Oh, Tom,

Do I have stories: most involving my pets, but, the funniest, by far, involves a fellow collectors' pet. For SOME strange reason, 1 dog & 3 cats have had a facsination w/Herkimer diamonds; they've never played with them, they KEPT them, as their special item. A "not toy; not food" thing. I could always get back the one they had, but, sooner or later, that or another one would dissappear & I would find it in their bedding/special corner (whichever). 1 cat, Miss Kitty, was blessed with an OPPOSABLE extra paw, which she used to bring food to her mouth (NEVER stuck her face in the bowl) &, she would go to where I had nearly 10K Herks stored, grab one, & carry it off to nuzzle & sleep with. The same with the other cats: NO batting or pouncing, Just bring to a corner, purr away like crazy, & sleep with the dang thing. The chocolate Lab, Coco, used to snag one, often with Doran or Tawny's help, & bring it to its bedding. I'm guessing that, bcs they ADORED me, they adored those, &. let's not discount how AWESOME they look! LOTS of animals like sparkle, for SPARKLES sake!

Now, I had taken a married collecting buddies to a geode site, where the minerals were fairly intact in the in terra geodes; HOWEVER, THEY thought it would be good to bring their PLAYFUL full sized police shepard along. As I was digging MY treasure up (he didn't bother his OWNERS!), I started noticing that there weren't as many geodes as I was SURE I had dug up; THEN, Xanadu, ran up to my pile, grabbed one of my geodes, & ran off to play with it & CONVENIENTLY left it near his MASTERS' pile! (they had the dog leashed & staked, but, it was a LONG lead) I told them what was happening & asked them to shorten the lead. Judy responded by tying the lead around her waistline, which shortened the lead; YET, brought the dogs "anchor" CLOSER to me! You guessed it, the dog STAYED my visitor. After taking another geode from my pile, I decided to put this dogs "play with Steve's geodes" mood to use; I grabbed a small geode, teased the dog that I was going to throw it (LOVES playing ball!), then, just as I was about to throw it, I switched the geode with a piece of limestone & threw that, OVER Judy's back & WAY past where the lead would end! True to Xanies "got to go get it, at TOP SPEED' nature, he BOOGIED after that piece, jumping over Judy's back & going like CRAZY, all 150 lbs. of him! When xanie pulled the lead to its end & still had distance to go to that piece, HE JUST KEPT GOING, not a moments hesitation or hinderance, as JUDY BECAME A HUMAN YOYO! She tied the dog to a tree, WAY away from ALL of us, after that! We STILL bust a gut, remembering THAT one!

Your friend, Steve

-- moved topic --

This doesn't involve any minerals, but my cat went through a phase where he would not eat his food unless he heard the dry food hit the plate, even if there was food already on it. He would literally sit there all day and not eat until I came home simply because of this.


He also refused to drink water if I placed the cup near his food dish. He would only drink it if it were on my desk, and of not, he would go drink it from the dripping tap in the bathtub.


I think this is because, while dogs usually just eat anything that smells good, wherever it is, what cats eat, and where they eat it is far more of a learned thing. This is why mountain lions don't attack humans for food all too often. "Human" is just not seen as a food item because when they were young they usually only saw their mothers hunting rabbits, coyotes, deer and the likes.

The Great Puppy Jewel Heist


Some years ago when our dog of 10 years, Bear, died, my wife and I were inconsolable, but we decided that as we'd be traveling over the holidays, it would be best to wait to adopt a new dog. Well the next day, I was taking off for a rock swap in Richmond VA. It was an all day affair, and when I returned home at about 8:00 that night, my wife showed me the picture (found while browsing the Internet) of the dog she had decided she absolutely had to have--Farley. It was a really cute picture--the little guy staring out with both attitude and curiosity. My wife was in love and she was adamant, so the next weekend, off we went to Pennsylvania to the foster home where Farley was staying.

Now, did I mention, that Bear was the perfect dog. Quiet, considerate, loyal, friendly, loving, great with kids...and smart...really smart. He was more like a considerate roommate than a dog, except that the only housework he did was to dustmop the floor with his fur.

