A couple nights ago, I was just falling asleep when I was startled into alertness by a racket on the roof above my head. My first fear was that the rats had returned to my attic, but judging by the sound, these would have been REALLY BIG rats! This morning, our garbage can was over-turned, garbage was strewn over the grass, and my daughter discovered raccoon paw prints in the silt at the bottom of a bucket filled with rain water, which was sitting close to the garbage can. Mystery of the night visitors solved. We had inadvertantly set up the perfect raccoon dinner stop: garbage can buffet and right beside it, a place to wash the food.

Here’s a photo of a raccoon climbing up my back porch a couple years ago.

Zoologists often refer to ravens as the “brains of the bird world.” To the First Nations people of the northwest coast, Raven is the “Trickster,” a sometimes greedy, sometimes cunning, sometimes joke-playing figure, who tried to steal the sun and released the first humans from a clam shell. The Trickster’s ordinary raven counterparts have similar traits. Among loggers of the westcoast, ravens are well-known as crafty lunch-stealers (who always know in which part of a bag a lunch is hidden and are expert at opening lunch boxes and zippers or sawing through canvas with their beaks) and have also been known to play tricks on humans.

My dad has worked in forests up and down the B.C. coast for the past fifty years (first as a timber cruiser, then as a log scaler) and has had many encounters with ravens. When CBC radio announced its “raven contest” a few weeks ago, honouring the birth date of Haida artist Bill Reid and calling for stories, poems and songs about ravens, I immediately called my dad. Here is the story I wrote, based on a couple of my dad’s real encounters with ravens in the Queen Charlotte Islands:

Last Laugh

The sun was just rising over the trees as a small motor boat made its way out to the log boom resting on the calm water of Juskatla Inlet. On shore, a raven called, the sound masked by the drone of the motor.

The boat tied up at one end of the boom, and two men climbed out, gripping the log with the spikes of their caulk boots and using their long scaling rules for balance. By the time the sun was well over the trees, the scalers had worked their way to the opposite end of the boom.

“Look at that,” one of the men called, as he straightened his back for a rest, beginning to think of lunch.

At the top of a tall cedar on the near shore, a raven let out a loud squawk, then dropped as if shot. The bird spiralled down while the men watched. At the last moment before hitting the ground, the raven swooped up, flew straight back to the top of the tree and did the stunt again.

The men shook their heads and laughed.

“Damn stupid bird.”

They were wrong.

 Later, back at the boat, hungry for the lunches they’d stashed safely in their gear bags, the men stopped and stared. The canvas bags sat in the bottom of the boat, flaps open, zippers gaping. A quick search revealed the lunches were gone.

On shore, two well-satisfied ravens cawed. In Juskatla, ravens always work in pairs.

* * *

[Note: the raven photos were taken by my husband at Cowichan Bay, the carving is by Bill Reid and depicts the story of Raven releasing the first humans from a clam shell, the bottom left photo is of my dad scaling logs in 1962. To read the poem that won the CBC Raven contest go to: www.cbc.ca/bc/features/billreid/index.html#grandprize]

While I was visiting my parents over the holidays, an old photograph surfaced of me before a high school dance. There is much I could say about this time in my life, but when I look at the photo, it’s hard for me to get past the hair.

As a teenager, I was very self-conscious and embarrassed easily. When I decided (shortly before this photo was taken) to get my long hair cut and permed, I was hoping for a slightly new look, but not a drastic, attention-drawing change. Not too short on the sides. Not too curly. When I ended up with what could be best described as poodle head, I was horrified.

How could I face the stares and jeers of everyone at school? (Yes, it sounds self-absorbed and superficial now, but this was high school, remember). I called up my boyfriend and we agreed to skip school the next day and drive to Victoria (about an hour away) – where no one would recognize me.

I can’t remember exactly what we did all day, except that we spent some time wondering around the neighbourhood of James Bay near Beacon Hill Park. Maybe we parked the car and walked or maybe we just drove around. In any case, one house caught our attention, and we stopped. On the grass in front of the house, sat a small brown monkey. Neither of us had ever seen a live monkey up close before. When we approached, a middle-aged woman came out of the house. She was very friendly, let us meet the monkey, and chatted with us for quite awhile.

It ended up being a good day, but with a strange quality – as if we had stepped out of our regular lives and even out of time. By our return home, I had grown accustomed (or at least resigned) to my new hair and bolstered enough to face school the following day.

I didn’t give the episode much more thought until two years later, when I was living in Victoria going to university and became interested in the artist Emily Carr. I had known about her before, but now something about her paintings and her life seemed to speak to me in a new and personal way. She had grown up in the Victoria neighbourhood of James Bay (she was born there in 1871) and had lived there as an eccentric older woman with many pets, including a monkey named Woo. As I looked at an old black and white photo of a middle-aged Carr standing in her James Bay backyard holding a small familiar-looking monkey, an eerie feeling of deja vu came over me. Is it possible I might have seen the ghosts of Emily Carr and Woo on that fateful bad hair day?

I’ve walked around James Bay many times since then, trying to remember which house was the one where we’d seen the woman and the monkey, but I never could find it again. If it really had been the ghosts of Emily and Woo, did they appear just to help me through a bad hair day? Or was there some profound message that Carr would have liked to pass on (a P.S. about art or trees or life, perhaps)?

A few days ago, I paid one last visit to “Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon,” an exhibit which just ended at the Vancouver Art Gallery. As I walked through the rooms of Carr’s paintings, it occurred to me that she doesn’t need a ghost to pass on a message: her paintings have never stopped speaking. This is not to say I wouldn’t have a few questions for her, if I did meet her ghost….

[Click on “My Books” in the right sidebar for info on the two novels I ended up writing about Emily Carr’s childhood]

I launched my new book this past Saturday at the Vancouver SPCA shelter. “The Truth about Rats (and dogs)” is the second novel in a series the SPCA asked me to write about kids and animals. The first book, “Dog House Blues,” which came out last year, was also launched at a shelter event. I had three dogs as special guests at that one (rats, of course, at this one).

The highlight of last year’s event was when the dogs all ran to the front of the room where I’d been doing my reading, and my dog, Dylan, immediately (and messily) drank up my whole glass of water. The kids thought that was hilarious. The highlight of the recent launch was probably when George, the rat, escaped from my hands and scampered onto my back, where I couldn’t reach him (see above photos). I’d like to think the best part was when I read from my book, but as usual, I was upstaged by the non-human guests!

(George, in the photo on the left, has been living at my house for the past few weeks, along with his brother, Sneaker. They are both available for adoption at the Vancouver shelter. Believe it or not, rats are becoming more popularly adopted pets than the dogs and cats.)

 You can read a different perspective on the launch and see more photos at www.cwillbc.wordpress.com.