Other-Worldly Encounters with a Feral Cat

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

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.

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Capturing the Spirit of Our Kindred Cousins

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animals, art, bronze, human nature, inspiration, kindred spirits, Nichola Theakston, sculpture, spirit, wildlife

Bronze sculpture, ‘Macaque and Infant’ Detail, by Nichola Theakston

Sculptor Nichola Theakston works in bronze and ceramics to capture the spirit of creatures found in her native Wales and in the wilds beyond its borders. “The notion that an individual creature may experience some ‘otherness’ or spiritual dimension beyond our understanding of its instinctive animal behaviours, is the premise behind much of my work,” she tells us on her website.

I discovered her work on a blog I follow at Colossal, and fell in love with the tender and tranquil faces of her primates, the curious and inscrutable felines, the proud and majestic wildlife.

We learn something about ourselves as humans when we see these qualities in the more-than-human world around us. Is it our own spirit we recognize in them? Or a Spirit that enlightens human and non-human alike, that compels us to see ourselves in the Other.

What do you see when you look at faces of our kindred cousins?

‘Sacred Langur’ in Bronze

Bronze sculpture of “Bastet”

Bastet Study in Bronze

“Still Rhino” in Bronze

‘Standing Silverback’ in Bronze

“Fleet Hare” Study, in Terracotta

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.

Into the Wild – On Safari in Africa

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Africa, Botswana, Jeff Jones, Namibia, Nature, photography, safari, The Jones Party, wildlife

Water hole, Namibia, Africa – Photo by Jeffrey Jones

My brother and his wife have had a life-long love affair with the wildlife and habitats of southern Africa. So much so that after several trips themselves they began taking small groups on safaris. Here are just a sampling of some of the fantastic photographs he’s taken from various trips. They take us, not to the edge, but to the very heart of the wild.

I hope you will enjoy these stunning images from Namibia and Botswana as much as I have. If you’d like to learn more about his trips and the safaris he arranges, you can visit his website The Jones Party, Adventure Travel.

Water hole, Namibia – photo by Jeffrey Jones

Elephant herd, Namibia

Lion “pride”, Namibia

The stunning red sand dunes of Namibia

Sand sculpture, Namibia

Looks like a scene from Mars, but it’s the windswept hills of Namibia

Even the earliest humans were fascinated by the wildlife of Namibia

Leopard, Namibia

Braying zebra, Namibia

Elephant herd, Botswana

Baby elephant, lost among the legs, Botswana

Stay down, baby!

Sitting and sleeping in the shade of the herd, Botswana

A handsome beast!

Noble profile

A little lion love

More, please!

Water Buffalo, Botswana

Mama and baby, Botswana

Hungry baby

Dining lodge, Botswana

Sleeping lodge, Botswana

Cooling down after a long safari, note elephants in the background

View from the lodge as the sun goes down

The end of another beautiful day in the wild.

[All photographs copyrighted by Jeff Jones]

You might enjoy another post I wrote a few years ago about “Waterholes in the Wild and the Backyard“.

 

The Deer’s Scream, My Mother’s Eyes, and a Ripe Strawberry

Tags

death, dying, human consciousness, Nature, wildlife, Zen

The deer fleeing for its life turns to look at me with my mother’s eyes.  Dark fierce eyes, bitter-bright, locking onto mine.  Not letting go.  She’s not looking for help or pity or comfort.  Or escape.  She knows there’s no escape.  That dark gaze locked onto mine wants but one thing.  A witness to its passing, its inevitable and terrifying end.

I never actually saw the deer that night.  It was too dark.  I only heard its pounding hooves passing behind our home, its terrified scream splitting the night.  But I “see” it nonetheless.  For days, weeks, afterwards, even now, I see it. Screaming past me with my mother’s eyes. I’d watched her passing too. Her inevitable and terrifying end.

It came quickly.  Late June she was diagnosed with cancer.  By October she was gone.

