Love's Real Stories

Answering all the real estate questions you never knew you had.

Category: Animals & Pets

February 6, 2020

Cowboy

“The explosion blew him 35 feet, all the way across the road!” said my friend Mae. “Can you believe it? 83 years old, and he lived!”

“That is hard to believe,” I said. “Is he still around?”

“Oh yes,” said Mae. “Lost his Paradise home and everything he owned, but Lee’s a tough old cowboy. He was knocked out and lay in the ditch for three and a half hours. The fire burned right over him. They said he was burnt black as coal. The fire burned everything around him while he was knocked out. He lost his house and everything.”

Mae gave me Lee’s phone number, I called and introduced myself. I told him I wanted to hear his story.

“It’s not much of a story,” he said. “I was knocked out cold through the whole thing, and all I have to show for it is one shoe and one dog.” 

“I heard you were blown 35 feet,” I said. “That sounds like a story to me!”

“More like 40 feet,” said Lee. “I think I damaged the driveway when I hit it with my head. But I’m a tough old cowboy, we take it as it comes. I’m just a little bit older than the hills, but I can still ride bulls. My wife doesn’t think so. She’s a beautiful lady, but even ornerier than me. Tougher, too. She fell and broke her hip and her arm after the fire. So, I’m not getting much good work out of her lately. Don’t tell her I said that. She’s wilder than all get out. She’s over 90 years old and more beautiful than ever. We love to dance. She fell when we moved into this fifth wheel. I worked a whole lotta years to become homeless. We might build again on our lot in Paradise but I’m hard to work with. I’m a contractor. When I say plumb, level, and square, I mean it.”

I asked Lee about the day of the fire.

“The fire came later in the day to my place on Deer Creek Lane. My granddaughter had already come by and hauled off my wife, when I decided I better get moving. I’ve been a logger and a cowboy, and I’ve fought fires. I figured I knew what to do. I watered the place down and I was loading my four dogs into the pickup. But that fire was too fast. The propane tank blew and sent me flying. Knocked out in the ditch while the fire burned right over me. I never did find my other shoe….” 

Lee paused there. When he continued, he choked up. “Three of my dogs didn’t make it, Doug,” he said. “My special dog Lacey, the Border Collie with the white ruff, she had her legs wrapped around me. I always load her into the pickup because she’s overweight.”

Now Lee is talking through his tearful sobs.

“I’ve never had a dog so close,” he said. “She clung to me. We were in this world to help each other, comfort each other! I love all animals, Doug. I’ve worked with livestock my whole life, but it’s not just numbers! I loved every horse, cow, pig, dog, and animal I’ve ever seen.”

Through his pain, Lee told me that Lacey perished in the fire along with Princess, the other Border Collie, and Lucky, the Black Lab. Bambi, the Lab/Pit Bull, survived, curled up on the floorboards in the cab of the pickup, having stayed there as the entire area was consumed by the howling fire. 

“I woke up to a red blizzard of fire and smoke. I was dazed and stupid. I hauled myself in a half-crawl back across the road to my charred pickup, the only thing left of the world I knew before that tank blew.”

Lee jumped in the pickup, it started up and he drove himself and Bambi out of Paradise.

“I was pretty beat up,” said Lee. “The worst is a bunch of 3/8 inch holes burnt into me from the embers, but they gradually fill up.

“Like I said, I’m a hard-headed old cowboy. We take it as it comes.”

 

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September 18, 2014

No Buddy

”How old is Flora?” I asked Martha Hart. Martha puffed her cigarette and kept an eye on the T.V. in the corner of the kitchen.

“Nine,” said Martha, sighing through a wet cough. “She’s nine, and in her own little world.”

I had met Flora briefly with her dad outside. Flora looked me over with a steady gaze as she shook my hand. She possessed a quiet and serious nature despite her wild curly red hair and the smiling beagle dog dancing at her side. Mr. Hart asked about the difference between personal property and fixtures, to be included in the sale of their property.

“Personal property,” I said, “are free-standing things like refrigerators and furniture, and aren’t included in a sale without a seller’s consent. Fixtures, on the other hand, are attached to the property, things like ceiling fans and curtain rods. Fixtures are included in a sale. ”

Flora asked hopefully, “Is my swing-set personal property?”

Mr. Hart leaned down toward Flora, red-faced and neck muscles bulging. “Stop interrupting!” he yelled. “Mr. Love is here for business, not your silly questions, Flora!”

Flora’s question was actually a good one, and stumped me. The swing-set’s legs were set in the ground, which made it a fixture, yet its intended use was as personal property. Mr. Hart solved my quandary. He looked at Flora and said, “The swing-set stays with the property.” I made note on the listing contract: “Swing-set included.”

Flora narrowed her eyes and gave her dad the stink-eye. I shrugged apologetically when she looked at me, but she gave me the stink-eye, too. Flora stomped away and Mr. Hart left. I measured the outside of the house, then toured the inside, and ran into Martha in the kitchen.

“Yeah, she’s a funny one,” Martha said toward the T.V. She exhaled smoke and rattled the ice cubes in her drink glass. I caught sight of Flora out back. I don’t think Martha noticed or cared. I left the kitchen out the back door.

“What’s your dog’s name?” I asked Flora. She huddled under a tree with her arm around the beagle’s neck.

“Buddy,” she said softly, and wiped her cheek.

She looked up at me and asked, “Is Buddy personal property?”

I nodded yes, and told her Buddy goes with her.

“Will you write that down?” She pointed at my listing contract.

I did: “Buddy not included.”

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June 27, 2014

Hot Time

Summertime heat in the North Valley can be vicious. Especially for people from the Bay Area accustomed to cool breezes by day and cold fog at night.

