Other-Worldly Encounters with a Feral Cat

Tags

Nature, wildlife, reality, Perception, feral, cat, umwelt, pets, environment, animal kingdom

She sauntered into our yard about a month ago, this young orange tabby with a white bib. Her gaze passed over me as if she did not see me at all, as if I was part of the patio furniture where I was sitting. When our eyes finally did meet, I still saw no recognition that I was a human or animate or alive or anything at all. It was eerie—being so unseen, unrecognized—her complete disinterest in me. Even the deer and wild turkeys I meet see me, and seem wary and apprehensive when they do. They recognize me as something apart from my surroundings, something to pay attention to, keep an eye on. But not this kitty.

Until she mistook me for food. I’d dropped a couple pieces of lunchmeat on the patio for her, which she gobbled up. But when I held my hand out to her after that, which must have still smelled of meat, she slowly moved toward the smell. She sniffed at my fingers, and then took a bite. Not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough for me to draw back and for her to skitter away.

Later as I was sitting there reading, and apparently wriggling my bare toes, she approached again, stealthily. She saw my toes as prey—not connected to something larger. Then she pounced and bit, harder this time. I cried out. She dashed off again.

Since then I’ve been putting food out when I see her in the yard. She now seems to “see” me as a food source, rather than as food. She won’t eat until I’ve put the food down and move away. If I stay in the yard, she keeps an anxious eye on me, and if I try to approach she darts off. Sometimes she’ll even stand by the door where I go to bring out food, as if waiting for her food source to fulfill its mission.

But she’s still a wild thing, with wild behavior.

We’ve watched her run full tilt at trees and dash up and down the trunks as fast as she can. One tree after another as she makes her way up the hill. For no apparent purpose but for the pure pleasure it brings, it seems. Once when my husband was pruning our plum tree, she dashed up its trunk and then wriggled like a worm through its tight branches.

At wild cat at play in a wild world.

I’ve watched her stalking birds at our birdbath. At first she tried to get them while standing beneath the bath and reaching up. Now she’s learned to take a running leap at them, flying up over the birdbath stretched out like superman, her back legs trailing in the water while her front feet try to grab the bird. She’s yet to catch any while I’ve watched. But we’ve seen her more than once climb up the hill toward the tall grass with a large furry creature in her mouth.

Now that she recognizes us a food source, she hangs out here more often, sometimes grabbing a drink from the pool or the water-can we keep full for her. Sometimes she drinks from the birdbath. She’s found a favorite padded patio chair with a pillow where she likes to snooze. Although a narrow wall will do just as well.

Sometimes we don’t see her for days.

When we do, I don’t try to tame her. I want her to stay wild and independent. But I also want her to see our home as a safe haven from the predators who see her as food—the coyotes and foxes and mountain lions that live beyond our fence. She’s small enough to squeeze through. They aren’t. And I want to augment her diet during the lean times to keep her healthy but not dependent upon us for her meals.

She reminds me—even more than the deer and coyotes and other wild things that live nearby do—that there’s an entirely different way of being in the world and perceiving it that’s unlike anything we humans could ever experience. Insects, birds, bats, orcas and others species each inhabit separate and distinct slivers of reality known only to them. There’s a word for that—umwelt.

We tend to anthropomorphize the animal kingdom, especially our pets, remaking them in our own minds in our own images. But what they are and the world as they experience it is so extraordinary and other-worldly as to make our own pale in comparison. More on this and the umwelt next time.

Rainy Morning Reveries in Photos

Tags

backyard, beauty, California, Central Coast, color, Nature, photography, rain, rainy day

We’ve been blessed with more than usual rainfall on the central coast of California recently. I love the way the gray skies and damp, rain-soaked surfaces around our home make the colors seem more rich and vibrant. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. Wet cement and a shovel can look like abstract art. While fallen tree branches take on the purple glow of a Fauvist painting. Even a little hummer left behind this winter came out to dazzle me with its red-throated splendor. I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Ding-Dong, The Witch Is Dead!

