Deep, Strange-Scented Shade of the Great Dark

I was outside just now, giving the last of the breadloaf to the birds (oh, who do I kid? to the squirrels, really), when my next-door neighbor B. approached me to give me a most-serious warning: she'd seen "several" snakes in her yard and she wanted us to know to look out for them. Upon inquiry, I learned that they were native black rat snakes. The largest in Virginia, a bit imposing certainly, but still harmless. B. proceeded to tell me of how she kills them when she finds them.

I was reminded of a passage from Lisa Courturier's essay, "The Hopes of Snakes":

That the unease over the snake was disproportionate to the actual danger of the creature was not relevant. The concern seemed to be: Who does this snake think it is, venturing out of the trees to travel in the open grasses where stood people just now realizing the snake by their feet was not a child’s toy but an actual live serpent?...our awareness and direct experience of serpents is so limited that what we believe about them functions as a sort of anti-knowledge. In the absence of contact, the snake’s life forms in the human mind as a nightmare of slithering, of fangs, of constriction, of venom, of being swallowed slowly, and in full.

For B., for many people, clearly the very idea of a snake has become much more frightening than the snake itself. So much so that it becomes impossible to consider anything other than that idea, anything that might be closer to truth. Last fall, I opened the attached shed out back to discover a fairly large black rat snake coiled up inside. I guessed that it was seeking shelter from the torrential rains we'd had. I was startled to see it, surprised - especially considering the shed is off the second-floor balcony - but not scared really. And the next day when the rains had cleared, when I took Z. out to see it, it was gone. Last week, we found a tiny dead snake in the road and we all looked at it for a long time.

The snake in the road

The snake in the road, close-up

I explained to B. this morning that as long as I see them in places they're meant to be - our yards, for example, or even in the shed - I generally just leave them. She gave me a very puzzled look. I realize now on reflection that implicit in her warning was reproach: our yard is the only one in the complex without a small lawn, without grass, the only one that the weekly landscapers know to just leave alone. It is, to her and probably to all the other neighbors, disorderly, unkempt, untamed, with various tall plants and groundcovers and trees. B. claims that she has seen snakes climbing the unruly chocolate vine crawling up the trellis out back too (which would explain the snake in the shed).

Yes, ours is a too-wild place that invites wild snakes.

A Gesture

On my way out of the house to the car yesterday, in the front yard I saw a strange sight: a squirrel was carrying something odd in its mouth, something enormous. The squirrel was startled to see me, appeared to panic, dropped what it had been carrying, and took off into the neighbors' yard. When I went over to investigate the dropped thing, I realized it was a very tiny baby squirrel. I also realized that I have never in my life actually seen a baby squirrel. An hour later, when I returned from my errands, the baby was still underneath the shrubs, and Mama was nowhere to be seen. Baby was lying very still, flat to the ground, in what seemed an effort not to be noticed. There are a lot of outdoor cats here, and I was certain that would be the fate of this animal if we didn't do something. So we found a big, empty box and put it on top of the planter by the shrubs, off the ground. Our hope was that the squirrel would seek shelter in the box on its own while awaiting its mother's return. And it did. And while we figured it was probably so young that it wasn't yet weaned, we left out a bowl of water at the edge of the box.

All day, that little squirrel sat in the box and chirped periodically, calling to its mother. After a few hours of this, I began to wonder if it had been truly abandoned (hard to know for sure, because I know deer leave very young ones alone for whole days at a time as well, so that the babies often just *seem* to have been orphaned). But since I couldn't just stand by and watch it die, and as young as it was, that's where things would be heading, I Googled all over, trying to find some sort of wildlife rescue in this area to help out. The closest I could find was in Roanoke, about 40 miles away. But they didn't laugh their heads off at a person calling for them to rescue something as common as a squirrel; their intern, who lives in Radford, said she would drive down after work, pick it up, and drive it back up to the rescue.

By evening, when we checked, Baby was gone. I have to believe that the mother did eventually come back for her baby.

Mysteries of the Bear

I watched a Nat Geo show recently, "Mystery Bear of the Arctic". The mysterious bear in question turned out to be, discovered through extensive DNA testing, to be a polar/brown bear hybrid, with a polar mother and a brown father, the only one of its kind yet found (they speculate that because both species often birth multiple cubs, there could be others still out there). I'm not entirely convinced by the "reasons" given for such a union - that grizzly would have had to travel an unheard of distance, into a range where they are not known to go. But given that both species either avoid interaction entirely if they do meet, or that such interactions usually involve a violent conflict, this is a curious and fascinating idea to consider. Then again, I'm a little over-informed and over-interested in bears.

