Category Archives: Animals! Animals! Animals!

Jun11

It’s Saturday

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It’s Saturday, and I didn’t sleep well last night.

It was one of those hot and cold nights.

Although the night air outside the van cooled off, inside the van the air was warm. I guess it was too warm inside the van, or maybe my feather comforter is getting to be too much. In any case, I had one of those nights where I’d wake up too warm and push the covers off my upper body. (I always sleep with at least a sheet over my legs.) I’d doze off, then wake up cold and have to pull the comforter over me again.

During one bout of too hot, I opened the curtains over my back windows to let the cool mountain air rush in. That was delightful…until it wasn’t.

cards, chance, deckMaybe the real culprit was playing solitaire on my phone right before trying to sleep. I’m not a gambler, and in fact I dislike playing any card game with a group of friends, but something about solitaire on an electronic device grabs me and won’t let go. Winning or losing, I just want to play. This is it, I tell myself, the last game, but then I play ten or fifteen or twenty more, until I can barely keep my eyes open. Maybe the blue light interfered with my ability to sleep, or maybe the game itself overexcited my brain.

Daylight was barely a hint outside my windows when the birds started their chirping. 4:45am and the birds were already communicating at full force. I know the early bird catches the worm, but are worms out and about and ripe for catching before daybreak? Didn’t the birds get the memo that folks like to sleep in on Saturdays?

(Back in the day when I did drugs that kept me up at night, when I heard the birds singing–even if the sun wasn’t out–I knew there’d be no sleep for me.) animal, bird's nest, birds

Because the curtains were open, when the sun did come out, the light was right in my face. Sigh. So I gave up on getting anymore sleep.

I’m not exhausted. I did get some sleep. But since I didn’t get the amount or quality of sleep I wanted, I feel tired. I have to work in the parking lot today, and it will probably be busy. I told myself I’d be nice to people today and not give sassy answers when people ask me why so many trees are dead. I was hoping to feel chipper and excited, but I suspect I’ll spend the day feeling slow and dimwitted. Maybe pancakes will perk me up, or maybe I’ll need a cup of black tea.

I wrote this piece on June 4, 2016. I ended up not drinking tea, and the parking lot wasn’t too busy. I did ok. I think I was mostly nice and while my brain might have been slow, I didn’t make any major mistakes.

Photos courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/playing-game-card-58562/ and https://www.pexels.com/photo/nature-animal-cute-sitting-36430/.

 

Jun8

The Roadrunner Returns

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Remember the roadrunner that hopped up on my side mirror one morning? It came back!

It was early evening. The sun was still out, but the temperature had dropped a bit and my van cast a big shadow. I had my table set up in a shady spot in the back of my campsite, and I was cooking dinner.

I saw movement in my peripheral vision and turned my head to investigate. The roadrunner was on the ground, strolling, in no hurry at all. I froze and watched it.

Close Up Photography Roadrunner at the Top of Red Surface during Daytime

(I’m not 100% sure it was the same roadrunner, but it seemed to be the same size and color. According to http://www.softschools.com/facts/animals/greater_roadrunner_facts/465/, the

[g]reater roadrunner is territorial animal…

which lends credence to my idea that it was the same bird I’d seen before.)

The roadrunner was close enough for me to see it very well, especially when it stopped moving. I could see the iridescence of its long tail feathers. I could see the crest of feathers on the top of its head move up and down. (Was the bird trying to communicate with me? If so, I missed the message.)

While I observed the bird, it picked up one of its legs and used its foot to scratch where its ear would be if it had external ear parts. The bird scratched its “ear” like a dog would. I was delighted! I’ve never seen another bird do such a thing. Is that a normal thing for a bird to do? Is that specifically a roadrunner move?

The bird didn’t seem worried or frightened. I wonder if it were as interested in me as I was in it.

