A Chihuahua Named Mina

Here is a true story that happened last year in July.  A woman named Sarah and her boyfriend, Mark, were camping at this place called Cle Elum, which is a town in the Cascade Mountains not too far from Seattle.  Anyway, they went hiking, and suddenly they saw something huge and hairy coming out of the woods.  At first, Sarah thought it was a great big wolf, but it turned out to be a black bear!

Mina was very brave and maybe a little foolish, so she ran toward the bear and barked a whole bunch.  She was trying to protect her people, just like any brave and faithful dog would do.  Except that the bear was way bigger than Mina was.  So the bear just gave Mina a swat with one paw and sent her flying.

Sarah and Mark though Mina must have been killed by the bear, which made them really sad.  But they did not run away.  They just stood there, and the bear looked at them and then it turned around and went away.  I think it did this because of the fierceness of Mina, the chihuahua.  Or maybe the the bear just remembered something it had meant to do back at home in its den.

Luckily, it turned out that Mina didn't get killed, but one of the bear's claws cut Mina's tummy.  So Mina had to have some surgery and stitches, but she got well again.  Her mom said "I feel like she's my protector, my little hero," which is what Mina was, of course.

My mom says that Mina must not have been on a leash, or otherwise she couldn't have gone running over to attack the bear.  And Mom says that if Mina had been on a leash, she probably wouldn't have got hurt by the bear at all.  But I say that if Mina hadn't been able to defend her humans from the bear, the bear might have just eaten them up, chomp, chomp!  And that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

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GOLDFINCHES

Male in summer

We've been seeing a lot of goldfinches around here lately, like starting way back in the winter.  We don't have a bird feeder in our yard because when Mom used to have one, Mel was always eating the bird seed that fell on the ground.  And also the bird seed made the rats like to come and live in our yard.  So that's why we don't have a bird feeder.  But we do have a bird bath.  And in the wintertime, Mom keeps a heater in it, so it doesn't freeze over, and the birds can get a drink there if they are thirsty.

So anyway, we think the goldfinches come to our yard because they like our bird bath.  And maybe they go in somebody else's yard to get some nice seeds to eat.  Sometimes we will see 5 or 6 goldfinches on our birdbath at one time.  They don't usually take baths, they just get a drink.  And then they fly up and sit on the electric wires that are above the bird bath.  Or else they go sit in the big oak tree in our neighbors' yard. And they do a lot of twittering and chirping and carrying on in a birdlike way.

The kind of goldfinch we have here is called the American Goldfinch, and sometimes it is also called the Eastern Goldfinch or the Wild Canary.  The scientific name for this bird is Carduelis tristis.  The word carduelis comes from carduus, which is Latin for "thistle."  And tristis is Latin for "sad."  So I guess you could say the goldfinch's name means "sad thistle" or maybe "sad thistle-eater."

Male in winter

Most people can recognize male goldfinches because they have bright yellow-and-black feathers.  But male goldfinches only look this way in the summer when they are trying to impress the girl goldfinches.  In the winter, the males are kind of an olive color.  The females are sort of a dull yellow-brown all year long, but they are a little brighter yellow in the summer.  Goldfinches are the only finches that molt twice during the year.  Molting means that they take off most of their feathers and put on new ones.  Dogs do it, too, but it's called "shedding" when a dog does it.

The kinds of places where goldfinches like to live are fields and meadows, and also roadsides, orchards, and gardens.  The reason they like these open sorts of places is because lots of plants with yummy seeds grow there.  Goldfinches are what are called granivores, and that means they mostly only eat seeds.  Here are some of the seeds they like best:  thistle, teasel, dandelion, ragweed, mullein, cosmos, goatsbeard, sunflower, and alder.  Sometimes they also eat insects because insects have protein in them.  And other things they sometimes eat are tree buds, maple sap, and berries.  Goldfinches have beaks that are very good for getting hold of seeds, and they can also use their feet to hang upside down or move seed heads around to where they can reach them better.

Yellow = summer-only range
Green = year-round range
Blue = winter-only range

American goldfinches are found in most of the U.S. during at least a part of the year.  In some places, like the green section of this map, they just stick around all year long, so that's why we see these birds at our bird bath here even in the winter.  Mostly, goldfinches are social birds that like to hang out in flocks.  But during breeding season, the males set up a territory and defend it from other males.  The female finds a nice shrub or tree where she builds a little nest that is about 2.5 inches in diameter.  It takes her 6 days or so to build the nest.  The outside layer of the nest is made of bark, weeds, vines, and grass.  Then all that stuff is bound together with spiderwebs and caterpillar silk.  The inside is lined with the down of milkweed, thistle, or cattail.