Still, I can't help but dwell on the reasons the bear was discovered in the first place. Ridiculously rich American man spends $25K to participate in escorted polar bear hunt by Native Inuit guide. The whole situation feels morally questionable and exploitative. That photo says it all.

Aha! Nature Mystery Uncovered!

I guess the reason I haven't been able to identify the type of hawk that lives around here - the one's that I've seen circling together in gigantic (i.e. 50+ members) groups - is because it's not actually a hawk at all, but a black vulture . There is also a huge turkey vulture population here as well. Interestingly, these populations seem to be specific to radford, VA in particular . Saturday has been proclaimed official "Vulture Day" in the city and there are all sorts of planned day-long festivities. We are actually considering getting up REALLY early saturday morning to watch them emerge and listen to lecture from one of the RU biologists. There was a lecture on vultures last week that I had hoped to attend. Now I'm sorry I missed it.

I love learning new stuff like this!

A Few New Home Things

I'm still mulling over my thoughts about this place. But I will say that I feel here more like the proverbial fish out of water than I ever did in Iowa. And until now, I really didn't think that was possible.

Turns out that the groundhog that met a sad, pickup-truck-collision demise last week is not, in fact, the groundhog living under our porch. I feel a little relieved about that. My students had me feeling really guilty that I'd somehow sent out the *go-away-now-intention* that it had picked up on and that I was, in a roundabout sort of way, somewhat responsible for said dead groundhog. I did have a little talking-to with him yesterday - feel oddly like it's a "he" - told him that if he didn't choose to relocate voluntarily, we were going to have to make that choice for him. I can't explain why, but I get a sense that he is a stubborn and brazen little groundhog who is quite happy where he is and has no intention of leaving. At least animal control here participates in a trap-and-release program! That is a relief.

Decisions, Decisions

I have no idea what books to use for my Craft of Nature & Environmental Writing course this summer. the big anthology I planned to use, S. is using now, which isn't that problematic, BUT another faculty member is using it in his lit class now as well. So there's a chance that some of those students who are enrolled in his course would take mine this summer and be stuck with the same main text. And that's no good.

I don't like any of the options. I'm probably stuck with the Norton Book of Nature Writing (those Norton anthologies give me bad undergraduate flashbacks I tell you...). It's comprehensive, but that's the issue. It's too comprehensive. The true "contemporary" nature writing section doesn't start till about 500 pages in, and that's the part I'd rather focus on in this course. I just don't know what to do.

I have ideas for *supplemental* readings, but what a huge amount of work, scanning them and getting them all online in Blackboard. Not to mention that I scribble up my own books like crazy (FYI: If such personal notes bother you, you might not ever want to borrow a book from me!), so I probably can't copy anything from most of my personal library. If I don't order books like, yesterday, the bookstore manager is going to kill me.

I did, last night, solicit some feedback from some current (and future) students in that class about my idea for a field trip to see pennsylvania's largest nursery colony of little brown bats at Canoe Creek State Park near Altoona (about 2 hours from Pittsburgh). I guess that single colony is up around 25,000 and there's several hundred endangered Indiana bats too. The students thought it sounded like a really fun idea, and I've been meaning to do this for the last seven years. I just discovered they have a batcam! .

Another animal-not-bat-related note: With the recent rains and the upcoming warm temperatures, I'm guessing this could be prime viewing weekend here for the yellow-spotted salamander mating. I was going to include a link, but oddly, there's not a single related link to this annual phenomena (if any local folks want directions, let me know. it's REALLY cool). Or maybe that's not so odd after all. I mean, they're just salamanders, right?

When I mentioned the possible bat field trip (which would probably mean an overnight, since it's so far from here), J. got all jealous and said: "I want to see the bats too!"