As I stood watching it, the roadrunner turned its back to me. I thought it was going to walk away, but instead, it lifted its wings away from its body. It looked sort of puffed up. I could see the downy feathers on its body. Those feathers were being fluffed by the wind. I could see its skin in patches not covered by feathers. The bird stood with its wings lifted for what seemed like a long time before it walked away.

I wondered if it were trying to make itself look bigger in hopes of intimidating me. It seemed odd to me that an animal’s act of aggression would involve turning its back on a possible threat.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadrunner,

To warm itself during the day, the roadrunner exposes dark patches of skin on its back to the sun.

The Hill Country Naturalist says that to warm itself,

[t]he roadrunner turns its back to the sun and fluffs out its feathers, using its black skin to absorb the warmth.

So that’s what it was doing! The roadrunner was feeling chilly and was trying to get warm. Its behavior had nothing to do with me.

When the roadrunner walked away, I went over to the van and sat in the open side doors to eat my dinner. As I sat there, the bird came back! It stood about three steps away from me, parallel to the van and calmly regarded me. I thought I should grab my camera, but I was worried my movements would scare off the critter. I decided I’d rather look at it and not risk spooking it while fumbling around.

When the bird grew tired of looking at me, it walked a few more steps away from me, toward some creosote bushes. It stopped, turned its back, and commenced its wing flapping. Then it disappeared into the bushes, not to be seen again.

When I told the Lady of the House about the return of the roadrunner, she said maybe it was my new spirit guide. I’ve been pretty happy with the sloth as my spirit guide, but there’s not much I can do if the roadrunner has chosen me.

Photo courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photography-roadrunner-at-the-top-of-red-surface-during-daytime-158097/.

May6

Beep! Beep!

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Growing up in the Deep South, there was a lot I wasn’t taught about the Southwest.

For example, I wasn’t taught that the saguaro cactus is IMG_4558

found exclusively in the Sonoran Desert.

[The cactus is found] in southern Arizona and western Sonora, Mexico. A few stray plants can also be found in southeast California.

(Thanks to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum for the info.)

I grew up thinking all cacti (I did know the plural of cactus was not cactuses) were pretty much that same and all cacti  grew in all deserts. WRONG!

Nor did I know much about the roadrunner. Oh sure, I saw the cartoon Road Runner on Saturday mornings, but I didn’t necessarily believe a roadrunner was a real creature. I saw Bugs Bunny too, but I knew rabbits couldn’t talk (much less sing opera), so while I might believe there was a bird called a roadrunner out in the big world, I was pretty sure it was nothing like the one on television.

I was right about that.

I didn’t see a real live roadrunner until I was an adult. I was so excited when it ran across the road, I bounced up and down in my seat and squealed.

Of course, the cartoon Road Runner looks a lot different from a real, live roadrunner. Real roadrunners are mostly brown, while the cartoon Road Runner is decked out in shades of blue. The cartoon Road Runner is much taller than a real roadrunner, and the decorative feather flop on the top of the cartoon’s head is much bigger than anything a real roadrunner has going on.

But still, when I saw the real roadrunner hurrying across the highway, I knew exactly what it was.

According to the All About Birds website

A bird born to run, the Greater Roadrunner can outrace a human, kill a rattlesnake, and thrive in the harsh landscapes of the Desert Southwest. Roadrunners reach two feet from sturdy bill to white tail tip, with a bushy blue-black crest and mottled plumage that blends well with dusty shrubs. As they run, they hold their lean frames nearly parallel to the ground and rudder with their long tails. They have recently extended their range eastward into Missouri and Louisiana.

WHAT?!?!?!? Roadrunners in Missouri and Louisiana? THAT is exciting, but how is a desert bird going to adapt to all the humidity?

Not too long ago, I woke up with the sun. It had been hot out, and there weren’t many other people around, so I hadn’t hung my side curtain when I went to bed. The lack of curtain helped with airflow, but when the sun rose at 5:45, there was a lot of light in my face.