The nest is woven so tightly that it is actually waterproof.  So if there is a heavy rainstorm, the baby birds could drown in the nest.  Which is why the mom and dad birds have to cover the nest and keep the rain out.

Male feeding female on nest

Anyway, the goldfinches wait until really late in the season to do all their mating and nesting stuff.  They wait until almost the end of July, which is later than any other kind of finch.  Probably, the reason they wait so long is so that there will be lots of seeds to feed to the baby birds after they are born.  But the fact that goldfinches wait until July to mate means that they can usually only have one family each year.

The female goldfinch lays 4 to 6 eggs which are bluish-white and about the size of a peanut.  Then she sits on them until they hatch, which takes between 12 and 14 days.  The male brings food to the female, but he doesn't do any egg-sitting himself.  The chicks are naked when they are born, and they don't open their eyes for the first 3 days.  But they grow some feathers within a couple of weeks, and then they start learning to fly.  Their daddy feeds them for about 3 weeks after they grow their feathers, and then after that they are on their own.

"What did you bring us, Daddy?"

So that's the story of the goldfinches, except I will also say that they are in no danger at all of going extinct.  In fact, when people clear out forests and make more open land, that is good for the goldfinches because it creates more habitat for them.  Oh, and maybe I should also mention that the goldfinch is the Official State Bird of Iowa, New Jersey, and Washington.  Which seems like a pretty big deal to me.

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GETTING OUR BIG OAK TREE TRIMMED

On Sunday afternoon, right when the picnic was over and everybody had gone home, the phone rang, and guess who it was!  It was Uncle Chuck, the man who trims our trees for us!  And he was calling to say that he could come on Monday and cut the dead limbs off the big, huge tall oak tree in the back yard.  So Mom said that would be fine.  She had to cancel her plans to go to the shelter and play with the poor, homeless doggies, but it was more important to have Uncle Chuck come over because Uncle Chuck is a very busy man, and you just have to let him trim your trees whenever he says he can do it.

So Monday morning, Uncle Chuck and his helper, Uncle Aaron, got here about 9 a.m., and all of us dogs had to stay in the house so that no one would bite anybody.  But Mom didn't have to stay in the house, so she went outside and watched the tree being trimmed, and she took some photos so that I could use them in my blog, which is what I'm going to do today.  And now I will tell you how Uncle Chuck trimmed our tree.

First of all, he put a really, really tall ladder up beside the tree.

And after that, he threw a little thing that was sort of like a bean bag up in the tree until he got it over a big branch way up there.  Except that he couldn't get it up there by throwing it, so he finally had to use a giant slingshot to do it.  Then when the beanbag thing fell back down, it pulled a little rope over the branch, and a big rope got tied on the little rope, and then it got pulled over the branch.  This rope was what Uncle Chuck used to tie himself to the tree so that if he slipped, he wouldn't fall all the way to the ground and get hurt.

Uncle Chuck wears a funny yellow hat, and he has to take a lot of equipment up in the tree to do his work with.  Most of the equipment gets tied to his belt.  The chainsaw weighs 20 pounds, and some of the other stuff is pretty heavy, too.

When he gets all loaded up and tied in to the rope, he starts climbing.  And when he gets to the branch he wants to cut off, he ties another rope to the branch.  That way, when he cuts the branch off, it can be lowered down slowly by Uncle Aaron, which will keep it from smashing into stuff on the way down.

Here's a picture Mom took through the bathroom window.  The reason it looks like there is a fog is because the window is dirty.  But don't tell Mom I told you that!

After all the dead branches got cut down, Uncle Aaron and Uncle Chuck cut them into firewood for us to use next winter.  Mom won't have to buy as much wood in the fall because now we have some off of our very own tree.  And since it is oak, it will burn really well.

Uncle Aaron stacked the firewood in the back of the yard.  Some of the branches turned out to be hollow, so who knows what might have been living inside them!

Anyway, after Uncle Chuck trimmed our tree, he also cut some branches off the neighbor's oak tree because those branches were hanging over the wires that bring electricity into our house.  Mom is afraid that if there is a big storm sometime, like especially an ice storm, these limbs might fall on our wires and break them.