I was her caretaker during those last brief months.  I watched her flesh waste away, her energy, her light step, her quick smile. Her interest in watching golf and tennis on TV, in reading mysteries, in knitting, in food, in friends, in family.  In me.  In her own life.  It all drained away in a few short months, in the time it takes to flee screaming from one side of the meadow to the other before crashing down that ravine.

And during all that time of her passing, her wide, terrified gaze locked on mine.  Or so it seems now.

In fact, her passing was surprisingly mild.  She refused treatment and entered hospice care.  She was 80 years old.  Her time had come.  She was ready.  Or so she said, and maybe even believed, at the beginning.  The medication kept her free of the worst pain for most of that time.  Until it didn’t.  Until there was no escaping the pain.

She watched herself deteriorate, and I watched with her.  It was like a thing we watched silently together, this draining away of her life.  It was a painful thing, but for the most part she was stoic, reserved, resigned.

And then one day as she was struggling across the room with her walker, moving in slow motion like the deer in my dream, she turned toward me and fixed her eyes on mine.

By then her loose skin hung from her bones, her sharp shoulders hunched, her wide mouth drooped, her once silver-white hair turned yellow and dull, and her dark eyes shone from sunken sockets. She turned toward me in her slow struggle across the room, fixing her intense bitter-bright eyes on mine and said, “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

The worst thing. Dying. And I knew she was not looking for a response from me, nor sympathy, nor saving, nor comforting words.  My place was simply to bear witness to this “worst thing”, to the terror of her inevitable passing.  Death at her heels on that slow passage across the room.

She slipped into a coma soon afterwards.  And then she was gone.

No escape.  The unalterable, unutterable fact underwriting our existence.  We avert our eyes every which way as long as we can. Until we can’t.  Until the time comes to bear witness, to refuse to look away, to let the fact of another’s inevitable passing, or our own, stare us down, and lock our gaze.  No escape.  And all we can do is be there, fully present, in that moment, bearing witness.

There’s a story about a Zen monk fleeing for his life, a tiger at his heels, chasing him over the edge of a cliff where he grabs hold of a branch.  He dangles there just out of reach of the tiger’s jaws snapping at his head, while below him he sees another tiger half-climbing the cliff to snap at his feet.  No escape.  Just then he notices a fat juicy strawberry dangling from a nearby vine. He lets go with one hand to swing toward the strawberry where he plucks it loose and pops it into his mouth.  “Oh, so delicious!” he sighs, savoring its sweetness.

Here’s another story.  True story.  Caught on video by a group of tourists on safari in Africa. You can watch it here on youtube. Here’s how it goes:

A herd of water buffalo approach a river where a pride of lions are resting.  The lions chase the buffalos, separating a calf from the herd, and dragging it away.  Only the struggling calf slips into the river.  The lions climb down the bank and begin pulling the calf ashore when a crocodile grabs hold of its leg and tries to drag it under.  The lions and crocodile play tug-of-war with the calf, until the lions win and pull it ashore. No escape.

Then something unimaginable happens. The fleeing buffalos suddenly stop running, reverse course, and head back, charging at the lions and chasing them away. The little calf, who moments before had been caught between the lion’s jaw and the crocodile’s teeth (no escape), gets to her feet, shakes her rump, and walks away with the herd, apparently unharmed.

What does it all mean?

These two stories roll around and around in my mind, the same way the screaming deer’s flight and my mother’s slow struggle across the room are rolled together in my memory.

What do they have in common, the monk and the baby buffalo?  One savoring life while death snaps at his heels, another’s life being saved from the grip of death.  The saving and savoring of life.  It’s a theme I turn to again and again in my writing.

Perhaps our escape from life’s inevitable and terrifying end, like the monk’s, is by embracing life’s sweetness, savoring all it has to offer, living life in the oh-so-delicious present moment.

Perhaps our escape is like the calf being plucked from the jaws of death by something too miraculous to even imagine.

Perhaps at the very end, when there finally is no escape from death, like that deer, like my mother, and that awful inevitable conclusion chasing us down grabs hold, something unimaginable happens.  Some unseen hand plucks us like a ripe strawberry from the jaws of death and swallows us whole, savoring all the sweetness of our brief lives, and reaffirming with a sigh, “Oh, so delicious!”

