When I first got married, I was thrust into the job of fathering a young stepson, Wesley.  One of the things that always seemed strange to me, then and now, is the reality of “play dates” for kids, wherein parents schedule times for kids to play.  I feel bad for kids now, they have all of their school activities regimented as well as after school activities (parents are obsessed with extracurricular activities as a way to make children stand out in a crowd of applicants for college) and then the poor kiddos even have their free time planned for them!  They will never know the joy of walking into the woods with no agenda just to see what might happen, and find themselves in a creek catching trout,  or making a tree fort, or doing anything without adult supervision.  Those times where adults were absent were key moments for understanding social dynamics—how to make a smart decision, how to deal with a bully, what to do when someone steals your baseball glove, figuring out what friendship means and then forming lifelong friendships.  Nope, it seems kids are under the watching eyes of adults until they go to college and then the sudden blast of freedom is almost too much for them—sometimes it is too overwhelming as they transition from 18 years of parental hovering to adulthood.  Well, anyway, that’s reality now, I guess.
            In recent years, I discovered, that my wife does the same thing for me.  She is always convinced that I need new friends, and she then sets up play dates.  Actually, they are typically suppers in restaurants where she and her friend are eating, and they both decide that the husbands should become friends too.  This almost never works out, as my wife works at the university, and most of the men in the area are not like minded with me—they don’t hunt, they don’t fish. They don’t even have dogs!  If they do have a dog it wears sweaters in the winter and the closest thing it does to hunting is digging through the garbage can!
            A few Christmases ago, Renee took the play dates to a new level, and that was in the form of these “white elephant gift exchange parties.”  Okay, so these are basically Christmas parties, but no one at the university would dare say the word “Christmas” because that might be offensive.  It turns out that everyone in my wife’s office hosts one of these.
            “When do you host one?” I asked my wife, Renee.
            “Well, I can’t,” she said.
            “Why not?”
            “Ever seen that Christmas Story movie?” She asked.
            “The BB Gun movie?  Yeah, I love that movie!”
            “You know how the neighbors are the Bumpuses and they have all those annoying hound dogs?” She held her arms out wide, palms raised.
            “Yeah,” I said.
            “Honey,” she pointed at a couch full of hunting beagles,” We are the Bumpuses!”
            “Nah,” I said, “Not at all.  I think those might have been bloodhounds in the movie.  We have beagles.”
            “Well, anyway, I hold ours at the church, so no one has to endure begging from beagles while they eat cookies and store bought eggnog.  I already had my party.  You haven’t made any of these office parties, because you have been hunting every time we have one.”
            “That makes sense,” I saId.
            “Well, everyone else brings their husbands!”
            “They probably don’t hunt,” I said, “Poor fellows.”
            “There is one white elephant gift party left, and please could you go?”
            “When is it?”
            “Tomorrow, at seven o’clock and it will be dark, and you will be home from the woods.”
            “Why is is called white elephant?” I asked.
            I will summarize her answer as I understand it.  They have a half dozen of these parties, and to save money on gift giving, each couple brings a used item, wrapping it.  The first person opens a gift and keeps it.  Then the next person does the same and can keep it or trade with the first gift.  The third person opens a gift and can keep it or trade with either the first or second person.  And so on.  At the end, the last person opens the final gift and can keep it or swap with anyone else.  Obviously, you want to be in the last person to open your gift, and then you get whatever you want.  The order in which gifts are open is determined by drawing numbers out of a hat.
            “Alright, I said, “I can make it, I guess.”
            I was hunting the next day, not long before dark, when my cellphone started buzzing in my pocket.  I ignored it.  It buzzed. And again.  A fourth time.
            “Hello?” I whispered into the phone.
            “I wont get to the house before this party, because I have to stay on campus to get a class session started.” Renee was frantic.
            “What party?” I whispered.
            “Are you kidding me!  The white elephant party.  We talked about this yesterday.”
            “Yes, that’s right,” I whispered.
            “Why are you whispering?”
