Exclusive Interview With Runaway Beagle

Hi, I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of On The Media. Ketzel has overdosed on so many M&M's during this last week of worry over Starlet, her beagle, that I suggested she pass out for the weekend and let me do the heavy lifting. My involvement's not all that far-fetched since I am a distant relative of said beagle. Ketzel is my second cousin and our grandmothers olev hashalom were sisters.

And while I too like dogs very much, having grown up with a memorable Great Dane named Eurydice, I don't exactly share my cousin's sometimes excessive allegiance if not over identification with animals. I'm hoping this detachment will play in my favor, as I ask a few questions that may help us fathom why Starlet Blue Levine left home.

Poised somewhere between disdain and apathy, Starlet (left) wonders why she and the thing (Zoe Mae, right) are being addressed.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

BG: Hi there Starlet, thanks for getting on the sofa.
SB: Are you here too? Are you eating something?
BG: Actually I wanted to talk to you about your recent disappearance. I understand that you took off Monday evening while Ketzel was out of the house.
SB: Does she have food in her pockets?
BG: In fact she does. Ketzel left and Zoe Mae opened the side door by putting her paws on the handle and jumping. Is that what you remember?
SB: Does she have a bowl outside?
BG: Yes, her bowl is outside. Is that where you were going?
SB: She smells but not much. But there is a smell. I remember now. And the smell gets closer and then it goes in a direction and I go in a direction.
BG: Right. Now from what we've pieced together from eyewitness reports, it seems you were following smells for about two hours before you were picked up. Do you remember where that was?
SB: BIG. SMELL. EVERYWHERE. I eat the smell.
BG: Exactly. You were eating garbage at the KFC on NE. MLK Blvd. Do you recall the people who picked you up and put you in their car?
SB: Are they here too?

Joyce Crabbe and Mike Smith found Starlet at a KFC and brought her to their home. A few days later they took her to the vet's office to be scanned for a microchip, having worried that if they brought her to Animal Control the dog might be confiscated. Turned out Joyce and Mike used the same vet as Ketzel, and so! another victory for the kindness of strangers.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

BG: Do you recall anything about your four-day stay with the people named Joyce and Mike?
SB: Cat. Food. Drawers. Vomit.
BG: That's what they tell us, too, that you had issues with their cat and that you went through every cabinet in their kitchen. My guess is that you found food and ate it but that it didn't agree with you so you threw up. Does that ring a bell?
SB: Are you here? Do you have food in your pockets?
BG: As a matter of fact, I do have a little something, a blue peanut butter M&M I picked up off Ketzel's bedroom floor. But let's focus for a sec on you. Since coming home and hearing about your friends and family's sleepless nights, the hours of searching, the hundreds of lost dog posters and the paid ads in The Oregonian, what do you think you've learned about running away?
SB: (Stretches.)
BG: Starlet?
SB: (Grunts, circles and lands, curled. Looks at interviewer out of one eye.)
BG: Indeed, Starlet. From your mouth to God's ears: There is no place like home.
SB: (Snores).

A final word: It may be that no one understands Starlet better than the cat who watches her every move. So it's not all that surprising that literary agents are all a-twitter about rumors of a manuscript now making the rounds Watch these pages for more news about STUDIES IN ATTACHMENT DISORDER: My Life With A Beagle, by Lulah Levine.

9:25 PM ET | 10-26-2008 | permalink

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The Beagle Has Landed

That's the headline, the happy ending details TOMORROW!!

8:45 PM ET | 10-24-2008 | permalink

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Where The Hell Is My Dog? Day 3

The excitement of hammering up posters, buying print ads and filling out online Missing Dog reports is over. I am now in limbo.

My dog Starlet's absence -- in any permanent way -- doesn't seem real enough to consider...yet I'm clueless as to what to do next. I am not proud to say I have temporarily given up on Day 3; I'm just sitting her paralyzed with lethargy hoping to simply konk out from so many sleepless nights.

(Don't worry, the money you've just pledged to your member station isn't going to get wasted on my sad self-indulgence. I'm taking a personal day.)

We're heading towards 72 hours of missing dogness. I don't think I've ever had an animal go missing this long before. And I can assure you that the non-ringing of my phone (and this with my number plastered everywhere) has never, never seemed louder.

Are lost dogs and cats like lost socks? Do they just disappear, never to be found?

5:41 PM ET | 10-23-2008 | permalink

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Starlet Still Missing Day 2

If you read yesterday's blog, you'll know that my 9 yr old beagle Starlet is missing. And if you're among the kind people who wrote w/advice and various OMG's!, I thank you from the heart.

I don't believe she's dead, but I do think she's with someone who might not know about microchips. That would explain why she hasn't shown up on anyone's radar. Actually, she has shown up -- I've gotten a few calls in response to the posters around the 'hood -- but they're all telling me where she was last seen, not where she is.

Starlet and I on one of our botanizing trips; doesn't she look the quintessential devoted animal? NOT!

photo credit: Troy Nave

 

Anyone with a beagle will not be surprised to learn that Starry was last seen by the dumpster of a nearby convenient market. So the good news is that whether she's still free-range or tied up in someone's yard, she's still very likely within a half-mile of home.