Tags

backyard, Nature, quail, rattlesnake, wildlife, Wizard of Oz

Like many living in rural areas, my husband and I enjoy watching the show that nature puts on outside our windows every day. We love watching all the critters parading in the meadow behind our home, the gentle deer traipsing by in their high-heeled hooves, the mighty elk lifting their crowns of horn, the black boars scuttling along through the brush with their young, the wild rooster puffed up in all its finery to dazzle his adoring hens, the skinny coyote trotting by on the hunt, and the comical quail with their clutch of fluff-balls scurrying behind.

But every good show needs its villain to heighten the drama, and ours have been the nest of rattle-snakes that took up residence in our back yard. We’ve killed three in the past two weeks. The first two were young, no more than a foot and a half long. One was found lounging by our pool, another slithering into our garage. Then yesterday my husband caught their mother, or rather she got caught in the black netting we’d hung over the tomato plants to keep out the birds. She was at least 3 feet long and not happy in the least.

He threw her carcuss over the back fence into the meadow where that hungry coyote who makes its daily round might find it.

What surprised us though was how the quail reacted to its demise.

At first they cautiously approached it and then hurriedly backed away. Then slowly they approached again, at least a dozen, surrounding it completely.

It reminded us of that scene from The Wizard of Oz when the Munchkins timidly came out of hiding to gather around the withered feet of the Wicked Witch of the East when Dorothy’s house landed on her.

We imagined the quail viewing the snake with the same sort of surprised and delighted glee. The snake had been caught only a few feet away from the bushes where our families of quail nested. We had been watching three clutches these past few weeks, 15 babies in one, nine in another, but only one little fluffball following its parents in the third. Who knows how long this snake had been terrorizing their homes and gobbling up their children?

So there they all were, gathering around their nemesis, wondering what merciful god had answered their prayers and slain this mighty villain. With heads bobbing and dancing feet, we could almost hear them singing gleefully:

Ding dong, the witch is dead!

Which old witch? The wicked witch!

The wicked witch is dead.

Then the lights dim. The curtain falls. The audience claps. And our cast of critters quietly leave the stage to resume their daily routines.

Exploring the Deer Paths Behind My Home

Tags

beauty, deer paths, hiking, Nature, nature walk, oak trees, photography

I spent a lovely morning recently exploring some of the deer paths behind our home, stopping to take photos along the way. It’s steeper than it looks here, but the deer know the best way to travel this terrain. And the lovely walking stick my husband made me with it’s sailor stitching and nubby knobs helped.

I love these oak trees, the curving branches with their rough bark and soft grassy moss, the dripping branches with their lacy ribbons. The way the sun peeks through . . .

The backlit branches spiking the sky. The tiny twigs curling like calligraphy against the deep blue.

The deer paths led me through sun-dappled glades . . .

. . . and pass the graveyards of dying and fallen giants, their bare bones scattered and broken along the way. Enriching the soil and nurturing new growth.

As I headed home again I passed the gopher ghetto that edges our property, a space my husband keeps clear of growth as a firebreak. These greedy, prolific creatures gobbled up the roots of several of our favorite rose bushes this year. But the bevy of quail that live here love this cleared space to scratch and feed. And they use the holes as bathtubs, wriggling their fat little bodies deep down into the tiny tubs and splashing the loosened dirt over their shoulders with their wings.

Home at last, I end this journey where I began, with this gorgeous red plum tree the marks one corner of our property.

And a postscript pleasure just for you: this beautiful buck who took a nap in our front yard not long ago. I feel so blessed to be surrounded by so much beauty and wildlife.

Primary Wonder, Age Three

Tags

Deborah J. Brasket, Denise Levertov, granddaughter, grandparenting, life, National Poetry Month, poetry, Primary Wonder, wonder

Primary Wonder, Age Three

Walking with our granddaughter
Whispering and waving
Our wings
Sniffing for bats.

What do you smell grandma?
Trees
What do you smell grandpa?
Clouds

by Deborah J. Brasket

Inspired from a backyard outing with our granddaughter after re-reading this poem by Denise Levertov.

Primary Wonder

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.

