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November 29, 2008

Intelligent Animals and Odd Women

Filed under: Home — donwood49 @ 3:49 am

I’ve been reading a book called Odd Women by George Gissing. It was written in the 1800′s sometime, and even though I enjoy reading books from that time period, this one has little interesting to say. What is interesting in it is it’s portrayal of “odd women,” women who wanted a career in a society and time period where they were expected to stay at home. For a book about people who want something other than marriage, it spends a lot of time with marriage. A woman has trouble with her husband, leaves him after he wants to control her thoughts, and then right off wants to marry someone else right away. This is very strange plot. It also has a plot twist no modern writer would think of. Apparently, a man and women couldn’t sit together in a living room alone without suspicion, so of course when the married women knocks on the door of a man she knows, the whole community believes she’s been doing improper things with him. Now a writer today would never think to write that. I guess that’s what townspeople did with no TV to watch.

Today Ernie told Walter the dog they were going for a ride and then went into the back room. Well, of course Walter couldn’t handle that, ran right to  our gate for the back room, then starting crying and watched outside the window to see if Ernie’s car was moving. That was interesting. I could see the wheels turning in his head: maybe Ernie had wriggled his way out the back window and ran around to the front of the house to the car, just so he could leave for a ride without the dogs. It makes you wonder. If babies eventually get over the “peek-a-boo” idea and stop thinking you’re going when they can’t see you, when do animals do this? Mom says Gerard our earlier dog thought anyone human could hide in the same places he could. Ebony our dog used to hunt behind the TV for predator animals on nature shows. Maybe it’s a predator-prey thing. Would Walter eventually understand that getting around the house would be difficult for Ernie? Probably not, but that’s just Walter. He wants to know where Ernie is all the time, but he’s a smart dog. Which part of an animal or human brain is this located? I wonder if it’s the same as the chickens not understanding about glass. They would try to drink tea with me by pecking at the glass. Since many of these animals are quite bright, it does make me wonder about this portion of their brain. If a 18-month-old child (or whatever age it is) can figure out this type of thing, what prevents the animals from doing it?
Food for thought.

Today I searched for jobs, went thrift shopping with Mom (who was called to scrounge at Savers). She’s looking for a cabinet, and found it but the prices were too high. Searching for jobs is beginning to annoy me. Half the time they do not have the right keywords or catagories so far at least. Makes searching difficult. I got a camera that makes stereoscopic pictures, but it can only be viewed with a little viewer. Really a silly thing to buy since I can’t see 3D, but I thought it would be fun. The batteries and film are still useable — I know because Mom tried it on me with the flash).

I took my banjo down to the music store the other day with my neighbor, who was quite happy to come along and knew just what to say to the music people about what my banjo needed. We took a tour of the place and looked at the different instruments — something I wouldn’t have neccessarily done by myself but I enjoyed it. I bought a book on banjos.
We had porcupine meatballs for dinner, and pie (third slice of the day, very good). Now we’re watching mysteries on TV, so I’ll end the post now.

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