After that, Mom asked Uncle Chuck to trim one dead limb off the locust tree in our front yard, which he did.  So now Mom doesn't have to look at that dead limb anymore, which she has been doing for the last three years.

Well, I'm sorry to say that because it took such a long time for all the tree trimming to happen, a couple of dogs peed in the house.  I'm not saying who did this, but Mom thinks it might have been Nicky and I.  Anyway, when the tree trimming was mostly over, Mom took me out in the front yard to meet Uncle Chuck, and he said I was very cute.  We went down by Uncle Chuck's truck, which was parked on the street, and I peed in the yard, like a good girl.

Then I realized that there was a dog in the truck, and this dog looked kind of scary, so I headed back to the house.  Mom said she had already met the dog, and his name was Whisper.  He was Uncle Chuck's dog, and he was a Staffordshire terrier from South Africa.  He was mostly brindle, with some white markings.  Mom thought Whisper was very handsome and friendly, and she liked him.  But later on, when Uncle Aaron got Whisper out of the truck and took him for a walk, Mom noticed that Whisper still had all his boy parts, which she was not too happy to see.

But anyway, getting back to the tree trimming story, the last thing that happened was that all the stuff that got cut off the trees was fed into a big, noisy machine that chewed it up and spat it into the back of the truck.  Then after that was all done, Mom paid the bill, which was $350.  This was less than a lot of vet bills that Mom has paid lately, so she didn't mind paying it.  And now we hope we won't have to have any more tree trimming done for quite a while.

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National Dog Bite Prevention Week®

Sunday was the start of National Dog Bite Prevention Week®, and Mom already did her part to prevent dog bites by sending Barry and Mel to Pooches' Paradise during our picnic!  But really, everybody needs to be careful all the time and try to prevent dog bites, not just during this one special week.

Last year I wrote a rather excellent post about dog bites and how to keep them from happening.  But since this is such an important subject, I think it's worth writing about again.  An average of 4.5 million people get bitten by dogs every single year, and one in five of those people has to get medical care.  This is what happened to Mom when she got bitten by that dog at the shelter last summer, and she had to go to the doctor to get some antibiotics.


The people that dogs bite the most are (1) children, (2) old people, and (3) mail carriers.  So there are all sorts of groups who are helping sponsor National Dog Bite Prevention Week®, including the US Postal Service, the American Veterinary Medical Association, pediatricians, plastic surgeons, and insurance companies.  Also Victoria Stilwell, who has a program on Animal Planet called It's Me or the Dog, is being part of the campaign against dog bites.  Ms. Stilwell only uses training methods that are based on positive reinforcement.  She feels that if you force dogs to do stuff by yanking on their collars or rolling them over on their backs, you are just making them feel scared and stressed.  Which means they are more likely to bite you.

The USPS is very interested in preventing dog bites because about 10 letter carriers get hurt by dogs every single day.  The most common way this happens is that a person goes to the door and opens it to take their mail from the carrier, and then the person's dog rushes out past them and bites the mail carrier.  So the way to solve this problem is either to keep your door closed when the mail comes or to put your dog someplace safe before you open the door.

The Postal Service put out a list of the top 10 cities where dogs have attacked mail carriers, and guess what!  The number one city is my own hometown of Houston!  Of course, this doesn't exactly make me proud, and I hope you don't think I'm the kind of girl who would ever bite the mailman.  But anyway, here's the top ten list, with the number of bites in each city during 2010:


 1. Houston, TX - 62
 2. Columbus, OH, and San Diego, CA - 45 each
 3. Los Angeles, CA - 44
 4. Louisville, KY - 40
 5. San Antonio, TX, and St. Louis, MO - 39 each
 6. Cleveland, OH, and Phoenix, AZ - 38 each
 7. Minneapolis, MN, and Portland, OR - 35 each
 8. Denver, CO, and Philadelphia, PA - 31 each
 9. Sacramento, CA - 30
10. Seattle, WA - 28


Anyway, like I said in my post last year about dog bites, there are a lot of things you can do to make dogs less likely to bite you.  But today I want to just talk about what to do when you meet a dog that you don't know, because a lot of times people get bitten when they are meeting new dogs.

If the dog is with its owner, you should ask if you can pet the dog before you try to do that.  And even if the owner says it's okay, you should approach the dog slowly and calmly and watch to see if the dog seems afraid of you.  Because dogs who are afraid are mostly the ones who bite, since they might think you are threatening.