I was looking at Facebook on my phone and hadn’t even put my glasses on when I heard a thump on the van. I looked up and saw…something…standing on my side mirror. My vision is very poor, and I can’t see much past the end of my nose without my specs. (Yeah, I’d been holding the phone close to my nose.) I suspected it was a bird on the mirror, but I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was some kind of super jumping desert squirrel that had leapt up there.

I reached out for my glasses, thinking my movement would scare of the critter. Nope. The critter didn’t go anywhere. I got the spectacles on my face and saw a roadrunner on my mirror. A big roadrunner. A roadrunner with a tail as long as (maybe longer than) its whole body. It turned around a few times on the mirror, so I got a good look at it from all angles. Then it flew up to the roof of my van, where I heard it thump a couple of times as it walked around. When all was silent, I knew the bird had flown away.

If I’d been in a cartoon, an anvil or a safe would have crushed my van. Thank goodness I’m living in the real world.

Since I didn’t get a photo of the roadrunner, I’ll post one of a saguaro in bloom. I took the two photos of the saguaros.

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Jan18

Gallery in the Sun (Part 2)

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I visited the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun in Tucson in December 2015. To read about my visit to the Mission in the Sun, the grounds, and DeGrazia’s original home, go here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2016/01/17/gallery-in-the-sun-part-1/.

This is the Gallery in the Sun with the Santa Catalina Mountains behind it.

This is the Gallery in the Sun with the Santa Catalina Mountains behind it.

According to the informational brochure I picked up in there, the gallery

was designed and built from the ground up by Arizona artist Ettore “Ted” DeGrazia, who achieved worldwide acclaim for his colorful paintings of native cultures of the Sonoran desert. Using traditional adobe bricks crafted on-site, DeGrazia built the gallery so his paintings “would feel good inside.”

Ted DeGrazia said,

The gallery was designed by me, I wanted to have the feeling of the southwest. I wanted to build it so that my paintings would feel good inside.

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This is the entrance to the Gallery in the Sun.

The gallery opened in 1965 and houses over

15,00 DeGrazia originals including oil paintings, watercolors, ceramics, and sculptures. There are six permanent collections on display and several rotating exhibitions each year.

As I visited the many rooms in the gallery, I was impressed by the huge amount of art DeGrazia produced during his life. Rooms with walls hung with art opened onto more rooms with walls hung with art. How did GeGrazia find the time to build a gallery made from adobe bricks and build a chapel and create over 15,000 works of art? I think he must have slept very little and had a wife willing do to all the cooking and cleaning. Of course, he must have also been absolutely driven to create.

Flash photography is not allowed in the gallery, but I was able to get some shots using just the light in the room.

One subject DeGrazia revisited many times during his life was the Virgin Mary, particularly Our Lady of Guadalupe. Here are four examples of images of the Virgin DeGrazia painted: IMG_4317IMG_4290

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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DeGrazia was friends with Native Americans and often painted scenes from the ceremonies and every day life of these people. Here are some paintings he did of the things he saw when he visited his Native American friends:

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When I saw the next two paintings, I thought, that man was seriously on some LSD. But maybe DeGrazia had the vision that some folks hope to gain when they take hallucinogens.

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The gallery opens into a courtyard where there are many cacti, several sculptures  and lots of cool found-object art pieces.

This mask is big enough to fit a giant, but I don't know who made it or why or how.

This mask is big enough to fit a giant, but I don’t know who made it or why or how.

I loved looking at all the different kinds of cactus in the courtyard.IMG_4283

 

 

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IMG_4297  In the center of the courtyard is a fountain. In the middle of it is a sculpture of a Native American man wearing a deer headdress. DeGrazia created the sculpture.

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This self-portrait is one of my favorites from Gallery in the Sun. IMG_4327

I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent (at least a couple of hours) at the Gallery in the Sun. I recommend it to anyone who likes art, Arizona, cacti, Native Americans and/or the Southwest.