Cascade Beagle Rescue is coming over this afternoon to help canvas the neighborhood.

4:19 PM ET | 10-22-2008 | permalink

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Starlet The Beagle Is Missing

Not that I think it will help me find her since none of you reading this blog entry are likely to live in my Killingsworth Ave/North Portland neighborhood, but since I can't think about anything else, I thought you should know that my beagle has been missing for 15 long hours.

This is Starry, aka Starlet, the beagle I rescued two years ago. She's often mistaken for a puppy because she's so slim and jaunty, but in fact she's probably 9 yrs old. I was out for a few hours last night (serves me right, not taking the dogs with me, how could I even think of having a life?) and when I came home, my big dog had managed to open the French door in the dining room (she's learned to jump up and land hard on the long handle) and the little one was nowhere to be seen.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

The worst of it is, she's not wearing her collar. It was in the wash. My one chance of seeing her again is that she's microchipped. Now I have to pray that whoever's found her (and I bet someone has, she's awfully adorable) knows to have her scanned.

Meanwhile, I've done what a good owner's supposed to do: gone to various websites, filled out online forms, called all the local vets, called the microchip company, and put up a few posters along the nearby busy street.

What I hadn't expected was the unsolicited e-mail that's resulted from my online search. I shouldn't be surprised. The "TOP LOST PET TRACKER IN THE US" is now in my inbox, plus a special offer for PREMIUM SERVICE from the otherwise free Petfinder.

Of course if I'd been registered with THE PET RESCUE INTERNATIONAL REGISTRY premium service would be free. But the fact remains ...

WHERE THE HELL IS MY DOG???????

Starlet is definitely the kind of beagle to stop and smell the lilacs...plus anything, everything else.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

I don't suppose you know someone who knows someone who's seen Starlet?

2:57 PM ET | 10-21-2008 | permalink

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Wonder What To Do With Your Fab Fall Photos?

If you're new to Talking Plants you may not know about our photo community. Given some of the stunning shots showing up there today, I wanted to be sure you take a look and consider delighting us with some of your own stolen moments from this 2008 fall.

Given what else this season has brought us, I suspect you'll find our photo album a very safe haven -- and there can never been too many of them.

"Ready to fly" was taken by TP regular Aleth Matrone who tell me she moonlights as a professional skydiver "and/or" an insurance claims specialist. And you thought you were interesting?

photo credit: Aleth Matrone

 

The majority of our group is enamoured with macro shots, and having tried a number of my own I know there's more to it than hitting the old "macro" button and hoping for the best. I find I have better luck with the big picture, which of late has been fairly mindblowing as I continue to hike my favorite (nearby) places on the planet.

I've been spending way too much time talking about the Wallowa Mountains and the nearby towns of Joseph and Enterprise, but now I can brag all I want without incurring the wrath of locals because the mountain passes involved in getting there have become quite formidable.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine

 

I'm going to give the last word to Aleth for capturing a moment we've all stumbled into but perhaps have never fully seen.

Aleth spied this moment on her 17 acre farm spread in Kutztown, PA. A little light, a hint of red barn, and suddenly I'm no longer in front of the computer but smelling the sun on hay. Thanks, Aleth.

photo credit: Aleth Matrone

 

10:42 AM ET | 10-20-2008 | permalink

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Shivering to Sleeveless in 24 Hours

Before I started to shiver in Wallowa County, eastern Oregon, where my friend Nani and I escaped over the weekend, I grabbed a few shots of my new courtyard now rich with flowing water and fall flowers and where, admittedly, you and I have not spent enough time kicking back.

Then suddenly, Nani and I were through the Blue Mountains and entering La Grange, OR in a bloody snowstorm! Nani grew up in Hawai'i and spent the next few glorious days swaddled in fleece. The landscape was, as ever, relentlessly gorgeous but the winds got so brutal, we had to curtail a hike on Saturday after getting chilled to the bone.

And then unexpectedly, before my Zoe Mae was able to fully realize her inner beast (I have pix to prove it), we were rushing back to Portland so I could make a last minute plane to Chicago where the weather is now fully summer and I'm back in sandals and a sleeveless top.

Global footprint? Embarrassingly large. Stimulus factor? Overwhelming. Sense of gratitude? Off the charts. These last few days have been peopled with astonishing characters everywhere I've gone, some of whom you'll be meeting in my late fall Morning Edition series, AMERICAN MOXIE: HOW WE GET BY.

Right now it's back to the future, with an image from my next destination where today's blog all began.

Red and center, a huge stalk of dahlia blew over and broke so I popped it in the fountain (I'm rethinking all the dahlias I planted so prominently because I don't want to look at stakes). Foliage highlights include black and green taro plus hardy banana to the far right. And that weird white thing on the fountain ledge is a candle; the set designer let that one slip.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

9:02 AM ET | 10-14-2008 | permalink

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Look What's Rocking At Versailles

I was driving through the slate gray gloom of fall this morning tuned -- bien sur (accent aigu, oui?) -- to Morning Edition, when I heard Eleanor Beardsley's story, King of Kitsch Takes Over Versailles.