Feeling Rant-y

Watched the most profoundly stupid Nat'l Geo special on dolphin attacks the other night. I just don't get how people can be so stupid when it comes to dolphins, how anyone could think that it is a *safe* idea to go swimming around in the water with them. Because they can do tricks? Because they're so intelligent? Because they *appear* docile and gentle? Hello people: they are PREDATORS. Not cuddly, sweet, domesticated pets. Why are you surprised that they bite? That they can be aggressive? That they occasionally are provoked to attack? Duh. funny thing is that J. put the show on as background noise while I was grading midterms, not realizing I would become interested (and incensed!) and would be distracted from my work.

Having Faith in the Non-Human Other

Lions Free Kidnapped Girl in Ethiopia

Rescue the Drowning, and Tie Your Shoe-Strings

Here's the mark of a true, geeky academic: When you discover not one, but TWO, really amazing journals, which are surprisingly accessible. And you find yourself positively delirious with excitement over words, plain old *boring* words on the page. Such that you simply cannot stop reading them. Have spent the better part of my "work" time so far reading full text articles from Society and Animals . My favorites so far?:

• "Anthropomorphism and Anthropomorphic Selection—Beyond the 'Cute Response'"
• "Toward a Non-Speciesist Psychoethic"
• "Crossover Animal Fantasy Series: Crossing Cultural and Species as Well as Age Boundaries"

Yup. Total geek.

Wish I Was a Nomad

One of my fondest childhood memories is the ritual of sitting down weekly (Sunday nights?) to watch Marlin Perkins narrate animal stories on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I was really not much into either Nature or Animals as a kid - not at all, in fact - but this show was one of my favorites.

The show is still around. Last night I watched the most remarkable story of a lioness in Kenya with an 'unnatural' penchant for adopting orphaned oryx calves . The film just left me speechless. But, as is the case with pretty much all such stories, this one does not have a happy ending. For most of the calves, and for the lioness herself (who disappeared and hasn't been sighted in several years). And certainly not in my own heart. But still. Wow.

As with so many things in my world, i have a love/hate relationship with these sorts of nature shows, probably with Nature herself. I love learning, watching, observing, but there is always the inevitable sadness.

Thinking of Moving...

...into the Langley Hall library (aka the Biology library). Seriously. Conveniently located right across the street from where I work, it's like a wee little library full of the coolest books. If I had a home library like that, I'd never have to leave my house. I just can't stop pulling books off the shelves in there. I went during lunch today for just two particular books, which turned into four, which then turned into seven, and then I saw one more I'd missed on the "new book" shelf right by the checkout. And there were several more I just couldn't carry.

I really should have had some sense about me fifteen years ago and studied wildlife biology, instead of English. How very different my life might be. Ah, hindsight.

Though I've Dreamed Them, In Sleep's Spaces

Friday necessitated my going to Ohio for the day. I offered, on the way home, to help transport two wolfdogs from a temporary home in OH, to their new foster home in PA. The story of the journey itself, while mildly interesting (How it Took M. 7 Hours to Drive a Mere 150 Miles), is unimportant at the moment. Suffice to say that if I ever consider such a journey in the future, it will definitely be on very different terms, MY terms.

I knew/know very little about wolfdogs. Intuitively, I've always had this sense that such breeding between species may not necessarily be the best idea. Now that I've done a bit of retrospective research, I am very conflicted about having participated in this rescue endeavor, conflicted for a few reasons:

• At the OH home, the wolfdogs lived in an outdoor kennel (talk about filthy dogs! my car is still stinky!). At the PA foster home, they are going to a person who has little if any experience with this type of animal, who has 2 small-ish children and a puppy; the dogs will most likely live in a basement room and the new caretaker will not have the time or the resources to handle/socialize them as they will need in order to be adopted. Have I unknowingly helped to trade one *bad* home for another? Has this actually been the best thing for these two dogs? I am not sure I would have done this if I'd known what I do now.

• Is there any real reason, any real benefit, to breeding wolfdogs in the first place? By "benefit" I mean, does this practice make things better for the individual or collective animals themselves? They are, essentially, neither wolf nor dog, stuck somewhere in the middle, uncomfortably and unwillingly straddling those two worlds. It seems that any reason one could offer up for doing this would just reinforce my developing belief that this is done only for selfish, purely human reasons. The kind of home environment all the resources indicate wolfdogs need, does not seem like it would give any of them the quality of life they deserve. Then again, this same issue could be raised for any number of *exotic pets*. This seems to get back to the issue L. and i were discussing a while back, about when and to what extent can/should humans intervene/meddle with Nature?