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This is what the door to the outside world looked like.

I took all of the photos in this post.

Nov11

Three Bears (Part 2)

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I’d recently seen my first California bear, and more bear activity was reported in the campground in the next few weeks.

Some young Forest Service employees staying in the campground while investigating predator (weasel) populations in the area left their ice chest outside their truck overnight, even after we (casually) discussed how bears have learned that ice chests harbor good eating. (I’ve been told that if an ice chest musts be left in a vehicle, it should be covered so bears can’t identify it. Bears have broken into cars to get to ice chests inside. The safest way to store food in bear country is probably in a bear canister.)

The Forest Service employees reported they’d heard bear-type noises in the night, so the woman left her tent to investigate. By the time she’d exited the tent, the bear had run away , and everything in the campsite looked fine. However, when they got to the area where they were performing their investigation and opened the ice chest to pull out the raw chicken used to entice the weasels, they found the cooler empty! The bear in the campground had eaten six chicken halves, then quietly closed the lid of the cooler and scurried off before the woman made it out of her tent.

One morning right before I was laid off, a couple reported a bear had been in the area near their tent the night before. They heard the bear trying to get into the (bear-proof) garbage cans, then rolling logs around. By that time, summer had moved into fall, and the bear must have been hungry in preparation for its long winter nap.

I guess I went to bed too early or slept too deeply or maybe just didn’t leave enticing food lying around, because I never heard any bear activity in the night.

I saw bears #2 and #3 on the same evening. I was driving the company truck to the parking lot to retrieve the self-pay envelopes from the iron ranger. I left before dark, but the sunlight was quickly fading as I twisted and turned through the mountain road curves.

Suddenly an animal was crossing the road not too far ahead of me. What was it? It was too large to be a coyote or a wolf. Was it a mountain lion? Then it was fully out in the road, and I realized it was a bear. A bear!

I’d stopped the truck in the middle of my lane (traffic wasn’t really a concern at that time of night at that time of year) and watched it amble across the road. A bear! I was hooting and hollering and pounding the steering wheel. A bear!

This bear was much better looking than the Tom Waits song bear. This bear was black, with shiny, smooth fur. It was smaller than the other bear and seemed to have more energy. I watched it cross to the other side of the highway and disappear into the trees.

I saw the last bear on my way back to the campground. It was almost dark by that time, and the bear was little more than two glowing eyes and the shadow of ears in the trees next to the highway.

I got my wish. I saw bears, from a distance and in relative safety. All of them, even the one with the shabby coat, were awesome to behold.

To read more of my stories about bears, go here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/04/15/my-first-bear/, here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/05/28/bearanoia/, and here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/05/11/kids-and-bears/.

Image courtesy of https://pixabay.com/en/black-bear-portrait-head-face-1019046/.
Nov10

Three Bears (Part 1)

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I spent part of the spring and the whole summer in the National Forest, but I didn’t see a bear until it was almost time to leave.

I don’t know why bears didn’t come into my campground. I don’t know where they were hiding, but I didn’t see any until September, after I moved back to the larger campground.

I didn’t see (or hear) the bear who scratched on the back of a toy hauler, but the campers told me all about it the next morning. They’d awoken around midnight to the sound of scratching on the their RV. At first the woman thought their dog was making the noise, but that proved to not be the case. When the man when out to investigate, he found a bear trying to open the back ramp door. The couple had cooked in the kitchen inside the RV, and the bear was probably enticed by the lingering food odors. The bear was smart enough to figure out which part of the trailer opened, but was not (yet) smart enough to figure out how to open the latches keeping the door closed. The man chased the bear away by shouting at it, which worked because the bears in the area are very timid and afraid of people.

The attempted bear invasion happened on Thursday night. I scared several campers over the weekend when I told them about the bear in the campground. As I told a group of (so very) young women, I wasn’t trying to scare them. I just wanted them to have as much information as possible to stay safe.

