Abandoned Beagle Daisy Mae Hobbles Off Her Mortal Coil
Daisy Mae had her last belly rubs on April 30 which she spent with me, her human, codeine pills and a large bone she did not so much as sniff.
The end was clearly near.
She never turned down thirds or fourth – after carefully picking out bits of seitan and kale.
Since last August she cohosted “Daisy Mae’s Interspecies Café” on the Facebook page we shared to post stories about the animal world while it lasts. We don’t have much hope for the kangaroos of Ukraine. But you never know.
Think of Daisy. She was dumped under the 59th Street Bridge 13 years ago where she was fed by the local cat lady who recommended her to the Humane Society at 306 E 59th Street.
From there she was transported by shelter associate Bill Berloni, a famed animal trainer, to 82nd Street and Broadway where Daisy met my human (?) partner Francesca Zambello, also known as Godzilla and/or the Great B-Minus Director, and two other beagles, Mugzie and Minnie. Mugzie came from a kill shelter on Long Island which had advertised her as “senior and obese.” Who could resist? Minnie was bequeathed by a hunter upstate for being “useless.”
In the summer of 2011, Daisy went on her first trip: to the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York. She was continuing a tradition of travel that started with Sugar – remembered as “the sainted Sugar” -- who joined us in San Francisco, Santa Fe, Dallas and Houston, where she made a guest appearance during a rehearsal of B-minus’s enchanting, early days “Street Scene” and won praise from the company’s general manager David Gockley. “Great walk-on.”
Sugar was the first of the beagles who chewed up stuff at 82nd Street followed by Frida, Emma and one-eyed Luke Wotan. Daisy would be the last.
Looking forward to spending July 4 in Cooperstown, all three dogs sported festive red-white-and blue collars. Daisy especially loved the ball part of baseball. The Great B-minus Director was sullenly starting her tenure as the company’s omnipotent after failing to dislodge the imperturbable Peter Gelb from the Met Opera. Still, $225,000 for running a modest festival isn’t peanuts.
The visit ended before it really began. We didn’t make it to the opening night’s “Carmen.”
After 20 years, B-minus had tired of living with an old person with breast cancer (“sick and senior”). B-minus spends half her days on the phone and has a boisterous voice. The verdict was hard to overhear. Admittedly, it was kind of true – I was 62 and bald.
Guests, important guests, were coming! We needed to leave. Like Now! And thusly I tumbled from the bedroom with the Baker reproduction furniture and down the staircase. Daisy, howling, followed. Eventually and not too soon, all three beagles were packed into the Toyota along with their bruised human. “They’re yours now!”
True enough. B-minus got herself a new human (???) and a new dog. For months Minnie, her hiking companion at Minnewaska, the state park above our cabin in upstate New York, would run to the door when she heard an SUV she associated with her adored human.
When Minnie fell ill in 2015, B-minus was too busy (inexplicably to outsiders, the opera in Washington, D.C., gave her a second job for another estimated $300,000). It was left to Marilyn Perry, the emerita of the Kress Foundation and the World Monuments Fund, now also banished from the new court, to take Minnie to the vet for a last visit.
“Heda heda hedo!” Mugzie was already waiting on the other side of the rainbow bridge welcoming her buddies to Valhalla, Richard Wagner’s castle in the sky. The castle is a monument to greed and burns down at the end of “Twilight of the Gods.”
Maybe they will stage it in Cooperstown!
For a while we hoped – oh ha -- that B-minus, a staunch Christian Scientist, would push a few pennies our way. Christian Scientists believe in the power of love just like Wagner. Vet bills, walkies and Chewy’s this last decade have totaled over $110,000.
Daisy thrived upstate despite cancer and liver problems and matured into a distinguished artist in the tradition of Robert Smithson, creating swirling earth works in the meadow below as she dug into the underground Nibelungen realm of moles, worms and chipmunks.
I will write more about Daisy but right now I am so very sad, and also stuck with sacks of special hepatic kibble. We hoped she still had a bit of time on her arthritic legs. Even her caring vet at Gotham in the city, Dr. Bonnie Brown, thought she might be good to go for a while longer. But we always do even when we know better. There are no happy endings.
We will be selling off B-minus memorabilia in the near future – including size eleven scuffed golf shoes and CDs of that smash London hit “Napoleon”-- for a memorial to Daisy.