• What does it mean that I am bothered by say, keeping a bengal tiger as a "pet," but conversely, I am not bothered by say, keeping an "exotic" reptile (provided it's captive bred) as a "pet"? Hypocritical? Am I assigning some hierarchy of importance/meaning to particular animals' existences based on some overtly subjective, personal criteria?

I am seriously grappling with the ethics of this whole thing.

It did occur to me on Friday that spending the little time I did with those animals, is perhaps the closest I will ever come to being truly near the wild wolf.

The Book Excerpt

After almost four years, The Animal Book is finally in print!
Here's what the editors have to say about my essay...

“…Those of us who have shared our lives with animals may recall a time when we ‘lost our eyes’ and thus attained a fuller vision. Perhaps one day it will dawn on us that our dog finds us difficult to communicate with—that the problem was ours—instead of vice versa; we might have realized suddenly what our horse has been telling us all along about the field we tried to force him through. Melanie Dylan Fox has loaned her eyes in this way to the black bears of Sequoia National Park. In ‘Ursus Americanus: The Idea of a Bear,’ Fox examines her responsibility to the bears she has come to know in their trespassed habitat. Like Steeves and other contributors to this volume, she also ponders the etymological and semantic quandaries that accrue to us when we attempt to speak about such knowledge. We must violate ‘traditional grammatical rules’: each bear for example, is a ‘he,’ a ‘she,’ a ‘who’ with an individual temperament, not an ‘it’ or a ‘that’ with merely a species identity.

In the tradition of Herman Melville in Moby-Dick, and more recently, of Loren Eiseley and Barry Lopez, Fox looks at animals through the dual lenses of science and myth. Like Eiseley in the title essay of The Star Thrower, or Lopez in Of Wolves and Men, Fox seems hopeful that some verbal concatenation of empirical detail and mystical insight might inspire the reader’s own exploration and discovery. Her cross-species, social relationship with bears has changed her forever, and the experience she describes is available to all who expand their conceptions of what is possible.”

Hmm. My essay contains empirical detail and mystical insight. Cool.

The Sky is Falling

Walking home from the bus stop last evening—for the first time I really and truly have to admit to myself, shivering in the near-darkness, that winter has very nearly arrived—it happened again. Same, dense rustle of feathers, I look upward to the telephone pole, see the birds (two this time) drop like heavy, smooth river stones, straight to the street, thudding to the hard concrete into a tangled sprawl of feathers less than two feet from me.

Only this time, it isn't a dying, juvenile robin. This time, it's one of my hawks, one of the red-tails that nest each season in the tall tall tree across the street from my home, and a dark greyish pigeon. I can only guess that, despite all the hawk's fluid grace when flying, the two birds have somehow collided mid-air, sent them both stunned to the ground. from the vivid coloring, I guess it to be the adult female, not the darker male and not one of the pair's young. I'm certain it's the bird I've watched year after year. And all I know is that she's standing close enough for me to reach out and touch her. That and this incident has just left me utterly and completely startled.

I see cars coming in either direction; I must do something. So I do something really stupid, and walk partway into the street, approach the hawk, dangerously close. I stand so that the cars have to go around me. A year ago, M. and I did this very same thing, helping a snake that had been awakened by the unseasonably warm October weather, cross the street safely.

A couple in a silver sedan slow, roll down the passenger window, stare at the birds still on the ground. The hawk has stood, but she clearly is disoriented. And the pigeon, well, it's safe to say the pigeon has not survived, either the collison or the fall.

The cars pass, the hawk attempts flight. She makes it to the other side of the street, to a front porch. Her wing is bent awkwardly, clearly in a twisted position that isn't quite right. We stare at one another with blinking eyes for many minutes, the human-animal distance between us breathtakingly small. Her beauty, which i can finally see in detail for the first time, brings tears to my eyes. I watch and wait.

More moments pass. She turns and takes flight, erratic and obviously strained, makes it to the roof of a two-story apartment building. In this instant, I have a helpless, but inevitable, feeling that I can do nothing but trust. I will see her again next spring.

Where My Head is Today

A moving poem by one of my favorite poets, ever, Pattiann Rogers (linked because it is loooong).

Tessa, A Million Apologies

I struggle to find the right words.

I am sorry that you were not given a chance, a real chance, to find the loving, attentive home that you desired, that you deserved.