Here are my bear safety tips:

#1 Keep all food in bear-proof boxes or in a vehicle with locked doors and closed windows. No food in tents!

(If you’re back country camping in bear territory, you really need to keep you food in a bear canister.)

#2 If a bear is in your campsite, chase it away. Make yourself as big as possible. Yell at it. Make a lot of noise. Throw rocks at the bear if you have to. Let it know it’s in your territory.

#3 If the bear already has your food, don’t try to take the food back.

#4 Don’t run from a bear! The bear might chase you, and the bear is faster than you are.

Bears can run more than 60 kilometers [37 miles] an hour…more than twice as fast as we can run, and they can do it up hills, down hills or along a slope.

#5 Don’t think climbing a tree is going to save you.

Despite all their timidness on the ground, black bears seem to feel more courageous in trees. Bears sometimes kill each other by throwing their opponents out of trees. The bear below has the advantage because the bear above cannot easily hang on and face downward to fight back.

On my next day off, I planned to go to the post office/WiFi spot nine miles away to pick up my mail and catch up on my internet work. I planned to leave as soon as the sun was up so I could get an early start.

When I tried to start the van–disaster! The battery was dead.

I saw some campers had arrived during the night, but no one was stirring on the campsite. I decided to make the two minute walk to the highway and flag down a driver and ask for a jump start.

The highway was slow around 7am on that Tuesday. (By “slow” I mean no vehicles whatsoever.) I paced as I waited to hear an engine coming around the curve.

I glanced over to the north and saw movement, something headed in my direction.

My brain fills in the blanks of the world around it in strange ways. I swear, my  first fleeting thought was to wonder whay that man was wearing that crappy bear suit and walking on the side of the road.

Then I said out loud, Oh shit! That’s a bear!

The bear was brown in color (although in California, all wild bears are technically black bears, no matter the color of their fur). The bear looked like it was having a rough morning, a rough life. I know I’m anthropomorphizing here, but the bear looked tired and possibly hung over. The bear looked like a bear in a Tom Waits song (if Tom Waits sang about bears).

The bear’s coat looked shabby and dull, as if it had been worn too long or retrieved from a dusty attic, or maybe picked out of a free box on the outskirts of skid row. The bear was lumbering along slowly, on all fours, on the dege of the road, as if it just didn’t have the energy to climb the hill into the forest and pick its way through the trees.

Bears don’t like crashing through bushes any more than people do, and are often found on trails, especially early in the morning, near dusk and at night. – Linda Masterson in Living with Bears (pg 177)

The bear was about as big as a medium-size man, which added to my snap conclusion that I was seeing a worker from a down-and-out carnival too tired to remove his shoddy costume at the end of a long night.

But then I realized I was actually seeing a bear, a bear that was walking toward me, and I felt a little panicked.

The bear was maybe 100 yards from me. (I’m really bad at estimating distances, so I’m not sure.) It was moving toward me, albeit quite slowly.

I decided I did not want the bear to think I was trying to invade its territory, so I scurried across the road and into the large driveway leading into the campground. Once i crossed the street, I could no longer see the bear, but after only a few moments, I heard crashing through the trees. I walked back to the edge of the driveway and peered down the road. The bear was gone.

That was my first California bear sighting, but it wasn’t my last bear experience.


Images courtesy of https://pixabay.com/en/black-bear-walking-wildlife-nature-1901957/and https://pixabay.com/en/bear-cubs-animal-black-tree-branch-50137/.
Nov1

Here’s a Book Review: The Biggest Bear

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[amazon template=image&asin=0395150248]Today’s review is of The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward. I wrote this review in August 2015. The Lady of the House saw it in a thrift store and picked it up for me. She picked it up at first because she thought a book about a bear would be cool. After looking at the last page, she read the whole thing, and sent it to me, even though the story is all kinds of fucked up.

This has got to be the saddest children’s book I’ve ever encountered.

