Family

For some reason I’ve been thinking about family lately, partly because my nephew Finn drove a long way to come hunt chukar with us recently. I wondered about the word’s origin, and felt dumb not knowing what it was since I have my students work with Latin and Greek roots every day. I was surprised to see it comes from “servant.” What does this have to do with chukar hunting?

A lot, actually. Families and households serve those lucky enough to have some of that, and our dogs are an integral part of our home ecosystem. We don’t have our own children, and — like a lot of dog owners — our dogs, despite not having any say in the matter, fill an important role in our home. The fact that they’re hunting partners means that we serve each other at home and in the field: we serve food to them, they serve us with unconditional love and affection, we serve them the uplands, they serve us with downed birds.