FoxCraft

Black and White and Dread All Over

One of the pleasures of hiking in the Black Hills is seeing wildlife. Mule deer stand and watch you go by with casual interest. Whitetail deer leap away through the woods when they hear you coming, their tails waving to signal danger—not seeming to realize that if they just stood still you probably wouldn't see them in the first place. Turkeys flap away in flight as inelegant as the first attempts of the Wright brothers. Chipmunks dart across the rocks as if an invisible force were pulling them along by the tails that stand straight up over their backs.

On one recent hike, though, we saw something different. We were walking along an old railroad bed that had been built some 130 years ago a short way above the bottom of a narrow canyon. A moving flash of black and white in the canyon caught my eye, and I thought, "There's a Border Collie."

Close, but not quite. It was a skunk, the biggest one I've ever seen. (Of course, it's hard to get an accurate comparison, since most of the skunks I've seen were in various stages of squashedness in the middle of the highway.) It was a beautiful animal, with its dramatic striped coat and magnificent plume of a tail. Presumably the stripes help camouflage a skunk at night, but in the sunlight it seemed a tad overdressed, like a socialite in pearls and satin at a backyard barbecue.

Since skunks are both nocturnal and also one of the most common carriers of rabies, it's not a good sign to see one in the middle of a sunny afternoon. We kept very quiet, preferring to remain anonymous while we watched this one. Its behavior seemed normal enough. Though since we tend to do our hiking in the daytime and had never seen a skunk in the woods before, how would we know?

It was obviously on a mission, trotting down the bottom of the canyon. It came to a little spring, stopped to get a drink, then pattered on up the canyon and out of sight. Reassured—at least until we realized the skunk was between us and our car—we went quietly on with our hike in the opposite direction.

A little further along, on the opposite side of the canyon, we saw a huge bird perched atop a pillar of rock. We thought it was an eagle until we spotted its red head. It was a turkey buzzard, basking in the sun. It sat and watched us watching it, seeming to wait while we got the camera out. Then it spread its wings into an elegant sweep, the sun behind the long pinions haloing them in golden light. We expected it to launch into the air, but instead it just sat for several minutes, sunning itself, watching us take pictures almost as if it were posing.

Or maybe it was just waiting to see whether we would stop moving long enough to be considered lunch. We made sure to stay in motion, and after a while it gave up on us and flew away.

Some people might consider seeing a skunk and a turkey buzzard in the same afternoon a bad omen. It may have been. Or maybe not. We were just glad neither one was a mountain lion.

Facing Up to the Pansy

I'm not sure when or why the word pansy became an epithet, a scornful term for a man who didn't seem "manly" enough. Besides, as a feminist and a parent of both daughters and sons, I could—and do—certainly take issue with why being considered effeminate is an insult in the first place.

But that's a rant for a different day. For now let's talk about pansies.

I bought a bunch of them this week, which I plan to put outside if it ever warms up enough to actually plant something. I've liked them ever since I was little and first noticed, in my grandmother's bed of pansies beside the back step, how much their blossoms resembled vivid little faces.

In the hierarchy of the garden, pansies are members of the chorus rather than stars. They don't have the fragrance of roses. They aren't dramatic and showy like peonies or gladioli. They aren’t temperamental or difficult to grow.

What pansies do have is character. The heat doesn't appear to wilt them. The ever-encroaching creeping jenny doesn't defeat them. Even the ineptitude of my gardening doesn't seem to faze them. They just keep blooming, through spring hailstorms, summer heat, and even the first early frost.

According to Merriam Webster, the word pansy comes from the Latin “pensare.” It means to ponder, and it’s also the root of “pensive.”

The name suits these bright yellow and purple flowers. Blooming is their business, and they do it conscientiously. Pansy faces aren't smiling and carefree. They wear the focused, serious expressions of those with important jobs to do.

Actually, they remind me of another group that does important work. A group that certainly would be described as effeminate and could easily be called pansies if the word meant what it ought to mean. They're tough, they have character, and they hang in there even when conditions are less than ideal.

Surely, by now, you know who I'm talking about. Mothers.

Back Yard Biddies

It might be due to the economy. It might be due to the "natural foods" movement. It might be due to pressure from otherwise law-abiding citizens who have been seduced into illicit behavior by the lure of fresh eggs.