And also, a dog who is with his human might think the human needs to be protected, and that's another reason you might get bitten.  So if the dog is sort of cowering or seems uneasy or especially if it growls, DON'T TRY TO PET IT!  And don't have that silly idea that "dogs always like me" and force yourself on the dog.  

A lot of people, when they are coming up to a new dog, hold out their hand for the dog to sniff.  And they often tell kids to do this, too.  Personally, I think this is a dumb thing to do because as I have told you before, dogs have Very Good Noses, so we can smell a person perfectly well without needing to have a hand stuck under our noses.  And if someone reaches out toward us, it can be kind of frightening, and we might just decide to bite that hand.


The same is true if you reach out to pet a dog on the head, because in dog language, this is a sign of dominance, and some dogs don't react well to being dominated by someone they only just met.  So if you are going to pet a new dog, you should do it on his neck or back or side or maybe give him a little scritch under the chin.  This way, you will not seem like a threat, and the dog will not be thinking about whether to use his weapons of defense.

If you see a dog that is just roaming around loose, without its person, you should be even more careful about how you go up to that dog.  And this is because a dog that is lost is probably very scared and nervous.  Except that sometimes a lost dog might be happy to have found somebody to rescue him, and he will be really friendly.  But you have to know how to read doggy body language so that you can stay safe.


Well, that's pretty much all I'm going to say right now about preventing dog bites.  Just remember that ANY DOG WILL BITE if the situation seems threatening enough.  And just because your beloved, faithful dog has never bitten you,  that doesn't mean he might not bite somebody else sometime.

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OUR PICNIC

Guess what happened yesterday!  We had an entire picnic at our house, and a bunch of people came, and they brought food, and everybody ate a whole lot, and then everybody went home again.  And the reason we had this picnic was because it was the cactus club, whose real name is the Kansas City Cactus and Succulent Society.  But it's easier to just say "cactus club."  And anyway, every year they have a picnic, and usually it's in May, and usually it's at somebody's house.  So this year Mom said the picnic could be at our house.

Aunt Barbara is fixing some food, and Aunt Judy
is talking to somebody who didn't get in the picture.
Also you can see Nicky's butt by the back door.

But first of all, before we could have the picnic, Mom had to do a ton of work, like she had to clean up all her plants because she knew that the cactus club people would want to look at them.  And then she had to dust everything in the house, and there was lots of dust everywhere because Mom hadn't done the dusting for a while.  And upstairs stuff gets really dusty because of those silly cats who are always scratching around in their litter boxes.

And then Mom had to vacuum the house, which also took a while because there was a lot of dirt, and Mom said it was probably all stuff that we dogs had tracked in from outside, but I don't think it was all our fault, and I refuse to feel guilty.  And when Mom moved one of the rugs, she found out that somebody peed on it sometime when she didn't know it happened, and so she had to wash that rug and also some other rugs.

Then while Mom was vacuuming, Nicky got really, really nervous because he didn't like the vacuum noise, so Mom let him stay outside for a long time, and he entertained himself by digging holes in the yard, which made Mom annoyed.  And Saturday afternoon Mom took Barry and Mel over to Pooches' Paradise because they were going to spend the night there so that they wouldn't bite anybody at the picnic.

Oh, and Mom also had to mow the grass, besides vacuuming the whole house, and so she got kind of exhausted.  And when she finally sat down to rest Saturday night, she saw that somebody had peed on Nicky's dog bed in the living room.  And she thought Nicky probably did it himself because he was upset about the vacuum and everything else that was happening in the house.  So Mom had to wash the cover of the bed, and Nicky had to sleep on a rug until it was time to go to bed upstairs, where there are beds that hadn't got peed on.

Uncle Joe is reading
one of Mom's cactus books.

Okay, so yesterday people came here for the picnic.  Except it was kind of cold outside, and Mom even had to turn the furnace on Saturday night.  So everybody stayed in the house where it was warm instead of being outside where you are supposed to be for a picnic.  And in that way, it wasn't much like a picnic.  Also, Mom had planned to take a whole bunch of pictures, but she mostly forgot, so she only took three.

Nicky went right up to everybody at the picnic, and so they all petted him, which he likes a lot.  And if people start petting him, he will lean on them, which is a greyhound thing to do.  I mostly stayed in my little dog bed on the sofa, but people asked about me and petted me, and sometimes I got up and walked around so that everyone could see how cute I am.  And lots of people said they couldn't believe how quiet Nicky and I were, which I guess means they were glad we weren't jumping up on everybody or barking or doing stuff like that.

