Twinkle

Missing in Action

Nina Barufaldi

Nov 17, 2025

Let me begin, again.

Ada Limòn has this great poem that starts like this:

What I Didn’t Know Before

was how horses simply give birth to other

horses. Not a baby by any means, not

a creature of liminal spaces, but already

a four legged beast hellbent on walking

I’d been thinking about this poem as I walked through the woods behind my house these last two weeks—about what I didn’t know before Twinkle went missing.

I thought about this poem and about how a loved one can simply vanish and how much I missed her as I walked. Here one moment, gone the next.

I’ll tell you about how she vanished, but first, let me tell you about where I live.

I live on the north side of a north facing hill in a little town on an island in Maine. From my kitchen, I see the most epic stage of nature, the North Atlantic Ocean.

Fog. Squalls. Ice. Snow. Sea smoke. Rainbows. Sunsets. Dawn, glorious dawn. And the waves. And the wind.

I see wind. Come. I will show you wind.

With all the glamour to my north, I hardly ~~think~~ thought about the dangers of the land behind me. It’s just a smattering of homes on the common terrestrial stage featuring turkeys, crows, owls, and deer. A half mile out my back door is Acadia National Park. I often tell visitors that the most dangerous thing about this island is the granite.

While I was searching for a streak of white darting this way and that in the rocky woods behind my house, I found so much other beauty I hadn’t been looking for.

I didn’t know that this snorting, thick chested buck (ten points) sleeps out back.

I didn’t know these wild flowers still bloom in November.

Hare’s-foot Clover
Thistle
Yellow Toadflax
Red Clover
Tansy. Why is no one named Tansy?

I didn’t know the barred owl feather and the turkey feather have similar stripes and colors.

I didn’t know how the fallen birch, maple, and aspen leaves can cover the ground so quickly.

I didn’t know how many friends and strangers would turn up to help.

(Maria, Hilary, Susan, Christine, Judy, Christina, Alicia, Ursula, Jay, Michelle, Melissa, Pete, Desiree, Chris, Jeremiah, Jeff, Eben, Cameron, Melissa, Steve, Natalie, Chris, Constance, Another Melissa…it’s a very long list and I know I’ve missed many.)

I didn’t know how supported by my community I could be.

I didn’t know how close the true wild was to my back door.

I didn’t know why coyote scat is often white.

I didn’t expect night to fall so fast.

Twinkle, our twelve and a half-year-old Parson Russell Terrier disappeared two weeks ago. We let her out into her enclosure before bed and she never came back. We thought maybe she’d escaped and was off on an adventure like Jack Russells are famous for.

But this time, on the third day of her disappearance, a sweet dog named Tesla (who’d once been out on the lam herself) found some of Twinkle’s fur and coyote scat just outside of her enclosure.

Maybe she just had a tussle, we told ourselves.

I didn’t know that coyotes would come so close to town, or that they grow bold in November.

I didn’t know coyotes can easily jump an 8-foot fence—ours was only 4 feet tall—just tall enough so that Twink could not escape.

I didn’t know how many local dogs had been on adventures lasting weeks and then returned home.

I hoped Twinkle would miraculously return, too.

We’ve had torrential rains, snow, cold, and much darkness, but not a single report of a yippy little white dog streaking through someone’s yard. She knows town—she walked it every day with me.

I’d love to see her tail wag, or feel how she relaxes on my shoulder when I sing her song—a slow bluesy (off key) Hello my baby, Hello my darling, Hello my ragtime dog.

How silly we become with pets and children.

We jumped. We sang. We danced. We barked and growled at each other. She stole loaves of my sourdough bread with her cousin Ralph and buried them in the couch.

Twinkle was my working week and my Sunday rest.
My noon, my midnight, my walk, my song.*