At any rate, earlier this spring our town considered an ordinance that would allow residents to keep chickens in their yards. The proposal was defeated, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come around again.

Even though I am not a fan of chickens until they're cooked, this seems like a good idea to me. A handful of hens would be less aggravating to one's neighbors than a couple of Chihuahuas or a pit bill. It makes sense to have back yards used for something practical rather than just a place to water the grass and fertilize the grass so you have to mow the grass. Not to mention the appeal of having fresh eggs for the price of some vegetable peelings and a little chicken feed.

Of course, having fresh tomatoes from one's own garden is appealing, too, and we all know some of the pitfalls that lie between that particular idea and the reality. No doubt raising chickens would be the same.

In our case, for example, we have a huge back yard with ample grass in its natural state—even more natural since the lawn mower broke last fall. Theoretically, half a dozen hens could find a wonderful home out there.

I’m sure some of our neighbors would love the idea. The red fox who lives in the gully, for example. Mountain lions probably wouldn't bother much with chickens, but you never know. A fat hen now and then might be a tempting morsel and a nice change from venison. The money-saving aspect of raising chickens for the eggs would pretty much be wiped out if we had to lay in (if you'll pardon the expression) a fresh supply of hens every week or so.

Then there would be the issue of keeping the flock fed and watered when we're traveling. I suppose, in exchange for the eggs, it might be possible to find someone to look after them. We’d just need to enunciate very carefully when we asked if they’d be willing to chicken-sit.

Crying Fowl

This was too much.

At the bird feeder, we've welcomed blue jays, tolerated an oversized yellow-shafted flicker, and succumbed to the overstuffed charm of a persistent squirrel who is even now probably eating for three or four. But today was beyond what even the most generous sunflower-seed provider should have to put up with.

In the middle of the afternoon, I heard thumping outside the window of my office. It sounded as if a heavy body had plunked itself down in one of the metal chairs out there on the deck.

Someone had landed in one of the chairs, all right, but only to use it as a launching pad onto the railing of the deck. There the uninvited visitor was, perched in front of the bird feeder, helping itself. Okay, okay, I do realize that having birds come and eat at the bird feeder is sort of the general idea.

Except that this was a turkey. A relic of the Jurassic Age that had no business inviting its large, awkward, and ugly self onto our deck. It was busy gobbling food intended for birds that were much smaller, much needier, and, let's face it, much better looking.

I charged outside, broom in hand just in case my yelling needed any emphasis. It didn't. The invader scrambled off the deck, landed in the snow, and made turkey tracks. It hasn't been back—so far.

But this was the last straw. Or the last turkey in the straw. If it shows up again, I may have to replace my broom with a slingshot or a pellet gun and teach it an important lesson about manners and the English language.

There is more than one way to interpret the phrase, "stopping by our house for dinner."

The Wrestlers and the Resurrected Raccoon

Why would you put a dead raccoon into the luggage compartment of the bus in the first place? The brief item in our local paper didn't explain, but inquiring minds would like to know.

True, the passengers on this particular bus were high school boys, which may be all the answer inquiring minds need. I could understand their interest—purely scientific, undoubtedly—in a dead critter. What I didn't understand was how the raccoon ended up stashed with the luggage. To me this implied a certain amount of official collaboration, since presumably only the coach or the bus driver could open the storage compartment.

The person who shares my morning newspaper suggested I might be underestimating the ability of a group of teenaged boys both to sneak a dead critter past their adult supervisors and to surreptitiously open the electronic latch to the luggage compartment door. Having been a teenaged boy himself, he ought to know. He claimed he wouldn't have put a dead critter on a bus himself, but would have abetted such a project.

Not satisfied with this explanation, I did further research. (Yes, I know. Certain people have occasionally implied I don't have enough to do.)

I found that the raccoon caper was sanctioned, however unwisely, by at least one adult. Furthermore, it involved raccoon-bashing as well as raccoon-stashing. On a Friday evening, the high school wrestling team from Carrington, North Dakota, was on a bus headed for a regional tournament in Grafton. They spotted a raccoon and the coach stopped the bus. Several wrestlers got off, hit the raccoon with a pail, picked it up, and stuck it in the baggage compartment under the bus.