So, anyway, off we go to Pennsylvania, and Chelle and I are talking. "Well, she says, Farley has a friend he plays with named Chazzidy."

"Maybe we should adopt her just so we could change her name," I joked.

"Well, it would give Farley someone to play with during the day," Chelle said.

"What kind of dog," I asked.

"Pit-bull-boxer mix," Chelle replied, "but they say, she's really nice."

"MMM," I replied and thought about our 19 year old cat at home. I didn't want to be prejudiced against a dog based on breed, but... "Maybe just one dog would be better," I said.

"OK," said Chelle.

Well, we arrived at the foster, and were surrounded by a motley pack of puppies. Farley WAS cute, and my wife said, "I want Farley." We sat awhile longer and Chazzidy proceeded to curl up on my lap and fall asleep. We left with 2 puppies, Farley and Chazzidy. Chazzidy quickly was rechristened to Taz. Initially, we thought Taz was short for Tazmanian devil. Nope. It's short for CaTAZtrophe.

Now they were adorable. That's how puppies survive to doggiehood, despite the fact that they ate our new couch...and chewed a hole in the carpet...and pooped and peed all over except on the pads we set out specifically for that purpose. We had to face facts: Our puppies had embarked on a life of crime. Still, nothing prepared us for their ultimate caper: The Great Puppy Jewel Heist.


I had been making some jewelry out of some of the gemstones I had accumulated in travels to Brazil, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and so on. Nothing really expensive, just pretty cut stones. I'm a rank novice, so I work in silver, and I work really, really slowly and swear a lot. Well, in the middle of a project, my day job intruded and I had to travel to Texas for an experiment. I'm on shift when my wife calls really upset: "The puppies ate your gemstones."

"What-" I responded intelligently.

" I think I found most of them," Chelle continued, but they might have gotten some of the garnets

"Well, they're small enough that they'll just go through, but... they're not worth searching for."

"I had no intention," Chelle assured me.

That weekend, I gave my dogs a bath. Under this harsh interrogation technique, Farley finally broke and confessed that he and Taz were part of a terrorist sleeper cell--Al Canine. Their goal was to bring about the collapse of human civilization so that we could all go back to the good old days of living in tribal groups in caves. There are times, after a tough day at work, where this is indeed a seductive idea.

While living in S. Calif. in the 70's, my first husband and I belonged to a rock and mineral club. Our collecting took place in the Mojave Desert during the months of Nov. -Apr.. One Thanksgiving weekend we traveled with the group to the Hauser Beds to collect geodes. The children were 4 and 5 and quite interested in "digging" so at the beds we just let them dig while we were in the "holes" extracting our prizes. I looked around and no kids! I got out of the hole and went to our van and there, sitting on the floor of the van with both boys, was a huge tan dog. Well it was getting late and I signaled to my husband that it was time to pack up and get back to our camp at Coon Hollow. We gently extracted the dog, much to the boys' disappointment, packed up and drove off. After about 5 minutes, our two magpies were making a ruckus in the back pointing back at the road. I looked back and sure enough here was that dog running after us. We stopped let her in, gave her some water and took her back to the diggings. She had a small tight blue collar on and I just knew she had to belong to someone. So back we went, asked one of our follows club members to hold her until we got out of sight and then let her go. We were on our way. 10 minutes later, the boys were again glued to the rear window of the van yelling for us to stop! In the distance crowning a hill was the a faint dust trail. We turned around and met our new dog! We didn't know about Great Danes other than they were big. We were in fact a little apprehensive. We took her back to camp and posted the usual paper plate found signs on the fence posts and went into Blythe to buy dog food, bowls and collar and leash. That night was cold and windy--but we didn't know this dog and no way I going to let her sleep in the van. Around midnight our youngest opened the van door and let her in--she slept between the boys and from that night on continued to sleep with them on all of our rock hounding trips and vacations. She was our introduction to the breed and 35 years later I still have Great Danes. Of all of our collecting trips this was the one where we brought home our "rockhound"


Linda