Jack and Mary Quince, a Bay Area couple, met me at my office one July morning to tour country property. The weatherman predicted temperatures of 105 to 108 degrees.

“Let’s go,” said John, “we have miles to go, right?”

We walked together toward my car in the parking lot and I noticed a station-wagon with a wire cage screening the open back window. A Golden Retriever stared anxiously at us through the mesh.

“That’s Rollie,” said Jack. “It’s okay if we leave him here, right?”

“Uhh…” I said.

A car zipped into the parking lot, made a snappy stop-and –reverse, and slipped backwards into the parking space next to my car.

My wily old mentor, KDV, popped out of the car.

“Morning, babe,” he said.

I made introductions and told KDV I was taking the Quinces out to see country properties.

“Ah. What fools these mortals be,” said KDV. “You do realize it will be so hot today the chickens will be laying hard-boiled eggs? It will be hotter than a two-dollar pistol, my friends.”

Jack and Mary laughed tentatively.

“But take heed!” said KDV. “After the sun goes down, my friends, it’s a midsummer night’s dream.”

KDV nodded toward the station wagon and asked Jack and Mary, “Is that your Retriever?”

Jack told him of the plan to leave Rollie.

“Only if you want to come back and find Rollie cooked like a rotisserie chicken,” said KDV. “In two hours that car will be hotter than Satan’s basement.”

“Let’s just take our car, then,” said Mary.

Four hours later we rolled back into the parking lot in the non-air-conditioned station wagon. The property tour was like a trip through a blast furnace. Jack and Mary sat slouched and wilted. Rollie was a limp rag. I said my good-byes and staggered off with no expectation of seeing them again.

Four days later, to my surprise, Jack and Mary bought a country property.

Forty days later, we closed the sale. I made an evening visit to their new place.

“It was a hot one today,” I said.

“Yes,” said Mary, “but tonight it’s a midsummer night’s dream.”

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May 1, 2014

Crawl of the Wild

“I’m a traveling library of smells,” says Jim, the Whole House Inspector. He raises his arms and scans himself as if taking inventory. He’s explaining why vicious dogs, nasty cats, and a variety of vermin seem to tolerate him, even like him. That’s a good thing, because Jim is a trespasser on the turf of dogs, cats, and vermin in the course of doing his job.

Jim has been inspecting homes since 1985. He has crawled over, under, around and through thousands of them. He’s been face-to-face with snarling, hissing, snapping creatures, in basements, attics, and yards. He’s emerged, so far, with no bites, scratches, nor stings.

He’s been scared just once.

Jim crawled in darkness, in the dirt beneath a vacant house in the foothills. He used his flashlight like a duster, wrapping up spider webs in front of his face as he wriggled on his belly. He snaked his way around to the back of the area, and on his return saw the silhouette of a dog lying in the dirt to the right of the access opening.

He called out. No response. He crawled a little closer, and said calmly, “I’m supposed to be here,” his standard offer of diplomacy to all creatures he encounters on the job. The dog didn’t flinch. Jim bounced a dirt clod near the head, and then bounced one off the flank. No movement. “That’s a fight or flight situation once I hit him, so I knew something wasn’t right,” says Jim. He fixed his flashlight beam on the body and squirmed closer. Jim’s scalp tightened when he realized he was inches from a mountain lion, not a dog.

“He was dead, but hadn’t been for long. He wasn’t stiff,” says Jim. “I had been there to inspect that house a week earlier, but the utilities were off, so I left. It turns out the Realtor put the cover on the access opening a few days before that, and must have sealed that lion in. It was a terrible tragedy. But if I had made the crawl the first time, that lion would probably have been alive, hungry, and mad……”

Jim shuddered. “That’s scary.”

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January 7, 2014

Animal Aura

“No more charging bulls and no more vicious dogs, please,” said my client, Janice. “I want to find a place with good vibes.”

Janice was referring to two properties I had shown her and husband Mark. At the first a neighbor’s bull charged us and at the second a neighbor’s Springer Spaniel sunk his teeth into my ankle. In both cases, Janice and Mark had loved the property we were touring, but left in horror.

“Not this time,” I said. “I checked this one out this morning; no beasts as far as the eye can see.”

We drove up the gravel driveway, and curved behind a row of maple trees. At the back of the property, hidden from the road, stood a two-story cottage with a front yard of tall flowers and a vegetable garden behind.

A little round lady emerged from the front door wearing an apron, wiping her hands on a dish-towel. She smiled and waved as we arrived.

“I’ll be out in the garden,” said the lady. “You kids just make yourselves at home.”

The place smelled like a bakery. In the kitchen a pie sat steaming on the wood-block countertop. All the rooms in the house had high ceilings, wood floors and old-time wallpaper.

“I already love this place,” said Janice.

“Funky, but nice,” said Mark.

We headed out the back door. An over-sized black cat was sleeping on the back porch rail-cap. Janice and Mark strolled out to the garden and I hung back with the cat.

“Beautiful cat,” I heard Janice say.

“Oh he just visits. He belongs to my neighbor,” said the lady.

I reached to pet the cat, and in a flash, he sunk his fangs in my thumb. I stifled a scream and hid my bloody hand in my pocket. I said nothing.

“Let’s write it up,” said Mark as they returned.

Back at the office I put the purchase contract on the table.“What is wrong with your thumb?” said Janice.

I confessed the cat attack. “I didn’t want to tell you guys that yet another vicious animal lived in the neighborhood.”

“Come to think of it,” said Mark, “that bull was aiming for you. And the dog bit you; and the cat attacked you.”

“Yeah,” said Janice. “This place has good vibes and we’re buying it. And you should adjust your aura.”

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