And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

by Denise Levertov

Walking in a Green-Winter Wonderland

Tags

California, Central Coast California, green hills, Nature, oak trees, photography, Winter

Here on the central coast of California, we look forward to a green, rather than white, Christmas. While we love our golden hills of summer, we crave green in the winter. During last year’s drought our summer hills turned dun. Even the golden grasses dried up and blew away, and this lasted through winter. But this year our green came early and I’ve been revelling in it.

Here are some recent photos of the green-wonderland behind our home.

My husband and our dog Mitzy.

Amazing oaks!

 

A fallen giant.

 

Shadows and moss.

Sunlight breaking through.

The Three Sisters.

Home again.

A Frosty, Sunlit Morning Walk

Tags

backyard, frosty mornings, Nature, oak groves, oak trees, photography, spanish moss

Yesterday when I woke the frost was so heavy on the grassy meadow behind our house it looked like a light pattering of snow had fallen in the night.

By the time I went out the sun had risen beyond the hills and streamed down through the trees.

I’d forgotten gloves and my fingers were freezing but I kept walking, snapping up photographs of things I found and wanted to share, like the frost-laced fronds and mushroom below . . .

Or the old upturned tree stump, lined with moss and dusted in frost . . .

. . . and the mossy tree branches . . .

and lichen-spotted tree limbs.

I loved the light filtering through the trees . . .

. . .  and the Spanish moss dripping from the branches . . .

Mostly I loved how each oak tree is so unique and elegantly shaped.

Finally, on the walk back, I loved seeing my home nestled among the hills and oak groves, and the man I loved waiting for my return.

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A Deer’s Scream – Beauty and Brutality at Home and in the Hills of Vietnam

Tags

beauty and brutality, death, Deer, deer scream, memoir, Nature, Vietnam, wildlife

The most horrifying sound I’ve ever heard came one night soon after we moved here.  A scream of pure terror that seemed to last forever.

It was too dark to see.  All we could hear was the sound of thundering hooves and a long endless scream passing from one end of the meadow behind our home to the other, then crashing down a ravine. There the sound suddenly stopped, as if a knife had sliced its throat.

Something running for its life had ended abruptly.

We had never heard of a deer screaming, but could not imagine what else it could have been to run so fast and so loud, so I searched online.

There various hunters confirmed that deer do indeed scream—not always, not often, but when they do, the sound is so terrifyingly awful it has haunted them ever since.  One property owner who had always welcomed hunters would not allow them on his land after hearing that scream.

So much of what I write here is about nature’s beauty, how it inspires, uplifts, and nourishes us.  But there’s another inescapable side to nature, darker and more brutal–nature “red of tooth and claw,” as Tennyson wrote.

I’ve seen that kind too in my own backyard–in the screaming deer running for its life, the mountain lion crouched in the tall grass devouring something unidentifiable, the rattlesnake that rose hissing and bared its fangs when I was weeding, the two coyotes taking turns digging at the gopher hole then swallowing it whole in two gulps.

Then there was the rattlesnake we slaughtered when it made its home in our backyard where our little dog plays.  The whole thing was a bloody nightmare, my husband going after it with a long pruning spear.  The snake lunging and hissing and retreating. Finally catching it up, cutting it in two, the headless body writhing, whipping its tail.

There’s also the traps we set to keep the rats out of our garage, the gophers out of our garden.  We kill to preserve life–the life of our dog, our flowers, our lawn–to protect our home. I can’t ever imagine killing a deer or rabbit or quail for food.  Yet our freezer is full of meat others bred and killed.

When we were sailing we joyously lived off the bounty of the sea, hunting, capturing, killing, and eating tuna and swordfish, scallops and lobsters.

How many silent screams went unheard in those halcyon days filled with great beauty and joy and thanksgiving.

As a boy my husband spent his days happily roaming through the hills of old Orcutt with his dog Scratch and his shotgun hunting rabbits and quail.

He hunted in the hills of Vietnam as a young marine too.

Never had he known such beauty as he did then tramping through those wild tropical jungles and lush valleys, he once told me.

He built shelters of sandbags high on a hill overlooking a distant valley quilted in rice paddies with the dark steep mountains laced in waterfalls rising behind them.

He trudged through streams with his 30-lb backpack and machine gun strapped to his back, spellbound by the tropical flowers draping the banks, the brilliant birds darting overhead.