            “The dogs are chasing a rabbit, and I do not want to give away my location to the rabbit.  I gotta go, they are getting close.”
            “Hey!” Renee yelled, “I need you to go home when you are done, wrap up a nice present that people will like and use, and then meet me at the party.  I will text you the address.”
            “No problem, your gal pals all have dogs right?”
            “Yes.  What are you goin—“
            “I gotta get ready to shoot.” I hung up.
            I cleaned rabbits, went home, fed dogs, and actually got to the party before Renee.  I walked in with my gift in a long box that originally held a floor lamp.  I couldn’t find wrapping paper, so I just duct taped it shut.
            “You must be Bob,” a gal opened the door, “I am Mary.”
            “Merry Christmas,” I said.
            “We say Happy Holidays, to be inclusive.”
            “Ah,” I said, “No Christians here?”
            “Um, actually, I think everyone here is a Christian.” She sipped her eggnog and scratched her head as she took a faith inventory of the room, “Yeah.  All Christians.”
            “Well then, Happy Holidays,” I held out the box.”
            “Just put it over there in the pile,” Mary said, “But we all know it is a lamp!”
            I chatted with a guy named Chad about some computer stuff he does and that I do not understand, and then with a nervous guy named Mike, whose wife yelled at him a lot, and then Renee finally showed up.
            “You didn’t wrap the present,” she asked me, trying not to move  her mouth as she talked.
            “I couldn’t find the wrapping paper,” I tried to be a ventriloquist too.
            “It was right inside the front door.”
            “Ah,” I said, “I used the basement door.”
            “The wrapping paper has been there for weeks!”
            “Oh yeah?” I said.
            When gift time came, My gift was opened early, “We could use a lamp, the husband of the couple said.”  They then pulled out a tie out stake.  The sort that we use to  put hounds on the ground at field trials or after hunts, to drink water and do their business and not wander off to—you know—be hounds.
            “What did you do?” Renee glared at me.
            “That one is hardly used,” I said, “And it is one of the big ones, almost three feet long, made for big dogs.  You know I switched over to the new ones, only eighteen inches, when they started making them.  Plenty deep into the ground to hold a beagle.”
            “Oh, a mystery!” Mike said as he held it up.
            “What is that thing?” His wife screamed and Mike flinched.
            “That is a—“ Renee covered my mouth.
            “You can’t tell us,” Mary said, “If someone doesn’t know what it is, then the people have to decide if it might be valuable or not. At the end you can tell them what it is,, if they still do not know.”
            “How often does it happen that you do not know what it is?” I asked.
            “Usually most people know what it is,” Mary said, but I do not recognize this thing.  Anyone else?”  It turns out that no one knew what a tie out stake is.  This was a good one too, with a sideways U at the top that sat on a swivel so that the dog could not wrap the attached chain around the stake and get choked.  Picture, if you will, a really long stake shaped like the letter “P” but the vertical line of the “P” is ten times longer—thirty inches to be precise.
            “You are in so much trouble,” Renee poked an elbow into my side.
            “You are a dog person,” Mike said, “I bet it is a dog leash that is also a walking cane. I think we should keep it.”
            “The next person took the stake too, “I bet this thing is for holding down your beach chair so the waves don’t move it!” the woman said as she swapped a wooden bowl for the stake.
            “I bet it is a thing for smoothing cement!” Chad traded for it, “And my brother-in-law could use this thing.”
            “I think it is for helping you get out of the snow if your car gets stuck, that looks like a snow chain,” another gentleman said, taking it.  The ideas just kept coming.  We opened up a little coaster that heats your coffee mug. “Coffee doesn’t last long enough to get cold,” Renee said, “We will take the wooden bowl, since it is against the rules to get your own gift back.”
            When it was all said and done, we showed them a picture of the tie out stake in action.
            “That’s close to what I thought it was!” The recipient of the stake said, “I figured it was a toddler retention system to keep them safe in the yard, it attaches to the belt loop!”
