Tell Your Story Fall 2022 Writing Contest — Finalist
Whether You Like It Or Not
“If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do.”
— Betty White
My mother passed away from sepsis and liver failure. Until then, I lived my whole life in Orlando, Florida. The City Beautiful, as it’s called, was a blanket; my own corner of the world bustling and metropolitan yet familiar, oh so familiar. I do not like traveling, and can’t afford it anyways. I am on the autism spectrum — as a result, change is not welcome here. But change is a part of life, as is the girth of death, its finality ripping every constant from my life by force.
I gave up our inner city apartment and moved with extended relatives to the small town of St. Cloud, Florida. The hour between the two cities is a misleading geographic misnomer.
Orlando is known for fresh squeezed orange juice and Disney World, the constant thunderstorms and rain make it a meteorologists’ wet dream. Metropolitan yet consistent, the city settles to a hum of feet on the sidewalk and cars blocking roads, wearing a perfume of bus exhaust and swan dung. I found my home in LGBT bars such as Pulse, and mystic, magic stores selling crystals and sage. It was chaotic, but I felt an endless affection for Lake Eola and it’s swan boats, the Fashion Square Mall, the theme parks, the large malls with their anchor stores, even the homeless man doing the Macarena outside Saint James Cathedral for cash.
St. Cloud, Florida, is a town of 40,000, best known for ‘celebrating small town life,’ fried chicken, donuts, and an abundance of “Make America Great Again” yard signs. According to Osceola County’s website, it was founded in 1909 on East Lake Tohopekaliga, and “was an early home to the largest concentration of Union Army veterans in the South, [hence its name].” Today, St. Cloud is a showcase of lakefront homes and quaint shops, kind people wearing the best Coldwater Creek fashions. Here, the weather man is just a guy on television; who needs him when arthritic knees just know, “A storm is coming.”
I don’t even travel. Certainly, I never made plans to move. I spent almost 30 years in the place I was born; the Publix on Orange Avenue, hospitals in the SODO district, even the porcelain lion statue circumventing Lake Como were a constant presence in my life, almost maternal, like a friend. I never dawned on me that this would someday be left behind.
The night of my mother’s passing, I left Orlando behind temporarily, an unwanted vacation to the nearby, more southern suburb. The transition from a bustling city to a town whose big attraction is a Tractor Supply Company was no easy feat. My new domicile: a quiet subdivision on the outskirts called Sweetwater Creek. The nearest establishments are a Winn Dixie, back roads, more back roads, and my choice of Dollar Generals. Going somewhere presents a unique challenge: I have a poor time socializing with strangers. In a small, conservative, traditional town, this struggle is amplified.
In Orlando, you have friends whether you want them or not. You’re never quite alone in a big city. At the very least, people are everywhere, and solidarity is found in the strangest places: on the back of a Lynx bus on a Sunday night, a knowing glance to a stranger because you’re running so late; in line at the Dollar Tree because there is one cashier and you both lament the management being so short staffed; every Publix employee ever, because they’re all so very nice. You cannot hide in the urban jungle; even strangers are company.
Don’t get me wrong, St. Cloud citizens are nice, but it’s more of the “bless your heart” southern hospitality. Affection is conditional to conforming, as is the nature of yokel towns. Even at that, people are sparse; hundreds of thousands less than the neighboring towns. A new form of isolation came to me on top of grief. I’ve regressed, and verily.
When I was a child, my best friend was a failed service dog named Mollie. After she passed, I adopted a russian blue cat named Peter Pinnoccio. The years that followed were a blur of feathered friends and opossums and raccoons. I learned to “mask,” or camouflaging certain behaviors and make friends, but losing my best and closest friend sent me back.
Of the six months spent in St. Cloud, I made no human friends — only a tabby cat, two golden retrievers, a brood (or two) of ducks, and an errant sandhill crane.
Sebastian is an anti-social cat. His owner claims, “he don’t like people.” Sebastian and I have this much in common.
He was an outdoor cat from the time he came home from the shelter. One day last year, he wandered off around the time of gator sightings. His owner shrugged and expected the worst. Then some night in September, he came back, intact but different. “I don’t know what happened,” his owner tells me. “But he’s been different since then, more aloof. He wants nothing to do with anyone.”
Every night I go for a walk around the neighborhood, taking in the scenic beauty this town has to offer. One night, a detour took me down a side street where I found this hefty orange cat. He ran up to me like we were old pals, started purring and rubbing his mug against my leg.
He doesn’t interact with the other animals of the house, and I’ve never seen him approach any other human. He lets me pet him until he’s done, boundaries firm as his fangs.
I think Sebastian understands me and the compassion I need.
Much better than any human ever has
This is a cat who counts on my consistency, bounding down the driveway each night at eight p.m. on the dot. He stands at attention or runs at any break in the monotony. He really doesn’t like other people. What’s more, he’s not bothered by the lack of companionship. He doesn’t care that he’s the weird cat on the block. He may have been gator bait, or human bait; I do not know. I am not asking, and he is not telling.
He doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about anything but the right now.
I wish I could be the very same.