[This post is a sequel to my last, which you can read here. The photos were taken from an Amtrak train window on a trip to San Diego where I wrote most of this post]

Related articles

• Mountain Lion Kills Deer in Springs Family’s Front Yard (kktv.com)
• Deer Forest (charleymckelvy.wordpress.com)

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.]

Waterholes in the Wild and the Backyard

Tags

backyard, Namibia, Nature, waterholes, wildlife

Waterholes, whether in the wild or the backyard, are natural gathering places for wildlife and people who like to watch them.

My brother organizes and leads small private tours into the wilds of Africa and Australia. Gathering at waterholes is one of their favorite past-times and the best way to view a large variety of the region’s wildlife. Namibia on the west coast of Africa is a popular destination where the barrenness of the desert landscape stands in stark contrast to the abundance of wildlife. At a single waterhole he will see herds of lions, elephants, rhinos, zebras, giraffes, and several varieties of antelopes drinking and bathing, all in proper pecking order.

Watching the variety of wildlife gather at our own backyard waterhole has become a favorite pastime for our family. We’ve seen squirrels, raccoons, rats, and rabbits, as well as a large variety of birds from hawks to hummingbirds sipping from the waterfall that flows between the spa and pool. Not to mention all the bees and grasshoppers and other tiny six-footed creatures that skim the surface of our pool for a drink.

Before we moved here the wild turkey had made our backyard pool its home. They flew in over the iron fence and waded in the water which at that time had been mostly drained. Even after we moved in they tried to establish the pool area as their domain, perching on the fence and swooping down over our heads, until the dog eventually convinced them to move on. Sometimes they still stare longingly at the water behind our fence. As do the deer whose trail passes nearby, lifting their long necks to peer over, noses in the air enjoying the sweet scent of water.

Two coyotes who hunt in the meadow behind our home like to sit in the tall grass on the hillside gazing down into our backyard, waiting for the squirrels and rabbits to sneak in for a drink, then chasing them down as they depart.

Just as in the wild our backyard waterhole has a pecking order. Among our feathered friends, the red-headed woodpeckers have claimed first rights to the waterfall. They will tolerate the blue jays who pay no attention to them anyway, and they largely ignore the hummingbirds, but the doves and finches and bush tits and any other birds who try to drink without their approval get chased away, returning only when the woodpeckers are otherwise occupied.

Once I rescued a small bird that had fallen into the pool, perhaps having been swept down the waterfall when trying to drink. I scooped it out with the pool skimmer and set it on the grass to dry off. A squirrel was pulled from our water trap where it had managed to pull itself to partial safety. Several rats were scooped from the pool post-mortem. And we have rescued hundreds of bees and grasshoppers with our skimmer, or hand-carried them to safety while we were swimming.

My favorite waterhole show was watching a pair of hawks that had flown in for a drink. But they weren’t quite sure how to do it. They walked back and forth along the edge of the pool gazing into the water and occasionally lowering a toe. But the stretch was too far. They’d strut back and forth and puff themselves up and squat and peck at each other, trying to figure it out, to no avail. Once in a while they approached the waterfall leading up toward the spa where the water was closer for drinking. But this appeared too tricky or too risky for them. Apparently the cascading water and uneven rocks presented a problem. As soon as they’d taken a few timid steps up, they backed away. After a long while they summoned enough courage to climb all the way to the top, and at last they were able to drink as well as bath in the shallow waters coursing down the rocks.

The tiny bush tits and timid doves never experienced any difficulty in drinking and bathing in the falls—only the mighty hawks.

Sometimes I’m tempted to leave our pool gate open, so the wild turkey and deer, coyotes and mountain lions, rabbits and squirrels, could all gather around our pool in proper pecking order, just as they do in the wild.

Wouldn’t that make an awesome photo!

[NOTE – My brother, Jeff Jones, is taking reservations for trips in 2013 and 2014.  He will have a website up soon, but until then, let me know if you’d like more information.]