            “Oh,” I said, “I would be afraid of a kid  running and falling on the steel stake, even though it is rounded.  But if you are going to do that, I can get you another one for when you set up play dates.”
            “Oh, that is so kind,” the young mother said, “You really made this white elephant gift exchange party quite interesting.”
            “Merry Christmas!” I held my eggnog in the air.
            “Merry Christmas!” Everyone yelled, sipping their eggnog and eating cookies.
           

           “Hey,” my wife, Renee, said to me on the phone, “I went to that new pet store in town.”
            “Oh,” I said, while thinking to myself, “How much did this trip cost?”
            “Diamond really likes this bull pizzle!”
            “Do you know what pizzle is?” I asked.
            “No.”
            “Good,” I said, “I will be home soon.”
            Not only did my wife not know what pizzle is, my spellcheck on the word processor doesn’t know the word wither, underlining it in red every time it is typed.As you may already know, pizzle is penis.  If you are surprised to hear this, you should have seen the shock on Renee’s face, when I got home, and she was holding a handful of the sticks in her hand, “These things are not cheap, but the dogs love them, especially Diamond!
            “Great,” I said, I will never keep her out of any pasture with a bull or beef steers again.  She will be jumping as high as she can, and I will have to protect her from getting stomped.”
            “What?”
            “Bull pizzle is penis,” I said, imitating the vocal cadence of  Charlton Heston when he said “Soylent Green is people!” In the movie “Soylent Green.”  Apparently, she never saw the movie, and never saw a good impersonation of Heston before. “Damn you all to hell!”is my other Heston impersonation, from the end of “Planet of the Apes” when he realizes he has been on earth all along.  I don’t know if Renee has seen that movie.  Anyway, she stood there looking at Diamond gnawing away on her prize, and then looking at her hand, which held a half dozen pizzle sticks.
            “The people at the store said that they were good for cleaning the dogs’ teeth.  That doesn’t seem possible.”
            “Well, they are very dehydrated.”
            “I guess so,” Renee looked at Diamond, who was flattened out on her belly, holding the treat between her two front paws, and as happy as could be, “She has been working on this for almost an hour.”
            “Well,” I said, “How did you like the new pet store in town?” I was hoping to get an idea how expensive the prices might be, and maybe what the total bill was for the venture.”
            “I don’t care,” Renee shook her head, looking at Diamond, “I am still going to buy them…” she tossed the remaining treats down into the plastic shopping bag, hastily, as if she was playing a game of “Hot Potato” and the music was about to stop!  Note: Hot Potato was a game that kids played back in the 1900s before we had handheld video games, cell phones, gaming systems, or money.  You can google it.
            At any rate, we have been doing our best to clean the teeth on our mutts ever since paying a lot of money for some extractions.  As expensive as this pizzle might be, it an save money in the long run. It is pretty safe too—if made by a reputable manufacturer, because it is easily digested (unlike rawhide) and there are no splinters, like often happens with bones.  They are caloric, and that may mean cutting back on kibbles on a day when they are utilized.  If my dogs are running hard I don’t really worry about the calories, but in the summer I will monitor the food intake—I tend to run my hounds less in the summer months, not wanting to injure them in the higher temperatures.  There are other ways, and less expensive, to look after the  dental health of our hounds, and I use those snacks too.
            I do feed bones to my pooches, though I will be honest, some dogs are not as interested as others.  Many vets are apprehensive of bones, but I will use the knuckle bones as a way of removing tartar and keeping the gums healthy. I will get the store bought ones on occasion, but I also will get plain old soup bones from the grocery store too, which are cheaper.  There is a place near me that sells pork bones for fifty cents!  Trust me, that is cheaper than pizzle.  I watch them and take away the bone when it gets too small.  Whether is is pizzle or bones, I usually give them one per week, never more than two,  When they are running hard, I will give them a bone to gnaw one night and maybe pizzle or even a pig ear on another night of the week.
            Pig ears are also beneficial, but some of my dogs just go through them way too fast to get the cleaning benefit on the teeth,  During the hunting season, I have had dogs that get one pig ear per day, when the constant chasing allows for the extra calories with ease.