There are two golden retrievers that live on Channing Street. I am embarrassed to note I’ve never learned their given names. They’re just “the two golden retrievers on Channing Street.” Their owners immigrated here from a Nordic country. Nice folks, but still, I don’t know how to properly approach. However, I have no problem talking to their dogs.
They’re big, sturdy dogs, easily five years old. That doesn’t stop me from calling them puppies. I run up to the gate, and they run to see me. The man who takes them on walks notices me daily, and waves.
“They’re watching you,” he says. “The dogs think you come out just to see them.”
I have no shame in admitting, “Honestly, I do.”
He nods and says, “The weather’s nice, too. It almost feels like summer.”
These people, I believe, are genuinely good. You can see it in the broad smiles of their dogs, tails wagging with the wind while they run around their pool.
The dogs resemble the pup I’d had as a young kid. Mollie, my first pet, was a great comfort in times of trauma. I became acquainted with “near death” when I was four years old when my mother had a hemorrhagic stroke. I spent the next few months shuffled between relatives, where I had my first encounter with sexual abuse. I have vivid memories of that time; of seeing my mom in a hospital bed, of being afraid to use the bathroom in the dark. All that time, I had Mollie. She stayed by my side, making me feel safe.
It is no coincidence now, experiencing loss, I have two more golden retrievers in my life. Their smiles are as bright as their glistening coats, even on cold or rainy days.
In my first month there, I found a baby duckling abandoned under my uncle’s old Blazer. She had a limp and a raucous beak. I took her in and named her Sunny. She died in a shoebox the next night.
I did everything I could to keep Sunny alive. A neighbor had a heat lamp, we put that over her bed. I furiously searched for the best duckling food. We bathed and held her, took her out in the afternoon wrapped in a washcloth. I sang to her, “Here comes the sun.”
She made it through the night and the whole house awoke to the sound of a vivacious, reverberating chirp. She ate and drank while our cats watched through the porch window. I found her mother in the pond out back, and tried returning Sunny to the swimming brood. Her mother didn’t want her back. Moments later, Sunny struggled to land, only to be picked apart by the larger males. I chased them away, cradled the duck to my chest and brought her back home. What else was there to do?
The day’s end was spent on the phone with wildlife preserves. St. Cloud and the surrounding areas were a pinnacle of natural beauty. Surely, someone had the space to take her in. Each call was met with the same, “Muscovy ducks are nuisances. They’re not indigenous to Florida. We can’t take them in. I’m sorry.”
They didn’t sound particularly sorry, especially when Sunny’s limp became more pronounced, and she struggled with every breath. We took to Facebook to find a local farmer, or someone with experience in taking care of ducklings.
By the time we found her home, it was too late.
She passed in the shoebox just as her new owner pulled into the very same spot we’d found her in the yard. The woman shrugged her shoulders and said, “Eh. That’s the circle of life.”
I wanted so bad, to point out the fault in her logic. A circle keeps going; it’s a line cut off with blunt scissors tearing through a paper map.
I knew loss now. I’d lost everything, and now, this duck.
But Sunny got to know love, I reminded myself. She got the feeling of safety and warmth. Up to her dying moment, she was running around, trying to play and sing. When I’d try and leave, she would struggle over to me. Maybe she knew she was dying. Maybe I knew too, and she knew I would try to help her.
Somehow, animals always know.
I am not a fan of change. In the last half-year, my world has been terraformed like the rain. In a new town, I expected consistency in the Florida wildlife. Especially with the birds; Florida has a wide variety of them, but they are all the same. They do not have the same expectations as people.
Birds do not care about the pitch of a voice. They’ve shown time and time again that they scream, just like you. Birds give two shits about dangerous spots: they’ll chase the backs of gators for their warmth. Birds understand the concept of distance, and know enough to run when someone gets too close.
But birds crave variety, in the genius sense. My travels here introduced me to something new: a sandhill crane.
According to The National Wildlife Foundation, sandhill cranes are “large birds with long, thin legs and necks. The bird’s cheeks are white and its forehead has a bright red patch, which is one of the bird’s most noticeable features.” They grow to four feet tall and have grey and white feathers. Most notably, they have piercing, orange eyes.
Eyes that demand attention, full retinal contact. Unlike their feathered brethren, they do not understand the meaning of distance. The sandhill crane will stand strong and proud, peck holes in bicycle tires and raise both wings in a show of dominance. And that voice! Their cacophonous call that sounds like a carburetor dying.
They are too difficult to ignore.
The sandhill crane in my neighborhood occupies a dirt patch in the neighbor’s front yard. He pecks at the hummingbird feeder, digs in the dirt for insects. Each time I go outside, he is there, watching with his big old eyes.
Sandhill cranes, they will stare you down, whether you like it or not. In their gaze holds a fearlessness I can only hope to achieve, an attitude that nothing in this world could take him down.
Edit:
When biking to the store one day, I found his body, neck tangled like a backroad. His eyes stayed open, even in rigor mortis. More than likely, some person hit him with their pickup truck. A city cleaner was picking up waste refusal, and came up to his mangled flesh.
I rode away before the man secured him in a plastic bag.
