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Bob Tarte QUOTES

Bob Tarte QUOTES

1 " That's because they're people, only smarter. They know us better than we know them, and a lot of them have a sense of humor. They're exactly like us minus our useless mental power and thumbs. "

― Bob Tarte , Kitty Cornered: How Frannie and Five Other Incorrigible Cats Seized Control of Our House and Made It Their Home

2 " Linda hadn't exaggerated her fear of the golden orb weaver spider. Up north at her cabin in Morley, I had once teased her by asking "Have we ever seen this kind of vireo before?" And then, instead of showing her a photo of a bird, I thrust a picture of the black-and-yellow spider at her. She shrieked. I laughed. Oh, the fun we had. "

― Bob Tarte , Fowl Weather

3 " I loved birds, and every bird was my favorite bird. But no bird was a better bird than a bird I saw with Linda. "

― Bob Tarte , Feather Brained: My Bumbling Quest to Become a Birder and Find a Rare Bird on My Own

4 " I feared that it was only a matter of time before the kitty would stumble onto the secret messages that other strays had left "

― Bob Tarte , Kitty Cornered: How Frannie and Five Other Incorrigible Cats Seized Control of Our House and Made It Their Home

5 " Three rabbits, two cats, three parakeets, a dove, two parrots, three turkeys, two geese, a canary, and nine ducks at last count were just about what Noah had started with, and he never brought his animals into the house. "

― Bob Tarte , Enslaved by Ducks

6 " Depending on how high I heaped the stones, each wheelbarrow weighed between 175 and 250 pounds. Once I managed to set it in motion, it was loath to stop without banging me up in some fashion, especially during the thrilling plunge down the backyard hill, when I switched roles from cart pusher to dragging victim. "

― Bob Tarte , Enslaved by Ducks

7 " linoleum at the base of the refrigerator. The pressure-fit plastic lid, which hadn’t withstood the pressure of impact, had rolled under parrot Bella’s cage. With hearing finely tuned to recognize the distinctive characteristics of tuna-packed-in-oil slopping across the floor, Lucy had materialized to lap up the chemical spill. “How did you get in here with the door closed?” Linda said to her. “I guess I let her in before I went outdoors.” It was my latest ploy to get Lucy to like me. Snoozing under the dining room table was her latest gesture of defiance toward house rules, and I was helping her get away with it. “She doesn’t even look at the birds. "

― Bob Tarte , Kitty Cornered: How Frannie and Five Other Incorrigible Cats Seized Control of Our House and Made It Their Home

8 " cat person” was pretty specific, suggesting a tame middle-aged eccentric who substituted interaction with pets for a healthy social relationship with other people. I resented that whole notion, because it described me perfectly. "

― Bob Tarte , Kitty Cornered: How Frannie and Five Other Incorrigible Cats Seized Control of Our House and Made It Their Home

9 " We only had three, and the only reason that we had that many was due to a unique set of circumstances that had descended upon us like a dark cloud and could never occur again. At least that’s what I told myself a few years before we ended up with six cats "

― Bob Tarte , Kitty Cornered: How Frannie and Five Other Incorrigible Cats Seized Control of Our House and Made It Their Home

10 " I had discovered the "loop-back" phenomenon, and I had penetrated its deepest meaning, which boiled down to this: in birding, as in life, we don't so much find things as things find us. "

― Bob Tarte , Feather Brained: My Bumbling Quest to Become a Birder and Find a Rare Bird on My Own

11 " Bill had always been a placid pond of a friend with a few boulders of madness lurking beneath the surface, but unlike me he knew how to keep the jagged edges out of sight. "

― Bob Tarte , Feather Brained: My Bumbling Quest to Become a Birder and Find a Rare Bird on My Own

12 " Pound for pound, these animals don’t add up to much. Dog fanciers with a couple of Rottweilers trump us in terms of sheer biomass. But, when it comes to sheer insistence, even the largest, most unruly dogs—or for that matter, your average herd of cattle—are no match for our ducks, geese, parrots, parakeets, turkeys, cats, rabbits, and other birds. "

― Bob Tarte , Enslaved by Ducks

13 " Backyard ducks that supposedly “take care of themselves” require more maintenance than the space shuttle. "

― Bob Tarte , Enslaved by Ducks

14 " At least our ducks and geese live in backyard pens, though trudging outside to fill their plastic swimming pools involves a trip through the basement, where two convalescing turkeys yip pathetically if I don't coo and hand-feed them grain. "

― Bob Tarte , Enslaved by Ducks

15 " It might not have been Mike,' she said, 'but somebody left something somewhere.'

I couldn't really argue with that. It was as succinct a summing up of the seeming randomness of events in life as I had ever heard. "

― Bob Tarte

16 " I heard experts claim again and again that owning pets reduces stress and might extend your life. I tried to remember that as I dragged a hose out of the basement to fill the ducks’ plastic swimming pool in January weather so cold, the snow complained as I stepped on it. "

― Bob Tarte , Enslaved by Ducks

17 " I needed to keep my ears open for signs of mischief from woodwork-destroying parakeets, or from quacks of distress from an outdoor duck that had fallen afoul of its flock. "

― Bob Tarte , Enslaved by Ducks