            “Want me to give your dog one too?” I asked a friend who was visiting my house with his lab, as I doled out the pig ears.”
            “No, she can’t eat those, she gains weight.  How often are you feeding those to your beagles?” He asked me.
            “The retirees do not get them too much, but some of the dogs that go with me every day get one per day.”
            “Really?” His eyes widened in disbelief, looking at a 25 pound beagle that was able to thrive on the extra calories because of the increased activity involved in being a rabbit dog that loves his job and gladly does it every day.
            “Yep,” I said, “And it keeps the chompers clean!”
            “Does that get expensive?”
            “Depends,   My wife is a good shopper, and can find great deals.  She gets a bunch when we have a good price somewhere.  She gets a lot of them online, often in bulk.  That’s why we store them in a plastic dog food container with a screw top lid.  Keeps them from going bad or getting broken into by a sneaky dog that gets to them.
            That dental health translates to more than cheaper vet bills, and not paying for tooth extractions.  Makes for a better nose too.  Bad teeth can effect the sense of smell.  Senses, and how they work, are a fascinating aspect in life.  Butterflies see more colors than we do—they see runways on flowers that guide them to the nectar in the center. Predators, including humans, have binocular vision (our eyes are together on the front of our head), which enables the ability to time attacks, determine distance, and maximize the benefits of depth perception. Prey species have their eyes  on the sides of their heads, and since we are all about the bunnies, it is not a surprise to any of us that a rabbit can see nearly 360 degrees around itself and also see above their heads too! Our binocular vision gets about 190 degree field of vision, and. Nothing above us.
            When I get a stuffy nose, I like to eat hot spices on pasta, mustard on cold cuts, and horseradish on roast beef.  Why?  Because when it drains my sinuses, I can taste better.  We have all had sinus congestion that makes food seem tasteless. Taste and smell are connected, and improved dental health keeps a dog’s sense of smell working optimally.  Tooth decay wafts up to the nose and it may be that a dog loses some scenting ability as it ages. 
            There are lots of things about scent that baffle me.  Moisture is good for scent, but some days a light rain that should increase the scent seems to hinder the pack (of course a deluge will often make scent worse but not always).  Under certain snow conditions, I swear the scent smells better when it is old, as if the rabbit leaves a track and it stirs up the granulated snow to melt—and the older tracks have melted more than the freshest ones, and that melting gives stronger scent.   People get all worked up about barometric pressure and what it may or may not do to the scent, and all of those things are fascinating and confusing to me at the same time.
            One thing I do know is that dental care helps.  Pizzle.  Bone.Pig ears.  I have bought those cow hooves stuffed with a rock hard cheese or peanut butter.  I avoid rawhide, due to concerns of big bits of the rawhide causing blockages. It ain’t as digestible as the pizzle.  Sometimes, when I need the dogs to be especially quiet while I am working, I will take them to my basement office and let them worry away a knuckle bone while I am on the phone.  In the winter I will sit by the wood pellet stove down there in our subterranean den,  and let the hunting house hounds enjoy the reward of a bone after a good hunt. I find myself listening to the muffled sounds of chewing and canine coos of contentment.  I then think about the chase and the mystery of scent as those teeth are being cleaned.  I am always happy to learn something new about scent.
           One of the things I recently discovered was that having two nostrils isn’t a coincidence.  When I learned this, it was suggested that I smell my coffee with one nostril only, pinching the other one shut.  Then smell the coffee again with the other nostril.  I will let you do that now.  Did you do it?  Ain’t that weird?!  Two different scents!  Wild, ain’t it?  I bet you got the same look on your face right now that my wife did when she learned what is used to make pizzle sticks.