Presumably, this whole operation seemed like a good idea at the time.

But apparently a pail (plastic, do you suppose?) isn't a very effective murder weapon. The next morning, when somebody opened the compartment, the "dead" raccoon hopped out and trotted away.

The poor critter must have been confused. First it had been knocked unconscious with a pail and shoved into a cold metal compartment among luggage filled with wrestler's uniforms and socks (freshly laundered, one can only hope). Then it escaped, only to find itself in a strange place miles from home.

Maybe its near-death experience has led to a spiritual awakening, and it will spend the rest of its life ministering to homeless critters in the parks and alleys of Grafton. Or maybe it will sell its story ("Captured by aliens and left for dead in subzero weather!") to the National Inquirer and retire to a cozy home well out of sight of the highway.

Meanwhile, back at the bus, the wrestlers and their coach were having an awakening of their own. Because some of the boys had handled a wild animal and therefore might have been exposed to rabies, the whole team was deemed a health risk and barred from the tournament.

As far as I know, none of the wrestlers have come down with any mysterious diseases. But there's a rumor that several of them have developed an unusual urge to wash all their food before they eat it.

The Case of the Curious Sciurus

"Squirrels are amazing climbers." I know this statement is true, because I saw it on a poster in my granddaughter's room.

She had done a fourth-grade research project on squirrels, which according to the poster are among her favorite animals. She has plenty of opportunity to study them first-hand, living as she does in a neighborhood where oak trees spread a lavish squirrel-friendly buffet of acorns on every street corner.

I also know the statement is true because I have seen it myself. A squirrel can scamper up the post to our second-floor deck and dash across the railing to the bird feeder faster than you can say, "That bushy-tailed little varmint is out there again!"

Squirrels are amazing eaters, too. In only a few minutes, the one that raids our bird feeder can stuff its furry little face with enough sunflower seeds to have fed the chickadees and finches for a week. For a critter without opposable thumbs, it is certainly efficient at shoveling in the calories.

The family name for squirrels, sciurus, comes from the Greek words skia, or shadow, and oura, or tail. A squirrel, then, is a creature who sits in the shadow of its own tail.

Our bird-seed pillager, however, would need a little hair-weaving or at least some serious backcombing before its tail could cast a broad enough shadow to cover it. We have a photo of the squirrel, taken from behind as it crouches at the feeder. The only possible caption for the picture is, "Does this winter coat make my backside look big?"

An honest answer would be, "Yes, it certainly does. You're well-fed, squirrel. Face it, you're fat. Why don't you put yourself on a low-carb diet? I'm sure the Atkins plan for arboreal overeaters would work well for you. By the way, it doesn't allow any stolen sunflower seeds."

To the frustrated owner of the bird feeder and buyer of the vanishing sunflower seeds, this has become war. He already captured a previous munching moocher in a humane trap and hauled it off to a different part of town. It was a sweet victory—at least until two days later, when the replacement squirrel and current occupant showed up.

The trap is back out on the deck. By request, I even brought home a bag of acorns to serve as bait when I came back from a recent visit to the grandkids. So far, it hasn't worked. The squirrel seems to be more interested in sunflower seeds than acorns. Which makes sense, after all; they're probably much easier to shell.

But when he does catch the squirrel, maybe we could ship it off to my granddaughter. I'm sure her parents would believe us if we said it came from Santa Claus.

Robert Frost Didn't Stop By These Woods

It's amazing what some people do in the woods.

The Black Hills National Forest is a multiple-use area, and on a shirt-sleeve warm Sunday afternoon in November it was certainly being used.

We were out there on serious business having to do with geology. Well, one of us was. The other, while willing to keep an eye out for the occasional outcrop or carry the rock hammer now and then, was just there for the hiking.

Pretty much everybody else was out on ATV's. We saw several family parties—Mom and Dad on the front seat of a four-wheeler, with two or three little kids squeezed into the back. There were a few hunters, in blaze orange caps and vests, with gun cases across their laps. There were a few hot-rodders whose goals seemed to be speeding over the bone-rattling trails as fast as they could go.