Little Johnny Orchard carries a big gun. He is “humiliated” because while other barns nearby have bear skins nailed to them to dry, his family’s barn has never had a bear skin hanging on it. One day Johnny goes into the woods to shoot a bear and comes out with a (live) bear cub.

Where is the cub’s mother? That issues is never addressed in the book, but I suspect she’s nailed up to somebody’s barn. If mamma bear had been there, I bet she’d have fucked up that little shit Johnny.

Of course, the bear eats everything it can get its paws on. (And you thought giving a mouse a cookie or a pig a pancake caused trouble.) The bear wreaks havoc and grows huge.

After leading the bear far away on three occasions, only to have it return within days each time, Johnny and his father decide the boy will shoot the bear. (Ok, this impending shooting is not spelled out, but anybody over the age of six is probably going to look at the illustrations of a sad boy with a gun and figure it out.)

What passes for a happy ending still seems pretty sad to me, but I guess it’s better than having your best friend shoot you because the neighbors think you’re a nuisance.

I guess this book is what passed for children’s entertainment in the early 1950s. No wonder my parents’ generation is so messed up.

Unless you are from a bear hunting family, don’t read this to your kid unless you want to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions.

Oct11

Happiness and Bighorn Sheep

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On the morning after the first suicide of the year, I walked out on the Bridge.

It was just after six o’clock in the morning. The air was cool enough for legwarmers under my long skirt and flannel over my tank top, and the sky was the fresh pink of daybreak.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I wanted to pray for the man who had jumped 18 hours before, but I feel silly when I pray because I don’t believe an old guy with a beard and a long robe sits in the sky listening to what I have to say. Maybe I wanted to meditate, but “contemplate” was probably closer to what was on my mind. I wanted to ask for rest for his soul. I wanted him to be at peace. I wanted my energy to touch his energy in a way we had missed in life, but thinking that made me feel too woo-woo and new age-y. I wanted some connection with the man, something I didn’t know how to express even to myself.

I wanted to give thanks for my own life too, to express gratitude that I haven’t succumbed to the darkness I sometimes feel near the Gorge, usually at night, when I’m alone in my van, wondering what I’ve really accomplished in my life, wondering why I do what I do day after day, wondering why I’m even walking the earth.

My new friend Zack was an angel to me two nights before, the night before the first suicide of the year. I was walking to the restroom to brush my teeth, and suddenly he was there, for no logical reason. I didn’t recognize him at first. The light was fading and he was skulking around looking for snipes. I walked into the restroom and heard footsteps following me. I was thinking oh shit when he spoke my name, and I realized I had met him and his lady the day before. We talked a bit, and just before we went our own ways, he said that happiness has to come from our hearts, that we have to decide to be happy.

Thank you for that, I said as I hugged him.

Maybe we fight the darkness by deciding to be happy. Deciding isn’t a magical antidote that guarantees everything will be happily ever after. Deciding won’t make all the negatives disappear. But deciding not to dwell, not to wallow, on the negatives seems like a step away from the darkness.

As I walked out on the Bridge, I let the beauty of the Gorge wash over me. I’m always surprised and delighted by that beauty, no matter how many times I see it. Seeing the Gorge never feels routine.

I felt a sense of peace slide over me as I walked. I hoped the man who jumped knew peace too.

As I neared the end of the Bridge, I looked across the street to the south and saw something my brain at first couldn’t understand. I could only make sense of what I saw by thinking someone had set out life-size, three dimensional target practice dummies that looked like rams in what had been a parking area before it was blocked off by the Department of Transportation. Then I realized the creatures looking up at me were moving, alive. Six bighorn sheep were right next to the road, watching me, wondering what I would do next.

