Animal Tales

Several years ago during a lunchtime walk at work I came within one step of a large rattlesnake that was polite enough to rattle and hiss to let me know I was too close. The path I'd been walking was covered with instep-high wildflowers that were both nice scenery for me and nice cover for the snake. The rattle and hiss were nearly simultaneous, and before I could think about what the sound was, I knew--propelled upward by some deeply rooted genetic sense of danger that I much appreciated. A couple of men were driving by in a pickup and they stopped first to laugh at my contortions, second to see if they could find the snake that one of them wanted to take home for his small collection. Together we watched the think slither calmly into deeper grass, and I estimated it at about 3 feet long and as thick of my forearm. Then the snake was gone, the men were gone, and I went back to my cubicle where I sat down and thought, That was fun.

At work this morning we received an email letting us know that the security people had noticed a mountain lion and its cub wandering not far from where I'd seen the rattler, and we are advised to not walk or jog or ride our mountain bikes in that area. We were told that Fish and Game was notified. In all my hiking through valleys and foothills and mountains, that was my first snake-encounter, and I have yet to see a mountain lion though I concede that one may have seen me. I'd love to see one, preferably one that is not hungry and not after it has latched onto my neck. Indeed, my encounters with large creatures in the wild outdoors have been few: seen only one bear, that in Kings Canyon in Southern California as my friends and I were, perhaps ironically, returning to camp from hanging our foodbags in trees so bears would not get our victuals. One of my companions had left a loaf of french bread in his backpack, and perhaps there is more irony in that he was the most experienced of us and knew well enough that he'd messed up.

Riding my bike today along the American River, I startled a coyote off the path and watched it trot away. I slowed my bike and looked at it looking back at me before I put my head down, shifted gears, and continued on my way. This last summer I startled another coyote in the same area as it stalked a squirrel. When I got close the squirrel scampered up a tree, depriving the coyote of its immediate meal. Sometimes the coyotes along the river are considered "nuisances" and must be killed because they harass hikers or hikers' dogs. I often see large, wild turkeys on my rides, and the other day I saw a deer.

And this afternoon a little mouse got squished in our dishwasher, this after we trapped 2 yesterday and another a couple days ago. I saw 2 others today, a grown-up and a baby, so I figure our traps will be active the next few days, though maybe some of the critters will linger until after our Thanksgiving feast. I find mice harmless and less annoying than the ants that sometimes invade the house at different times of the year. If I were a coyote (and maybe a mountain lion) I would find mice perfectly fine fodder for an evening's ingestion. The dogs that wander freely throughout my house seemed mildly interested after I got them to sniff around the dishwasher. The older dog has some experience with rodents: many years ago a family of rats found shelter in our garage, and would actually carry dog food into the engine compartment of my car, where they also chewed through some things that I assume were there so the car could keep running. We also had another dog then, and the 2 of them got lucky a couple of times and took care of the rats.

I spent many summer days as a kid chasing gophers, creatures more photogenic than rats though often just as bothersome. In the schoolyard near our house, a schoolyard that then was surrounded by cornfields, my friends and I would go to the nearby creek, fill up buckets with water, and pour water into a gopher hole. My childhood dog greatly enjoyed this, and she would paw at the water and when a gopher stuck its head up for a breath of air, the dog would grab hold and shake. I'm not sure if this was cruel on our part, but I think we thought we were doing the school a service by ridding the playground of gophers. If we'd had snake (gopher snake, of course), we could have simply fed one to another.

In a different school a few years later, I was sitting in Mrs. Barrett's seventh-grade class, looking out the window when I should have been paying attention. (This continues to be a habit, and if I am in a meeting in a conference room that happens to have windows, I am lost.) The school itself was bi-level, and our class room was on the second floor from where we could look out over a wooded portion of the schoolyard. From my seat near the window I watched a raptor of some type dive into the trees, its wings back like an angry dog's ears. I had never seen anything like it, and all these years later I remember (or think I remember) that bird. The event itself would eventually work its way into an essay in graduate school, oddly enough.

And, though I cannot see exactly how, these events are somehow connected today, perhaps only as tidbits of memory that have congealed into something that must congeal.