Animal Insting

This is a totally true story about two brothers who used to live in New York City.  One of them was named Homer, and he was born in 1881.  And the other one, whose name was Langley, was born in 1885.  These brothers became very famous for the reasons that (1) they were weird, (2) they mostly hid out in their house, which made people wonder what they were up to, and (3) they hoarded tons and tons of stuff.

Mom first found out about the Collyer brothers when she was doing some in-depth research on hoarders, which is a topic she likes to learn about.  Then she listened to an audio book called Homer and Langley, which was written by a man named E.L. Doctorow.  I couldn't help hearing most of this book, and I thought it was pretty interesting, but Mr. Doctorow lied about a bunch of things that he said the Collyers did.  Mom says this is not lying, it is just something people do when they write fiction, and it's okay to do it.

Well, I am not going to lie to you about the Collyer brothers.  I am going to tell you only true facts.  And one true fact is that they didn't have any dogs, but they did have cats, so that's something, at least.  Also they had rats, but the rats were not pets.

Anyway, the Collyer brothers were pretty ordinary when they were growing up, except for being rich.  They lived in a 4-story house called a brownstone in Harlem, at 2078 Fifth Avenue.  At that time, Harlem was a fancy place to live, but that changed later on.  The father of the Collyer brothers was a doctor who treated women patients, and their mother was a society lady who could sing and play the piano.

Mr. Homer went to Columbia University and became a lawyer, and Mr. Langley got a degree from the same school in chemistry and engineering.  But Mr. Langley preferred to play the piano, which he could do very well, and he even played at Carnegie Hall.  In 1923, Dr. Collyer died, and Mrs. Collyer died in 1929.  By then, lots of black people had moved to Harlem, so the white people mostly moved out.  But not the Collyer brothers.  They stayed in their house even after their parents died.  And they started filling the house up with all sorts of odd things that Mr. Langley found and brought home because he thought he could maybe use them somehow.

The Collyers had their phone disconnected in 1917, and in 1928, the gas was turned off.  They used kerosene to cook with and for lighting.  They didn't go out in public much anymore, and the last time anybody saw Mr. Homer was in 1932.  He had a stroke in 1933, and that made him go blind.  Later on, he got rheumatism so bad that he couldn't walk anymore.  So Mr. Langley took care of his brother and brought him food and everything he needed.

Then some newspaper reporters got interested in the Collyers and in whether Mr. Homer was even still alive, and there were lots of rumors about how the brothers probably had millions of dollars hidden in their house, which they didn't really.  And kids started throwing rocks at the windows and breaking them, so Mr. Langley put boards over all the windows.  Also he got really worried, thinking about how somebody might break in and rob them or something.  So he used all his engineering skills to make booby traps, and that way if somebody came in, they would trip over a wire, and a whole bunch of stuff would fall down and smash them.

Mr. Langley was the only person who knew where all the booby traps were and how to get through them without pulling on the wires.  Mr. Homer had to stay in bed all the time, so he didn't need to know where the traps were.  And his brother brought him food by crawling through the tunnels he had made.

So that's how they lived for several years.  But on March 21, 1947, a man called the police to say there must be a dead body in the Collyer house because there was a bad smell there.  And the police came to the house, but they couldn't get in because of all the stuff piled everywhere against the door and the windows and in the basement.  But finally they got in a window and after two hours, they found Mr. Homer, who was dead from lack of food and water and also because his heart stopped beating.  He had only been dead about 10 hours, so his body wasn't making the bad smell.

But the police couldn't find Mr. Langley, so they started looking for him, both inside the house and outside the house.  Meanwhile, they had to take tons and tons of stuff out of the house, while people stood around outside and watched.  Then finally, after about three weeks, they found Mr. Langley, who was dead because one of his booby traps fell on him while he was trying to take food to his brother.  Also the rats had been eating him, which is yucky to think about, but it's what any sensible rat would do.

In the end, there was a total of 136 tons of garbage and stuff that was taken out of the Collyer house.  Here are some of the things that were in there:  newspapers, cartons, tin cans, old luggage, rope, baby carriages, rakes, umbrellas, bicycles, old food, potato peelers, guns, an x-ray machine, thousands of books, a horse's jawbone, human organs pickled in jars, 1 UK flag, 6 US flags, 14 pianos, 2 organs, a clavichord, 5 violins, family portraits, hope chests full of piece goods, toy trains, chandeliers, tapestries, 13 ornate mantel clocks, 13 oriental rugs, the top of a carriage, and the chassis of a Model-T Ford.

There was an auction to sell the nicer things, but the money from that only came to about $1,800.  The whole amount of the Collyer estate was $91,000.  The house had to get torn down because it wasn't a nice place to live anymore.  Now if you go there, you can see a little park where the house used to be, and it's called Collyer Brothers Park.  Which seems like kind of a nice way to remember these two strange brothers.

Today is the 5th of July, so it's not the 4th of July anymore, but it's still a holiday.  And the reason for that is because the real 4th of July came on a Sunday this year.  Which means that we can go on celebrating for another whole day!

Firecrackers are horrible, noisy, scary things that I believe were invented on purpose to terrorize dogs and cats and horses.  And if I ever meet up with the man who invented them, I'm going to bite him on the leg!  So there!

I already found the name of this person that I want to bite, and it is Li Tian, and he lived in China about a thousand years ago.  At least, some people say that it was Mr. Li that invented fireworks.  But there's also a story about a Chinese cook who discovered fireworks by accident 2000 years ago because he mixed charcoal, sulphur, and saltpeter together.  But this may have been the invention of gunpowder, and fireworks didn't come until later.  So it's all sort of confusing, which makes it hard to know who to bite.