With all these vehicles buzzing up and down the narrow gravel road and dirt trails, walking in the woods wasn't exactly a deep wilderness experience. Not surprisingly, perhaps, we didn't see a single deer all day. We did meet one hunter, though, walking alertly through the trees with her rifle at the ready. She was obviously an optimist; in the unlikely event she did see a deer in the crowded woods, we hoped she was also an accurate shot.

Then there were the intrepid hill climbers on mud-spattered ATVs, with winches and ropes and tire repair kits. A group of them came up behind us in a narrow canyon, announcing their presence with a low rumble that increased to an ominous growl as they came closer.

We moved to the side of the trail, which suddenly seemed much too narrow. I alternated between apprehensive glances over my shoulder and checking the sides of the canyon for possible places to climb out.

But they were the ones looking for a place to climb. They stopped at the bottom of a slope that was almost a staircase of rocks. The lead rider, on his ATV painted with skull designs, took off his menacing full-face helmet and turned into a polite young Air Force sergeant. He pointed out to us the exact rock he had landed on when he had tried this climb earlier in the day and flipped his vehicle.

He made it this time, and so did his friends. Each four-wheeler crawled up onto the first ledge at just the right spot to avoid getting hung up on the big rock in the middle, jumped sideways at just the right angle to make it to the second level, then growled on up between rocks that a mountain mule might have balked at. It was impressive. It was amazing to watch. Personally, though, I'd feel safer on a mule.

We went out again the following Sunday, not in shirtsleeves this time but in warm coats, heavy gloves, and long underwear. It was 31 degrees and snowing. Oddly enough, we had the silent, peaceful woods to ourselves.

Things That Go Bump in the Dark

I've written before about the hazards of hiking up our driveway on dark, cold mornings to get the newspaper. The worst of these is the emotionally real if physically imaginary (I hope!) mountain lions that lurk behind every shadowy tree and bush.

It's completely unreasonable as well as embarrassing for a mature adult, who can do public speaking in perfect comfort and is eight and a half times a grandmother, to be scared of the dark. Over the past couple of weeks I've been attempting to confront this fear.

It started one morning when I headed outside at 5:45. The front walk and the driveway were such a brilliant white that I thought it must have snowed. When I stepped out onto the porch, though, I realized the brightness came from the nearly full moon, backed up by a blaze of stars. The front yard was silver in the still predawn air, and the sky was breathtaking.

As I walked up to get the paper, delighting in the beauty of the morning, I kept hearing quotes in my head from Alfred Noyes ("The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor.") and Clement Moore ("The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a luster of midday to objects below.") This kept my mind so busy it almost forgot about the imaginary mountain lions.

Ever since, I've been concentrating on the beauty of the early morning sky in an attempt to trick my brain into becoming more comfortable in the dark. It's been working, too—sort of.

At least until a couple mornings ago, when the moon had shrunk to a narrow fingernail clipping above the trees and the shadows were especially deep and black. I crept warily through the shadow of the my spouse's parked SUV and headed up the driveway, walking as quietly as one can on gravel.

I made it to the top of the hill, grabbed the paper out of the box, and started back down, doing just fine until I heard the noise. A throat-clearing or coughing sort of noise, just the kind of sound my brain imagines a mountain lion might make before it springs. Or (it occurred to me later) just the kind of sound a neighbor's garage door might make.

I walked faster. Quite a bit faster. A biased observer might have even said I broke into a trot—not so easy to do in one's bathrobe and slippers. Nervous but still under control, I crossed the last strip of driveway and reached the shadow of the SUV.

Where an ominous figure loomed. It was so silent and still that I nearly crashed into it before, with a heart-thumping jolt of adrenaline, I realized it was there.

My dear partner, not knowing I had already ventured into the darkness, had started out after the paper. He was standing near the car, wondering whether that creature he heard blundering about in the driveway was a mule deer or a mountain lion.

It's a good thing neither of us was armed. Shooting each other in our own driveway would have made for embarrassing headlines in the next morning's paper. Though no doubt the nearest lurking mountain lion would have appreciated it.

A Halloween Whooodunit

"The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat . . .
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon."

There seems to be a cat-lover in Newell, South Dakota, who isn't familiar with Edward Lear. Or maybe the place is simply fresh out of quince.