Charlie and Chloe were even quieter than Nicky and I were.  They spent the whole picnic hiding under the covers on Mom's bed.  Which is kind of a shame because if they had come out, they could have got petted, too.  But they didn't come out, so they didn't get petted.

Anyway, even though our picnic was indoors, there was lots of yummy food there, such as ham and turkey and cheese and potato salad and deviled eggs and macaroni salad and baked beans and brownies and cake and cookies and chips and dip.  I could smell all these yummy foods, and that made me feel very hungry.  So when Mom got herself a whole plate full of food and sat by me on the sofa, I started trying to eat everything on her plate, but she wouldn't let me do that.  However, she did give me a little turkey and some chips and some egg and some cheese.

Aunt Gail, Uncle Mark, and Uncle John
are looking well-fed and happy.

Then after everybody finished eating, the club had a meeting, and Mom ran the meeting because she is the President of the club, which makes her Very Important.  And while the meeting was happening, I curled up in my dog bed beside Mom and took a little nap because frankly, I thought the meeting was pretty boring.

After the meeting was over, people started leaving.  And finally everybody was gone except me and Nicky and Mom.  So Mom cleaned up some stuff and then she took a nap, and after that she went to Pooches and brought Mel and Barry home.  They were very glad to get home so they could poop in our own yard.  And now we are a big, happy family all together again.  Mom is glad the picnic is over with, but she is also glad that she got the house cleaned up.  And she hopes it's a long time before it's her turn to host the picnic again!

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FURTHER ADVENTURES WHILE WALKING, by Nicky

The adventures I'm going to tell you about all happened on Thursday morning, but when I went to the computer Thursday evening to tell you about them, a horrible thing happened!  I got a message from the Blogspot people saying, "this service is currently not available."  They said they were fixing something, and they didn't know when the fixing would be finished.  So I couldn't write about the Adventures that Mom and I had until yesterday evening.  I'm telling you this so you will know that I am not being lazy or procrastinating, because I wouldn't want you to think that!

Okay, so first of all, here's our neighbors' house, the one where Henry the wheaten terrier lives.  During the winter, our neighbors had a porch built on the front of the house.  And then last week they got a whole new lawn, which is made of sod.  They water their new lawn all the time, so I guess they really want it to grow.

There are signs all over the neighborhood about Dumpster Day, which is today.  On Dumpster Day, there is a big green dumpster that is parked about a block from where we live.  People can come and put their big bulky trash in it, or their yard waste.  Mom is going to take a rug over there this morning and put it in the dumpster.  This rug was in front of the sofa for quite a while, but then it somehow got peed on, and not just once but several times.  I won't admit to knowing how this happened, but I do know that the last time the rug got peed on, Mom said it was too stinky, and she didn't want to keep it anymore.  Now we just have little rugs in front of the sofa.  They are the kind of rug that you can just put in the washing machine if it gets dirty or stinky.

Thursday was our regular trash day, but we think it must have also been Big Trash Day.  Several people had big piles of big trash out by the curb.  If it wasn't Big Trash Day, then that stuff is probably still sitting there, looking ugly, which would be really unfortunate.  Here's a closer look at these people's trash.  They had some very cool things, such as an original oil painting and a wading pool.  I'm not sure why they would throw these things away, but for some reason they did.

On the same street where we saw the Big Trash by the curb, we also saw this sign.  I guess these people think their garden is really special, but if they think that, I wonder why they don't pull the dandelions and other weeds out of it.

Mom decided we should walk all the way to Pooches' Paradise because if we did, I could say hi to all my friends there, and Mom could make some boarding reservations for Mel and Barry.  On our way to Pooches, we passed the KC Clay Guild, which is where people can go and make pottery.  And if they don't know how to make pottery, they can take a class and learn.

You never know what you will see outside the Clay Guild, because sometimes there are some ceramic pieces sitting around, like this one, for example.

Between the Clay Guild and Pooches' Paradise, there is a body shop where people have their cars fixed after they get all smashed up in a wreck.  But Mom didn't take any pictures of the body shop.  Maybe she will some other day.  Anyway, the building where Pooches' Paradise is used to also be a body shop, but now it's a doggy daycare instead.

Pooches' Paradise is all decorated in a tropical theme, so that if you go there, you feel like you are on vacation in the Bahamas.  Or at least I guess that's how you are supposed to feel.  Personally, I've never been to the Bahamas or even to Florida, although sometimes greyhounds come to Pooches from racetracks in Florida.