I am sorry that your greatest fault was loving people too much.

I am sorry that this world failed you.

I am sorry that you will never be able to be the Tessa you could have been.

I am sorry that i was not able to save you. I tried sweet girl, I really did. I should have tried harder. Should have been more insistent.

Most of all, I am sorry that others were not willing to do every damn thing in their human power to help you.

And, I am sorry I did not get to say goodbye.

I will miss your beautiful toothy grin, your boundless energy, the way you sat immediately at my feet for attention, even though you really just wanted to leap onto me and smother me with sloppy doggle kisses, your astonishing ability to love.

I grieve for you as if you were one of my own.

Late for Work This Morning Because...

I am unlocking my car door, when above me on the roof I hear a loud rustling. Ilook up to see a bird come sailing erratically off the second story and land, hard, into the tree just beside the car. The branch shakes for a split second, and then the bird falls, even harder, straight into the street below. On its back, almost motionless, feet twitching slightly, I know there is something terribly wrong with it. Instantly I know that it is dying. I cannot just leave it there in the street to be run over by a car, to die an undignified death (though it occurs to me now that perhaps that may have been the more humane thing to do, not painless, but likely swift). I cannot simply stand there and watch it happen. By this time, I am sobbing.

I scream for J. to come outside. We grab last night's pizza box, and while making impatient morning drivers wait, slide the bird onto it and carry it to the side of the house, lay it gently in the grass. It doesn't flinch, doesn't struggle. That it does nothing at all, doesn't resist, is almost more than I can bear. I stand there for too long watching it in the overgrown grass and weeds, eyes fluttering open and closed, breath shallow and labored. Quite large, but it is still a very young robin. It occurs to me that it will never see the soft, downy feathers on its chest give way to that deep, familiar, brick red color. I wonder if those same downy feathers I've been finding on the porch for the past few days were a warning, a sign leading up to this moment.

I am unable to pull myself together, spend the drive to work still crying, haunted by the image of that poor little trembling bird. My heart aches in a deep and twisty way. It is an ache I seem to feel frequently, for animals, but rarely for people. Only for a select few.

When I come home, I will stand in the darkness, bury the bird, say goodbye or something like it. The county health department does not want or need to know about dead robins, apparently. Only crows, owls, jays, and hawks. but that doesn't mean this little life doesn't matter.

As I often do, I wonder if this happens to other people, if it is 'normal' to feel this profound empathy for non-human creatures. Something so seemingly small as this morning, or something I simply see on television (the recent PBS show on hippos comes to mind), affects me deeply, evokes in me emotions that are constantly surprising, their strength, overwhelming and confusing. I have not always been this way, and I cannot help but wonder when this happened, when I became like this. More importantly, I am never sure exactly what to make of it when it happens. Seems like I need to do something, but I'm never sure what.

Of Dogs, and Me

I can't decide if I find it curious or alarming that I seem to be able to conjure up a lot more empathy for animals than I can for most people (apart from the ones who make up the matter in my personal universe). Is this a flaw? Does it mean I'm insensitive? Not entirely human? After I watched The Ring the other night, the single image that continued to haunt me was the horse jumping off the moving ship – I very nearly cried when it happens. I can't be bothered with a road trip across the state to see my friend John play near Philly this weekend (a friend I haven't seen since Sequoia, circa 1996), yet I will gladly drive to rural West Virginia saturday to try to save one, possibly two, dogs from a kill shelter there, just because the NE Ohio Collie Rescue has asked me to. Oh, and then on Sunday I will drive the dog(s) to Youngstown, to drop them off again.

I wish there was a Real Way (i.e. a non-financially stupid one) to take this passion and make it my vocation, my mission in life. I would be a lot happier.

Only You Can Prevent...

Maybe it's just my over-protectiveness when it comes to animals of the ursine variety – after having lived alongside them in sequoia for so many years – but as sad as this story is, I still can't help but think: Wild animals are wild animals, and human carelessness can be prevented. And once again, it's the animals who were doing nothing more than trying to live their lives as they're meant to, who ultimately suffer the fate of this carelessness. If you go around tempting the Fates and petting bears like they're happy-and-harmless-bumbling-ole-Pooh, bad, bad things are bound to happen. As simple as that. People really, really need to think about what they're doing. Grr.