I was recently and rather aimlessly standing on the sidewalk outside the front gate to our house in the East End of Vancouver British Columbia, of course Canada, debating with myself what just might be something useful to do beyond the twiddling of my left thumb. I am ‘Cack-handed’ i.e. left handed as are incidentally, most kangaroos. Just saying. By chance a guy came up to me and asked where could he find the hens? This just before I was planning to walk a couple of blocks to visit what I had recently discovered and had thought, based on its rather entertaining if piercing howl readily audible even inside our house some distance away, was a pet wolf-dog hybrid. (Yes wolves and dogs can interbreed.) It turned out instead to be a beautiful all white most likely pedigreed, pet Husky!

Putting my planned canine visit on hold, I discovered that the would be hen seeker who I determined was with CTV television, Canada’s largest privately owned television station, was in fact working which explained why he had more than a few gadgets draped around his person including a microphone and a portable television camera. I told him that not only did I know where the hens were, I would take him the seventy ish feet or so to their coop which I did. To my considerable surprise they were not there! They and their myriad forebears have used that bird coop the entire ten years or so that I have lived within quite literally a stones throw of it. I looked here I looked there. Certainly they were not home nor I had a sinking feeling, were they likely to be so any time soon if ever again. It is thus far and most regrettably, still the case now some time on.

I was flummoxed at the absence of the hens but there was nothing we could do about it. Would he I offered by way of a sort of hybrid consolation come cancellation prize, would he be interested in seeing our local frequently audible howling dog only a ten minute uphill walk away. Yes indeed he would came his enthusiastic reply so we set off albeit there was no howling ongoing at that point so I started howling and then singing.

OK I didn’t just start singing out of the blue per se, albeit when I am out and about alone I am inclined to do so. I have had a considerable amount of voice training and have maintained a very long interest in choral music performing with a number of choral groups over a long period of time including the Vancouver Welsh men’s choir and the SATB * Vancouver Bach choir. This singing as a first Tenor. My new found friend rather to my surprise encouraged me to continue with the singing. The howling? Not so much! I did not initially realise it, but he was recording me in both sound and video! I had presumed he was waiting for the expected howls from the animal we were about to visit although he had already complimented me on my howling skills. Who knew?

We soon reached the dog who instantly engaged full on both howling and barking presumably for our edification. It was untethered but was in a very large cage in the front yard of the house in which it lives. On eyeing us it immediately let us know it was not amused. The barking was of a very high standard and pitch which explained why we can hear it and the periodic howling from our house quite some distance away.

My new found CTV television based friend and I got along very well. I doubted his peers would actually use his footage of me singing and howling and promptly forgot about it. A couple of days later my wife and I were entering a restaurant when she suddenly said “you are on television”. By the time I had blinked the show must have ended because I was nowhere to be seen on the screen however she assured me it was for sure me she saw on the CTV program being broadcast albeit the audio was set so low neither she nor I heard it. Arguably a good thing. Sure enough for the next week or two many of our friends emailed me to say they had seen me singing and howling on television. How many people can say that? Singing yes but howling? Oy Vey!

Incidentally and as an aside for your edification and bemusement, like me most kangaroos apparently are left-handed. In the wild they tend to favour their left ‘hands’ (forepaws of course) during common tasks like grooming and feeding a recent study apparently suggested. Who knew? The researchers claimed this to be the first demonstration of population-level ‘handedness’ in a species other than humans which as is generally obvious, are mostly right-handed.

* SATB – Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass.

See Vancouver’s CTV News as part of Sawatsky’s Sign-Off here: Sawatsky Sign-Off: Barry’s Walks