Animal Life

Smack!  The spindly legs of the chair I’m sitting on seem to leave the floor; my hands pop up from the laptop keyboard. Crackling echoes somewhere in a ceiling corner above me.  A split second and a time lapse tinkling cascades over my right shoulder. I turn and see: the large pane of storm window shatters from the center, lines and fissures radiating outward as if pushed by invisible fingers of an invisible hand. Something’s hit the plate glass almost dead center.  It’s a big, oversized pane, maybe four foot by five.  Custom made for this Fifties house.

Out on the lawn a broad winged hawk rests at a slight angle, momentarily stunned.  Now he begins a hesitant, off-kilter walk. Then a slow taxi to lift off.  He’s gone.     

It’s been quite a year for animal life.  A neighbor says he’s spotted a blue heron in a marshy area in the old golf course.  Earlier this spring three turkeys appeared in my back yard.  I look out the bathroom window to see their springy necks rhythmically extending and collapsing like a multicolored slinky.  They startle and dart into the corner of the chain link fence, not having enough runway to get airborne.  They regroup and try again, barely clearing the jagged fence top.

Small birds are regulars, of course.  They eat year round and flutter in the birdbaths until November. Cardinals, finches, house sparrows, chickadees. Blue jays swoop in, imperious, all tail feathers and ass. Woodpeckers find their insects in the decaying trunks of trees that in better times the city forestry department would have tagged for removal.   The goldfinches like to eat upside down, says my friend Jan.  Her heavily trafficked finch feeder is in the College and Cultural Center neighborhood.  The residential enclave of academics.  Here specialists in the humanities and social sciences hold forth authoritatively about birds and rodents.  Their expertise results in whole blocks overrun by squirrels and birds, happy to have found a chemical-free zone of failed natural remedies for domestic pests. It’s a haven where tortured birds are lovingly pried free from the jaws of bored family cats. The nature-loving politics of liberals.

Over in my neighborhood, Mott Park, the summer drama has been what Mitt Romney with uneasy jocularity once called varmints. Returning from a month long vacation, I was puzzled to see a large mound of newly dug earth next to the back side of the garage. Its powdery light tan the tell-tale sign of recent activity.  And just beyond the pile a hole about a foot in diameter.  Sipping coffee on the back steps next morning I was momentarily stunned when I saw the creature.  A ground hog---and bigger than Ralphie, the twenty-pound orange Persian cat from up the block.  For several days I tracked the new creature’s habits.  Out early in the morning or at twilight, it scuds along the low retaining wall, and then drops into low bushes behind my neighbor’s statue of St. Francis. Religion---the last refuge of scoundrels.

Friends were not surprised.  ONe wh lives down in Carriage Town uses catch and release traps: "Havahart." Except I didn't have the heart.  Web research brought up remedies both murderous and encouraging of animal re-direction.  The first category involved the attachment of hosing to the car exhaust pipe and putting the hose down the groundhog tunnel.  A gas chamber for even these animals was appalling  This left only the natural remedies: a plastic pop bottle filled with ammonia and the cap pierced with holes to let out the fumes, Epsom salts sprinkled alongt he critters' pathway, a pound of moth balls rolled down the hole.  

In the midst of my research thriving pups appeared.  My neighbor Kyle drawled: yeah, get a .22. I didn't feel up to the rifle.  

Later in the summer, Kyle was dividing phlox for me on the front side of the garage.  A groundhog came up from underneath---evidently it had burrowed all the way across from the back side of the garage. When he told me about it, I asked Kyle what he did.  He said it involved a shovel and I should leave it at that.  The phlox flourish.

The ground hogs have disappeared from my backyard burrow. Now it’s early fall; they may have gone to a winter burrow elsewhere.  I learned of their two-abode life style online as well. Neighbors across the street report still seeing them, usually in familial multiples. 

Meantime, Ralphie lumbers along between the back yards, his quotidian ritual. He patrols the perimeters of the grass in that cautious way of cats, avoiding open space in the center, his marmalade leonine face and yellow eyes set in patient concentration.   

Animal drama’s over for now.  By the first of March someone on the neighborhood Facebook page will be asking if anyone’s seen a robin yet.   By mid-March it will be the Flushing Walleye Festival.  And I’ll be checking my yard for burrows.

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