I was afraid they would try to cross the road and one would get hit. I walked across the highway slowly and softly told the sheep they shouldn’t be so close to speeding cars. They moved back as I approached, but didn’t leave the empty lot. I perched on the barrier blocking vehicles from entering, and five of the sheep moved closer to the fence separating the empty lot from miles of the Pueblo’s sage. The one sheep that stayed in place kept eating from small patches of lush green grass that had shot up after the monsoon rains. Its mouth moved fast, as if film were being played at high speed. The sheep seemed to be goofing around, trying to make me laugh, but really, that’s just the way its mouth moved when it ate.

One by one, the other five sheep bounded gracefully over the low barbed wire fence and were back in the safety of the sage. Finally, the last one quit munching grass, walked to the fence, hesitated, then jumped across. I had barely breathed a sigh of relief when it hopped the fence again and moved back into the former parking lot to get more of the delicious grass. I continued to sit in silent awe, watching sheep on both sides of the fence, feeling blessed to witness their breakfast.

The sheep in the sage slowly made their way closer to the Gorge. The lone sheep in the parking lot seemed oblivious as the rest of the herd moved farther away. I could no longer see the other five sheep when number six decided it was time to get back to the group. It didn’t seem to want to jump the low fence, but looked for some other way to get to the other side. It approached the tall hurricane fence on the west side of the empty lot and trotted back and forth along it, getting visibly agitated and stamping its feet. It was cut off from its family and not sure how to join them.

I considered getting closer and trying to point the sheep in the right direction, but quickly realized the idea was ridiculous. This creature was not a Disney cutie or barnyard friend. This animal was wild, strong, and a least a little pissed. It might not realize I wanted to help, might instead feel cornered and attacked. While I wanted to have a magical, spiritual moment saving a wild beast, I was more likely to be kicked in the gut by a being living just fine before I can along. I stayed where I was.

The sheep walked over to the lower fence and hesitated, then sailed over into the sage. Go! Go! I silently cheered. There was another low barbed wire fence to clear before following the other sheep into Gorge, but a foot caught in the wire and the sheep crashed to the ground. I gasped, but there seemed to be no serious damage. The sheep was on its feet in moments, then disappeared under the Bridge and into the Gorge.

What connection do I make between these big horn sheep who travel in the Gorge and the man who gave up his life there the day before? I have just the vaguest idea, an idea I can barely grasp and can’t articulate. I feel like the answer is somehow connected to my understanding of my own state of grace.

Someone once told me that grace is a gift we don’t deserve, something given to us for no reason we can understand. I walked back to my van in a state of grace, blessed with a life I’m not sure I deserve, a life that on this day included a moment with bighorn sheep.

(The bulk of this post was written in late summer of 2013, edited in August 2015.)

Sep22

Happy World Rhino Day!

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Today is World Rhino Day!

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Photo I took of a rhinoceros at Out of Africa wildlife park in Camp Verde, Arizona

 

 

According to the International Rhino Foundation, each day, on average, three African rhinos are killed for their horns. The IRF is working to save all five rhino species. With World Rhino Day, the IRF hopes to teach people about rhinos, call attention to their plight, and show people how they can help save these massive critters.

Go to http://www.rhinos.org/stay-informed/world-rhino-day to learn more about World Rhino Day and how you can help save rhinos from extinction.

Did you know? The closest living rhino relatives are tapirs, horses and zebras.
Did you know? A group of rhinos is called a crash.
Did you know? Rhino pregnancies last 15 – 16 months!

Find out more things you may not know about rhinos at http://www.rhinos.org/25-things-you-didn-t-know-about-rhinos.

Sep14

Mouse in the House

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It was Sunday. When I arrived at the parking lot at 11AM, I discovered my co-worker wasn’t there and hadn’t been there all morning. Since he hadn’t been there to clean the parking lot restrooms, I had to do it. Having to clean those restrooms does not make me happy. Being surprised by having to clean those restroom makes me really unhappy, grumpy even.