Anyway, firecrackers are supposed to scare away evil spirits and ghosts because they are afraid of the loud noise, just like dogs are.  So the Chinese use firecrackers whenever there is an important event, like for instance the New Year or a marriage or a birth or a death.

Some people think it was Marco Polo who brought black powder from China to Europe in the 13th century, but other people think it was some guys called the Crusaders.  Anyway, the Europeans were glad to have this explosive stuff to use in their weapons so that they could kill more people in a noisier way.  Then the Italians started making fireworks out of the black powder, and after that, the Germans did, too.

The English also liked fireworks, and when Elizabeth I was queen, fireworks were very popular.  Some of the people who came to America to live here brought along fireworks.  The first Independence Day celebration was in 1777, which was before we even knew if we would win the war.  But we did win it, and when President Washington was inaugurated, there was a fireworks display.

Ever since then, there have pretty much been fireworks every year on the Fourth of July and sometimes on New Year's Eve and after baseball games and at Disneyland and all sorts of times like that.  But the fact that humans seem to like fireworks does not make them any nicer for dogs and cats.  I have heard of dogs who got so scared on the Fourth of July that they escaped from their yard or jumped out through the window of their house.

My advice is that you should not try to escape from your house, no matter how frightened you feel about the fireworks.  And the reasons for this are:
1.  You could hurt yourself while you are escaping.
2.  You could get run over by a car.
3.  You could become a poor, homeless animal, which is no fun, trust me.
4.  You might never be found by your humans, which would make you and them very sad.
5.  You are actually safer staying home because the firecrackers can't come inside your house, even if it seems like they are going to.

Oh, and here is one more piece of advice:  if your mom or dad invites you to a fireworks display, just say "No way, José!"  Then you can stay home and chew on the furniture, which is a really good way to relieve stress.

Well, Piper pretty much doesn't want to go for walks anymore, so she can't really have any adventures while walking.  That's why Mom asked me if I would write today's entry, and I said I would be happy to do so because I LOVE to go walking!  Walking is a big, wonderful adventure, with so many things to sniff and so many things to mark.  I wish I could do some sort of scratch-and-sniff type of blog entry, so that you would be able to experience all the wonders that we dogs do when we are out walking, but computers just haven't evolved enough yet for me to do that.  So I will have to settle for using the photos that Mom took while we were out walking yesterday.

First, I will just say that everybody's yards around here this spring are full of little baby oak trees.  This happened because the oak trees made soooooo many acorns last fall that the squirrels could not begin to eat them all, and the ones that were left over sprouted.  Every time Mom mows the grass, she is basically mowing down a whole forest of oak trees!


One of our favorite streets to walk on was closed yesterday, so we had to go a different direction.  We're not sure why it was closed, but it was probably because some utility company was digging something up.  They have been doing that a lot lately, including in front of our house, where they dug up the water main right before Mom and Piper and Gabe got home from Texas.


A lot of times when we walk, dogs bark at us.  The reason they bark is because they think we are lucky to be out walking with our mom.  Either that, or they think we are invading their territory, and they are warning us to stay away.  Here's a weimaraner that was barking at us today.  Weimaraners are really tall, so they can see right over the tops of fences.  I wish I were tall like that instead of being a "sawed-off German Shepherd," which is what Mom likes to call me.


Here's a house that's in kind of bad condition.  It needs a new garage door and a new coat of paint, and who knows what the inside of the house looks like.  Also, the shrubbery is trying to take over the whole house.  The people who used to live there had some cages in their back yard, and in those cages, they kept wild animals like squirrels and raccoons.  We dogs know this because we could smell the animals, and Mom knows because she peeked through the cracks in the fence.  Then those people moved away, and somebody else bought the house, but they aren't taking very good care of it.  Sometimes they mow the grass, though, so that's good.


This house is very funny-looking because it's so little.  There used to be an old man who lived there, and we would see him walking up and down the sidewalk with his walker, and he told Mom that the Second Coming would be here soon because of the wars and stuff going on in the world.  But I don't think Mom believed him.  And the other funny thing about this house was that somebody else used to live there, but they always slept in a little pup tent out in the yard, winter and summer.  But then we think the old man must have died because the house got fixed up some, but it never was for sale, as far as we know, so maybe the person who used to sleep in the tent sleeps inside now.


Nextdoor to the little white house is the Cat Clinic.  I don't know why cats should get their own special clinic.  I've never heard of a clinic that is just for dogs, but it seems like if cats can have their own clinic, dogs should have one, too.


And across the street from the Cat Clinic is this dentist's office, but it's just a dentist for children, which is another example of what I would call discrimination, but Mom says it's specialization, not discrimination.


 Here's another business in the neighborhood, and it has kind of a silly name.  I think the most interesting thing about this place is that they have three dogs.  Two of them are beagles and the other one is some kind of mixed breed.  We didn't see the dogs yesterday, but sometimes we do.


Lots of people have flowers growing in their yards and in pots and stuff, but these people have a Winnie-the-Pooh theme.  In fact, Mom says it is sort of like a shrine to Winnie-the-Pooh.  If it had been closer to the sidewalk, Mel and I would have probably peed on it, but it was too far away for us to do that.


And here's one of our very favorite things to see when we're out walking past this certain house.  There is always a bunny there, sitting on the step, even in the winter, when there is snow.  And when one bunny gets old and worn out, another bunny takes his place.  Yesterday when we went by, we saw that the bunny was all ready for the Fourth of July, which will be coming up in a few days.  If I had a bunny like this, I would have a lot of fun tearing him open and pulling the stuffing out, and that's why Mom doesn't let me get near this bunny!

Well, that's all I have to tell you about our most recent adventures.  Thanks for reading Piper's blog today, even though it was written by me instead of by Piper!