Before I bought Willow Oak I lived with my mother. It was there that I began to accumulate these beasts that now occupy so much of me. In the beginning it was all cats, then came Bonnie, then Lola Belle, then Lu Lu, then Fred. At that time I worked from home, so I was irritated that day when the dogs started making such a ruckus. I stepped out onto the back porch and could see that they were barking at something just across the fence behind my mother's house. I walked back to the fence where the dogs were, and woah! A litter of puppies, perhaps no more than five weeks old were crowded into a ball just outside the fence!

How did these little guys get here? I wondered. Could someone possibly have dumped them here, knowing that we keep a lot of animals, presuming that we would take them in? I couldn't see how that could be, seeing that a person would have to go through so much trouble to tote the pups all the way to this spot, which was so far from the road. How could a person expect to do that undetected? I was puzzled.

Anyways, I was able to deliver the pups, five in all, to the local animal shelter where all were eventually adopted out. This was a strange case, but it would not be the last. One year later, in approximately the same spot another litter of pups appeared. Now this really was puzzling! Was someone deliberately dumping puppies at our back door? Why would they do that? Why not dump them at the front door? I could not see how or why anyone would go to all the trouble of traversing the yard and several yards of woods to place the pups in a spot way in the back like that, but there could be no mistaking the fact that someone or some thing was doing so. All of the pups were simply too small to have wandered there on their own. Maybe one pup might, but a whole litter? And if they wandered there by themselves, why would they then be all balled up like a litter of pups or kittens are wont to do when their mother leaves them?

In all, while I lived at my mother's house I discovered three litters of puppies this way. All pups were delivered to the shelter, and to my recollection all were subsequently adopted.

In the meantime I bought Willow Oak and moved my crew there. Shortly after moving to Willow Oak I found Oscar wandering around and crying off in the woods, and from whence he came I could not tell, but he was by himself. I've already told Oscar's story, but there is a bit more to it. For one, whereas the other puppies I had found were in fairly decent shape, Oscar had a pretty bad case of mange and had open sores. He was very tiny, and I bathed him and nurtured him back to health. In the mean time I had, myself, developed an itch.

On a visit to the Vet's office, I related to one of the vets about my itch, whereupon being asked, I showed the offending rash. I was told that I had mange. Joy, Joy. So the vet wrote me a prescription for some ointment, and thus began a regimine of self-treatment for mange. I also placed my own self in quarantine.

One of the requirements of this ointment is that you strip completely naked and rub the stuff all over your body -- every square inch. Then you must remain unclothed for a period of time to let the ointment work. Lucky for me I live alone and in the country. I got the bright idea that a little sun would facilitate the treatment so for several days I wandered Willow Oak in the nude. What a site I must have been: a white man covered in a chalky-white merengue, walking about the premises totally and completely naked. I can only imagine what my crew was thinking. For me I didn't like it. I can see where if a person were accustomed to doing so, walking about in the buff might make one feel "refreshed," but for me being naked only made me feel ..., well, ..., naked!

Anyways, I cured my own mange problem, and Oscar's mange cleared up nicely, and, well, I've already told his story. But the story about finding puppies in the woods wasn't over. I continued to find puppies behind my mother's house as well as in and around the woods that surround Willow Oak.

Willow Oak had once been surrounded by a very dense forest of old pine trees, which had been harvested just prior to my acquisition. Hence there are huge piles of trees that have been pushed together to form little mounds here and there. It was deep within one of these mounds that I found a litter of puppies. Such clean puppies they were, too -- no discernable fleas or ticks or mange, and they were adopted out quickly by the animal shelter. In that case, however, I did not come out so clean. I had to crawl down into that old pile of trees, which were covered with years of dirt and humus, hacking my way through until I reached the pups. Part of the way down into the pile I had had to retrieve my chain saw to cut through some large tree trunks that were still relatively intact.

Anyways, I continue to find puppies in those woods and on my property. Where do they come from, and how do they end up in little piles just behind the fence of my mother's property? Well, I've thought a lot about it, and I can come to only one conclusion. Somehow, someway the mother (or mothers) of these pups know(s) that there are humans nearby that will take care of their pups. So, these mothers deliver their pups, once weaned, to a spot adjacent to and easily accessible by their human neighbors.

I simply cannot come up with a better explanation