Hearing the outspoken French thrash and gnaw at the current Jeff Koons retrospective was plenty amusing, just the kind of audacious controversy the Sun King Louis XIV might have enjoyed. As he also might have delighted in Koons' whacko floral fantasy, Split Rocker.

Not an easy work to capture with one photo, Koons' fantastical creation is a 40' high stainless steel statue weighing 11 tons and covered in 90,000 flowers and plants.

photo credit: jean-marc

 

Split Rocker in its original form was first unveiled in 2000 at the Palais des Papes cloister in Avignon, France. As described in Art in America, it represents "the head of a child's rocking toy--half pony, half dinosaur--with large yellow "handles" protruding from each side".

As described by Koons, "I thought this is the type of work that Louix XIV would wake up and have a fantasy that he'd want to see. And he'd tell his staff and Voila! he'd come home and there would be Split Rocker".

Which explains why no one's been tending my autumnal garden. I forgot to tell the staff...

1:21 PM ET | 10- 8-2008 | permalink

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Lady Bird Would Roll In Her Grave

Believe me, I do not invoke the name of the great lady lightly. But Lady Bird Johnson -- the woman behind the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 -- would no doubt consider it the saddest of days if she'd seen these two innocent words married into one terrifying phrase:

VEGETATIVE ADVERTISING.

I just saw it for the first time at The Human Flower Project, an excellent source of human/horticultural tidbits, in a blog entry titled That's No Garden, It's A Billboard. The subject is the easing of highway landscape restrictions that could allow corporate logos to be spelled out in plants. "If a company pays enough, California drivers could be whizzing by flowering signage."

Ponder this composite pix by Christopher Flynn and you'll see why vegetative advertising is a phrase to be feared.

It's not happening yet -- this pix has been photoshopped -- but according to the L.A. Times, the director of the California Department of Transportation (CALTRANS) is hoping for a change in the rules re:freeway advertising.

photo credit: Christopher Flynn

 

One of the best places to keep track of this story is at Scenic America. To get up to speed, here's some background. And if you're somehow involved or can offer us some insight, do post...

11:00 PM ET | 10- 5-2008 | permalink

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Last Of The Season's Wildflowers

This just in from the Nature Conservancy's Rob Taylor, who lives in the Wallowa Mountains town of Enterprise, Oregon: the last flower still standing in the Zumwalt Prairie is blue gentian.

Behold the bottle gentian, Gentiana affinis, native to prairies and sub-alpine meadows of the American West.

photo credit: Rob Taylor, Nature Conservancy

 

Earlier this summer, Rob took me on my first trip into the Zumwalt, where he woks as a field scientist. The region has subsequently stolen my heart. Check out this link to see why.

Send pix of the last wildflower standing in your area to Talking Plants!

11:58 AM ET | 10- 4-2008 | permalink

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Flower Phobia Cured By Fall Color

Back in June, while visiting the romantic garden of my friends Len Porter and and Peter Goldblatt, I confronted a chronic weakness I would have to overcome. Call it Fear Of Flowers.

I've justified it for years despite abuse from esteemed colleagues (just ask Nina Totenberg). I've even gone to great lengths to intellectualize it; consider this excerpt from my book, Plant This! :

As for choosing plants by their flower -- well, given the fickle nature of beauty, I trust this ornamental feature least of all...Which is not to say I'm perverse enough to covet a garden without bloom. But when you balance their capacity for transcendence with their utter unpredictability, flowers can break your heart. Obsessing over them is much like throwing yourself into an unstable relationship that has no real substance only dizzying sex.

Fine, so grow plants for their flowers...

On the whole, I still stand firmly by the idea that flowers are the icing, not the cake. But that's still no excuse for a plant lover like myself to cop out when it comes to choreographing color. On this first day of October, with nary a leaf turning crimson or yellow, I'm more grateful than I've been all year for the flowers now in bloom.

My hands down late season favorite is Leonotis leonuris. Other than its color (the same as my house), I also love the different stages of flowering on any given stalk. I spent a small fortune on a large Monrovia plant several months back; time will tell whether it'll be as robust next year.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

For my favorite color, orange, I've got the tender perennial lion's tail (above) and the low-growing, self-seeding annual Begonia sutherlandii. I'm also trying a variety of unusual, orange-tinged dahlias from Cistus Nursery here in Portland.

For magenta, I rely on that ever-blooming, always-scrambling, black-eyed Geranium 'Ann Folkard'.

And for blue, I vote with the hummingbirds: hardy salvias including S. patens, surely the truest bluest of flowers, and that towering giant for the back of the border, S. guaranitica.

Don't hold the composition and light against me as you behold this little confection I threw together for Rosh Hashana dinner (which was complete with kasha varnishkes). Along with the Leonotis, I added a one-two punch of a plant, Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

1:06 PM ET | 10- 1-2008 | permalink

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