 
 

 
           

 
            I live in central Pennsylvania, and that means I am surrounded by fantastic trout streams, spring fed, gurgling up from the ground.  You can travel to Spring, Creek, Spruce Creek, or the Little Juniata and see out of state plates from all over the country.  We are a bona fide  destination for angling.  I routinely show up at waters and see a Mercedes, or BMW, or even a Bentley parked there to fish.  A Cadillac Escalade is sometimes the poorest guy on the water, until I show up.  I like to make a big production, catch big trout when no one else is having success, and then leave in my old pickup truck.  I need to start by explaining a few things.
            First, I grew up fishing narrow cricks.  A crick is often mistaken for a creek.  To many, this is just an accent issue, with people in my neck of rural Pennsylvania mispronouncing the word.  While the part of me who appreciated linguistics agrees with that evaluation, the part of me that catches trout does not.  Here is how I differentiate a creek from a crick.  You can walk in a creek, and you can cast into it.  It’s a babbling brook, and you can take a fly rod and make majestic casts that kiss the water after a perfect presentation.  You stand there and hear Robert Redford narrating as you see Brad Pitt making things look easy.  Or Brad Pitt’s casting double.  A casting double is like a stunt double, but not as well compensated, I suspect.
            A crick is narrow, you can’t wade in it.  You ain’t casting into a crick.  The canopy of brush and trees is too thick.  In my childhood, you would hear rumors of massive trout that would be cleaned and the stomach contained whole frogs, or even a mouse.  This was way back in the 1900s, when my mother would send me out to catch fish to eat for supper.  We would cut wine corks into little buts that looked like a Tylenol capsule—the same shape as the food fed to trout in the hatchery before they were transported to the local waters as stocked trout for the beginning of trout season.  Some stocked fish lived and went wild, and found their way from stocked rivers into the cricks.  Native brook trout were in those cricks too.  A crick that was producing well offered a great opportunity for a kid to save some money by wading into thorns and thickets along the stream to claim lures that people lost by thinking they could cast into the tiny openings in the dense cover.  Jointed minnows, spinners, you name it, you could find it!  So, and this will be a surprise to many, us local anglers to those small cricks developed a better way to catch trout.  Brace yourself, if you are a purist.  No, really, sit down if you are reading this as a fly swishing purists.  We used live bait on a fly road.
            It was impossible to cast, so to avoid a tangled mess of 4 pound test in a spinning reel, we would use a fly road and just drift bait a short distance.  A couple drifts into each hole, working the crick slowly, so as to be quiet.  It was rare that we worried about casting a shadow, in those brush choked streams.  Rattlesnakes were a bigger worry. Fishing boots and snake boots are synonymous on a crick, and I wear a pair of snake boots made by Russell Moccasin when I fish cricks these days.  A live minnow jig worked great, but some guys used salted minnows, wax worms, or even red worms.  The line rarely was out of the reel, just tippet and leader!  Let it out, bring it in.  Repeat.  Next hole.  Sure, we had spinning reels on a cheap rod for catching stocked trout or bass, but for chasing crick trout it was all live bait on a fly rod.  Fast forward almost four decades, and you can see me on a famous Pennsylvania trout stream.  What do I do?  I go to the places that are catch and release only, but allow all tackle.  Yup, I go in there and begin with the biggest fly I can find, big as a damn moth if I can have one.  I once had a huge saltwater fly that I used.  I start slapping the water with that beast, while all the luxury car boys and girls are watching.  Then, I surreptitiously remove said fly, and go for my vest pocket where I have a few crayfish.  Sure, a live minnow might work better, but it takes longer string up the jig.  I let that crayfish tail drift and BAM!  I carefully produce a huge trout, making sure all my colleagues on the water see it.  Back in the water goes the trout, and the big fly goes back on.  I start beating the water again, like it owes me money, and then I change it out again.  I might have a red worm or two with me as well, or even a few kernels of corn.  I switch it up, because I sometimes catch the same trout twice!  It may be a stream that allows all tackle, but the guys looking to eat trout never go to those waters. It is just the purists, some that even refuse a plug or a streamer to enter their list of gear.
            Now, you may ask how long I do this?  How many do I catch?  I do it until everyone around me is slapping the water with the biggest fly in the arsenal, and then I go home.