So we went inside Pooches, and we saw several people who used to take care of me when I lived there, including Aunt Duvona and Aunt Cher.  They were all happy to see me, and they said I looked really good.  And then Mom made a reservation so that Mel and Barry could stay there tonight, because on Sunday Mom is having all the cactus club people come to our house for a picnic.  Mom doesn't want anybody to get a dog bite, and she doesn't want to have to shut Mel and Barry up in the bedroom all afternoon.  But Piper and I get to stay home because we are both nice dogs, and we don't bite.

Then we walked back home, and on the way, we saw more Big Trash.  Either that or somebody got thrown out of their house, and now they have to sleep on the sidewalk.

And the last thing we saw was some graffiti on the back of a stop sign.  And by reading this graffiti, we learned that Miranda hearts Jonathon.

So that was all of our adventures while walking.  Mom has been really, really busy the last few days because she is trying to get the house cleaned and the grass mowed and do all the other important things that have to be done before the picnic happens at our house.

Mom wishes that we dogs could help her with all this hard work, but we had to explain to her that since we do not have opposable thumbs, we can't really vacuum or mow or do any of that stuff.  But if she has time to take a nap, we can definitely help with that!

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President Benjamin Harrison's Pets

Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison.  And so far in the history of the U.S., this is the only time a grandson of a president also became president.  Benjamin Harrison was born in North Bend, Ohio, on August 20, 1833.  He was the second of 8 children, and when he was a kid, he liked to go hunting and fishing.

Mr. Harrison and his brother, Irwin, went to Farmer's College, which is close to Cincinnati.  After two years, he transferred to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and he graduated in 1852.  While he was at Farmer's College, Mr. Harrison met Caroline Lavinia Scott, and they got married on October 20, 1853.  They had two children, Russell Benjamin Harrison, and Mary "Mamie" Scott Harrison.

After finishing college, Mr. Harrison studied law, and then he moved to Indianapolis.  When the Civil War came along, he joined the Union side and raised a regiment for the 70th Indiana Infantry.  By the time the war was over, Mr. Harrison had made it up to the rank of Brigadier General.

Next he went into politics, and he ran for governor of Indiana, but he didn't win that race.  Then later he got appointed senator of Indiana.  The Republicans nominated Mr. Harrison to run for president in 1887 against President Grover Cleveland.  He won the election because he got more electoral votes, even though President Cleveland got more of the popular vote.

While President Harrison was in the White House, he had a collie named Dash, that he had bought for his grandchildren.  Dash had his very own doghouse, right next to the White House.  The family also had a dog named Jack and two opossums named Mr. Reciprocity and Mr. Protection.  Another gift that the President got for his grandchildren was a goat named Mr. Whiskers.  The reason the goat had this name was because he had a pointed beard, just like President Harrison.

One day, the President was standing by the door of the While House, waiting for his carriage, and then he saw Mr. Whiskers bolt out through the gate, pulling a cart with three of the President's grandchildren in it.  The President went running after the cart, holding onto his top hat with one hand and waving his cane with the other hand.  And Dash went running along behind.

I think this was probably the most exciting thing that happened during President Harrison's term, and I wish I had been there to see it.  But another interesting thing that happened was that a bunch of new states were admitted to the union.  And these states were:  North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming.  This meant that more states were admitted while Benjamin Harrison was president than since George Washington was president.

In 1891, President Harrison ran for office again, and he ran against former President Cleveland, so it was kind of like 1887 all over again.  Two weeks before the election, the First Lady, Mrs. Caroline Harrison died of tuberculosis, which she had had for a long time.  President Harrison stayed with his wife and did not go out and campaign.  Mr. Cleveland won the election with a majority of both the electoral and popular vote.

After he stopped being President, Mr. Harrison did some interesting things like teach and practice law.  In 1896 he married Mary Scott Lord Dimmick, who was the niece of his first wife.  She was 25 years younger than Mr. Harrison, so his children did not approve of the marriage and did not come to the wedding.  The Mr. Harrison and the new Mrs. Harrison had one child, who was named Elizabeth.

Some of Mr. Harrison's Republican friends told him he should run for president again, but he didn't want to.  Instead, he supported William McKinley, who ended up winning the election.

In February of 1901, Mr. Harrison got a very bad cold, and in March he died from influenza and pneumonia.  He was 67 when he died.  He is buried in Indianapolis, in Crown Hill Cemetery, with his two wives.

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