It was surreal—such beauty and brutality all rolled into one. Like the fields behind our home where beautiful creatures die every day to feed other beautiful creatures.

I don’t know why I’m writing this.

Perhaps just to bear witness to the beauty and brutality rolled into one all around us everywhere.  We can’t separate it out.  We have to swallow it whole.  There’s no other way.

For a long time after my husband returned from Vietnam he carried in his wallet a faded photo, a heap of dead bodies. When he showed his uncle, he shied away from him, horrified that he would take and keep such a thing.

But he had to he told me.  He couldn’t turn away.

He had to bear witness to the brutality of war.  Taking that photo was his refusal to turn away.  To swallow it whole.

[NOTE:  Part Two of this post can be found here:  A Deer’s Scream, My Mother’s Eyes, and a Ripe Strawberry.]

Touching the Wild

Tags

Nature, poetry, wild

“The word wild is like a gray fox trotting off through the forest, ducking behind bushes, going in and out of sight,” writes poet Gary Snyder in his book Practice of the Wild.

He seems to be saying that what we call “wild” can only be glimpsed, not grasped.

But can it be touched?  Can it touch us?

I wrote a poem about touching the wild long ago as a young mother looking out a window overlooking a barren backyard and high wooden fence.  Beyond the fence in an open field stood three tall dark pine trees , towering against a pale gray sky, leaning slightly, like masts of a sailing ship, tacking windward.

I must have felt isolated, in a new home, a new neighborhood, where I knew no one, an infant asleep in the next room, a long, lonely, cold-dreary day before me.

Staring out at those pines, “leaning like lords” as I put it in my poem, I longed for something I glimpsed there but could not quite grasp, something that could free me from whatever it was that seemed to be holding me back. From what, I’m no more sure now than I was then.

Watching those pines– not merely seeing, looking, but watching them intently, intensely, feeling the strength, the vitality, the wildness—I felt not only freer, but fuller—nourished, perhaps. Something I “touched” out there struck a chord that vibrated within, as I wrote in this simple poem:

Watching Winter Pines

A fence stands

‘tween me and wintry pines

That lean like lords against the paler skies.

The pines and fields

A wilder, greener grow,

Taller, farther than my fence could ever let me go.

I stand apart

And let the freer pines

Cast a carefree image upon these careful eyes.

Behind a fence

I touch a freer chord,

When touching wintry pines that lean like lords.

What’s amazing to me in hindsight is that those pines weren’t really “wild.”  They weren’t indigenous to the area at all.  The field beyond the fence wasn’t a nature preserve, or even a green space between housing developments.  It was just undeveloped land set aside beneath the flight path of a nearby airport.  Nor was there anything especially beautiful, or free, or wild about the trees.  Yet some sense of the “wild” I glimpsed within those pines called out to and re-animated something “wild” within me.

Nature is everywhere. We can’t escape it. And so too perhaps is the “wildness” within things, what the artist Auguste Rodin identified as an animating spirit:

“Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated.”  And which animates us.

Perhaps poet e.e.cummings put it best:

“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),

It’s always our self we find in the sea.”

Or a tree.

A bird.

A fox flitting in and out of view. . . .

Riffing on Roses

Tags

aesthetics, beauty, flowers, photography, roses

Lately I’ve been playing with roses, photographing them at different stages in bloom, at different times of day, against varied backgrounds, just to see what I could capture.

I love this first one, the delicate color, the fat soft petals, open, exposed,  framing the center. The way the gentle light catches the edges of the petals and swirl in toward the center where the deeper shadows lie. 

The eye moves from the edges spiraling ever inward, round and round toward the tight bud.   This is where the eye rests, at that center, probing the inner depths, where the spiralling continues past where we can see. 

The spiral is a symbol of infinity, an inward eternal flowing.  Water spirals, wind spirals, dancers spiral, galaxies spiral. Thought spirals round and round, ever inward, toward a place past knowing.

This next one stops my heart, I don’t know why. 

The color is so tender, the center so closed, the outer petals so utterly open, leaving the center defenceless.  There’s a feeling of vulnerability, a careless disclosing, an utterly unstudied becoming.

