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