I was bustling around, just trying to be efficient and get everything done as quickly as possible. While I was cleaning the restroom on the left, a man entered the restroom on the right. He stayed in the restroom a normal amount of time, then exited. A boy, probably his son, went in after him, also stayed a normal amount of time, then came out.

I was out of the restroom I had been cleaning and was sweeping the sidewalk when the man spoke to me. He had an accent, maybe French. He asked me if I knew there was a mouse in the restroom he and the boy had used.

I expressed my displeasure mildly. I did not scream or curse. I was thinking Why? Why? Why? I should not have been required to deal with a mouse. That mouse should have been my co-worker’s Sunday morning problem, not mine.

I heard the boy say, She’s scared.

How does he know I’m afraid of mice? I wondered at the moment. Am I acting afraid?

(Now I wonder why he was speaking English.)

Then I realized he meant the mouse was afraid.

Before I went into the restroom, I heard the boy say something something feeding. I didn’t know what in the world he was talking about until I walked into the restroom and saw in the front corner not just a mouse, but a mamma mouse nursing three babies.

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I took this photo of the mouse family. Notice the mouse shit all over the place.

I don’t like mice (or rats or gerbils or hamsters), but what was once nearly a phobia is now an aversion. I don’t think those rodents are cute or sweet or precious. I think they are vile and disease-ridden. They shit everywhere and make people sick. I worry that one is going to run up the leg of my pants in a moment of panic. (The critter’s panic would quickly become my panic if it ran up the leg of my pants.)

So when I saw the nursing mouse, my thoughts were more Ewwwww than Awwwww. The babies were not tiny and transparent as I once read baby mice described. They were big, probably one-third the size of their mother. Their eyes were still closed. and they seemed to just hang limply from their mother’s side.

The boy was right; the mamma mouse did look scared. Her eyes were huge. She looked resigned to bad things happening, as if these big children suckling from her were not only getting milk from her body, but also stripping away all of her hope. I could almost feel sorry for her, almost admit she was kind of cute, in a sad sort of way, but then I saw the mouse shit all over the floor and the shredded toilet paper they’d probably slept in the night before. I knew I was the one who was going to have to clean it up. I wondered if I’d get workers comp if I caught plague  or hantavirus from the little mousy family.

As I swooped in to pick up the shredded toilet paper, a tourist lady came over with her cameraphone to photograph the mouse family. She couldn’t stop exclaiming over how cute they were.

Oh sure, they’re cute, I said, until they give you the plague.

That thought seemed to sober up the tourist lady pretty fast.

I decided I should get my camera out of the van and take a photo of the mice too. I knew I’d write about them, so why not post a photo as well?

My van was nearby, so I wasn’t gone long. As I was returning to the building housing the restrooms, an new guy was walking up.

Don’t go in the one on the right, I screeched at the young man. There’s a mouse in there!

(I don’t know why I didn’t let him go in there and run them off.)

He said he’d heard about the mice. He wanted to take a photo too.

(Is any animal exotic if it lives in the National Forest?)

He said, Oh, they’re so cute.

Oh, sure, I said, until they defecate all over the place.

I sounded as bitter as I felt. I should get hazard pay for dealing with rodents.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to remove the mice from the corner. I had a broom and a large, blue dustpan. Should I use the broom to sweep them into the dustpan? Should I try to push the edge of the dustpan under them and scoop them up? While I didn’t like them, I didn’t want to hurt them. I’m not keen on hurting living creatures, although I will defend myself. Removing mice from a building hardly seemed like self-defense.

Because the door to the restroom was propped open, there was a large gap near the floor between the door and the wall  When I moved toward the mice with the dustpan extended, the mamma mouse fled through the gap, babies still attached to her nipples. It looked unnatural and grotesque. I guess I’ve never seen a mother run with suckling infants hanging on to her with their mouths.

I was relieved to see them go.

(I know the title of this post is misleading because the post is actually about four mice in a restroom. I opted for poetic license, since “Mouse in the House” sounds better than “Mice in a Restroom.”)