Here it is again from a different angle.  See the way the light flows upward through the petals?  It breaks my heart. 

And the one below . . . I have no words.Now we go outside to where I pluck the roses from the only bush that has survived the deer and gophers.  It’s a tall, gangly bush that grows outside our bathroom window where we see it every morning, watching the roses burst and bloom from one stage to another. 

I cut only the ones that grow below and above where we can see and bring them into our home–orphans, offerings, honored guests, gracious gifts.

This first one is stunning.  The contrast between the deep rose and deeper blue.  I’m thinking flags flying, sails billowing, kites dancing across the sky. 

Hotdogs? Baseball? Blasting trumpets?  There’s something heroic, cheering, utterly wholesome and deeply comforting about this photo. 

That shade of blue in contrast with bright colors heralds all our summers, all our bright hopes, all our pride and enduring optimism.  Endless summer.  It lives like a flame in our hearts, in the faces of laughing children, in the roar of jets, in  fireworks bursting against a twilit sky. 

This deep blue sky is the background for all our hopes and dreams and unites us wherever we live in the world.  The whole rounded globe is cupped in this blue.

The next is especially sweet and hopeful.  The way the light shines through it conveys a sense of innocence, purity.  There’s a freshness here.  You can almost smell the sweetness.

The following seems more serene, mature, even though it is the same rose against the same sky, but the light is different,  There’s an intensity here, a romantic allure.  I’m thinking candlelit dinner, silk stockings, love letters strewn on a bed.

The one below is pure happiness.   I can only smile and smile.

What more can I say?

The following photos evoke something else.  The rose and the clouds seem to drift across the sky, lightly as feathers. 

 We sense movement here, of passing time, fleeting moments.  

There’s a dreamlike quality with the soft focus, the soft petals, soft as the clouds they float upon.

I’m thinking of a rowboat rocking gently on a pond, fingers trailing in the cool water, eyes gazing at the sky above, clouds gentle as a breeze gazing downward, stroking soft skin.No we go indoors again. 

These roses are shot against a gold wall. I like the way the pink  and gold play against each other. The contrasting colors startle each other, but they do not clash.  The boldness of the gold deepens the warmth of the rose, releasing its sweet aroma. Can you smell it? 

There’s a tropical feel here.  It reminds me of a conch shell I have sitting near my bath, the deep rose at the center of its hollow, the broad lip curling outward turning shades of gold, the whole sculpture a study of pink and gold, of curls and whorls and crowns.  The smooth inner lips reflecting the light, the rough and rugged shell absorbing it.

This following was shot out of focus against rippling water. I filtered it to see what would happen. 

It’s hardly a rose anymore, hardly water, it’s all melted together, water and rose. 

There’s a surreal quality, what a rose might look like painted by Van Gogh, underwater, floating among the seaweed.  A still face just below a rippling surface, holding you with its gaze.  Trying to tell you. You strain to hear.  What is it?  What do you hear?

The next is also filtered, shot against the travertine tile. Romanesque, don’t you think? An old world quality.  Ivory and old lace.There’s a coolness and stillness here, yet the light still brightens. 

I’m reminded of ancient statues, the way the light wraps around them, tempering the cool marble with its warmth.  The skin of the rounded limbs, the muscled thighs, the bent elbows, broad shoulders, soft and silky to the eye’s touch, the embracing gaze.

Can you feel the cool, soft petals?

The following is one of my favorites.

She’s just past full bloom, just a shade before fading, still buoyant, full faced, gracious in her giving, nothing hidden, nothing withheld.

The sepia tones capture that inner light, the golden glowing, the gracefulness and graciousness. We know where this ends. But the end is not here, not here at all, not in her, not in this elegant awakening, this gathering awareness, this full-throated opening to all there is.

Here are my lovely ladies, gathered in a crystal vase, growing old together. See how the petals sag ever-so-slightly?

You want to cup them and hold them up, you want to feather your face against them, you want to say, it’s okay my sweets, I love you still, I love you ever more, I love you just this way.

Never has your beauty been more achingly tender than in its fading, its falling away, it ethereal effervescence.

Your beauty is past knowing, it’s all past knowing.