DON’T CAST YOUR PEARLS BEFORE FOWL

A pig, a chicken and a three-legged dog.

No, this isn’t the beginning of a bad joke. It’s some of the creatures we featured in the September issue all about pets. Of those animals, which would you expect to be the biggest diva during a photo shoot?

Nope, it wasn’t Eleanor Pigby, the neighborhood hog who made headlines when she ventured away from the safety of her backyard for a couple days while her humans were on vacation. It was Helga, the chicken who loves to cuddle.

While most of us become a little, well, chicken, when photographers point their cameras at us, Helga just strutted her stuff like she was born for the limelight during her photo shoot.

“At one point I jokingly said, ‘Work it girl, show me what you got,’ and the chicken actually kind of started posing,” Fulgencio says. “She’d strike a pose this way and then that way, and it just kept going. It was really weird.”

Her attitude even surprised her owner, Jessica Allendes. “She was like a star that day,” Allendes remembers. “It’s like she knew she was there to be on camera. I think at one point [Fulgencio] even said, ‘Oh I love her feet,’ and she raised her feet to let him take a picture of them. It was really odd. I mean, she’s always friendly and outgoing, but that was even more than usual.”

Helga let Allendes doll her up with a little neckerchief. She was pretty as a picture until Allendes tried to make her wear a pearl necklace and that ruffled her feathers.

“The chicken wasn’t having it,” Fulgencio remembers with a laugh. But as soon as the necklace went away, Helga started shaking her tail feathers again.

Creepy Teepee

Not at all creepy, actually. Last spring Advocate photographer Danny Fulgencio set out to snap a dozen or so hidden wonders at White Rock Lake. Armed with a shot list provided by the editors, he hiked the dirt paths behind the Old Fish Hatchery, near the lake’s western shore. We promised fascinating scenery — think graffiti-painted benches and photogenic birds — amid towering trees and interlacing trails. Uncovered was something even better than a yellow-bellied sapsucker: a teepee hut “straight out of ‘The Blair Witch Project,’” the photographer mused. An 11-year-old Lake Highlands resident named John David Aler designed and built the structure, we learned later, after the boy’s father spotted its photo in the Advocate. “We were so excited to see it in the magazine,” his dad David says. “For the past few winters, we have built teepee huts in the woods behind the dam. They get washed away and we rebuild the following winter. My son’s imagination lights up as we build these structures. It’s been a truly great experience every time.” When they returned to the area after building the photographed hut, which took two or three full days, they found someone had made use of it. “There was trash, beer cans inside, and that made me a little bit mad,” John David says. His dad adds that they love the idea of someone going inside and finding warmth or comfort, but the litter is disheartening. More than any tangible result, though, they enjoy the time bonding at their favorite place. “White Rock Lake is our home away from home,” David says. While slightly bummed to realize our discovery was not contrived by some ghostly draftsman or a Bigfoot, we relished this impromptu introduction to the architecturally inclined Aler family.

— Christina Hughes Babb

The Band The Advocate Built

In December, we explored the storied studio history on Garland, where legendary musicians have been making albums on and off for decades. It began with lifelong East Dallas resident Jim Billingsley, who launched Diamond Nights Recording Studios in the 1980s, which drew famous faces like Ronnie Wood. Later, local resident Rick Babb took over the space and kept it as a practice venue for the likes of Edie Brickell. Then the studio went quiet for a few years, becoming an insurance office. That was until the early 2000s, when John Painter decided to relocate his Kitchen Studios from Deep Ellum to Garland Road. He didn’t realize the space he selected was once a thriving recording studio until he began remodeling and saw classic signs that music had been made there. While he loved the legacy he has inadvertently taken over, he never knew the former owner, until the Advocate stepped in. Past met present when photo editor Danny Fulgencio positioned Painter and Billingsley together for a portrait in the studio. Like any two musicians are wont to do, they got to talking music. That conversation grew bigger and bigger until a yet-to-be-named band was born, which will feature Billingsley and several other musicians they used to jam with back in the day. Painter will produce, of course, out of his Garland Road studio. We just hope they’ll consider writing us an Advocate theme song. Emily Charrier