It seems that the town has had a problem with an over-abundance of feral cats. For small-town law enforcement, dealing with stray animals comes with the territory. This is not necessarily a trivial task in western South Dakota, where every now and then a wandering feline turns out to be a mountain lion. Still, complaints about stray cats probably aren't a top priority for the sheriff's office.

The priority may have moved a little higher in recent weeks though, when apparently an unusually high number of Newell's feral cats were disappearing. The authorities tend to get nervous about the idea of citizens randomly dispatching strays with .22's or BB guns within the city limits. Perhaps the sheriff's officers were even concerned about the slight possibility that somebody might be killing cats for twisted and gruesome reasons.

Somebody was killing cats, all right. Very dark and early one recent morning, the sheriff caught the perp red-handed.

Er—make that red-clawed. A great horned owl swooped down from a tree, grabbed a Siamese cat, and proceeded to have it for breakfast. There was no word on whether it used a runcible spoon.

"Runcible," by the way, is a nonsense word invented by Edward Lear. A couple of sources describe it as a spoon with short tines on the end, what we now call a "spork." A couple of other sources maintain, from the way he used the word in a couple of other stories and from one of his own drawings, that Lear simply used it to mean "gigantic." The latter meaning seems more logical, and also makes a runcible spoon an appropriate utensil for any bird big enough to routinely capture and munch on full-grown cats.

But the plot thickens. For one thing, the owl caught with its Siamese take-out wasn't working alone. Two of the birds have been seen in town. Second, catching them in the act doesn't mean the sheriff's office can do anything to protect the innocent cats of Newell. Great horned owls are a federally protected species, and it's illegal to harm them.

This could be a real problem. The owls, which can grow up to two feet tall with a wing span of 60 inches, are powerful predators. They eat practically anything, from rodents to skunks and even porcupines. A small town with plenty of cats gives them a handy all-you-can-eat buffet, and they probably can't taste the difference between a stray cat and someone's much-loved pet.

This raises an interesting question. What exactly would the federal authorities consider "harm"? Would someone be prosecuted for sending a pair of great horned owls down the mighty Missouri in a pea-green boat? Surely not, as long as they were supplied with plenty of quince and a couple of runcible spoons.

Fall and Flying Objects

Why do so many more jet trails show up in the sky this time of year? I'm sure there's a good scientific explanation based on such factors as air temperatures and winds aloft, the refraction of the light based on the angle of the sun, and other things about which I don't have a clue.

I could look it up, I suppose, or ask someone who took more science classes than I did and probably paid more attention during them. Or I could just enjoy the patterns of the white streaks against the blue autumn skies, and let it go at that.

It's been a beautiful fall in the Black Hills this year, and we've appreciated it all the more because last year we didn't really get one. October started out with snow and bitter cold, which caught many of us unprepared in matters of snow tires, storing garden hoses, and getting out flannel sheets. Even worse, it caught the trees while the leaves were still green, so the fall colors consisted of brown, brown, and brown. This year, though, the trees got to dress up in their best yellows, reds, and golds. Mild days and crisp nights allowed the leaves to stay on display for a long time before they let go and flew to the ground.

Autumn also brings some less appealing flying objects. Our house has been full of flies and wasps. As far as I can tell, they hatch out somewhere inside the window sills, where they become trapped between the window and the screen. Sometimes they crawl around in there, buzzing and bumping up against the glass, until some kind soul can't stand their noise any more and opens the window to let them out.

Sometimes they slip under the edge of the screen into the house, where they buzz back and forth until they collapse on the dining room table. There they lie on their backs, legs kicking faintly, buzzing intermittently like a toy whose battery is giving out, until they expire.

I am not unsympathetic. I don't kill these innocent creatures wantonly or maliciously. At the same time, I don't really feel it's my responsibility to rescue them when they crawl across the kitchen faucet, ignoring my efforts to shoo them away, until they slip and fall into the dishwater and drown.

Compassion and understanding, however, were not my first reactions the other day when a wasp got caught in my hair. I could feel it crawling around in there, buzzing frantically much too close to my ear, and after trying to shake it out and brush it out with my fingers I made a dash for the bathroom to grab my hairbrush and brush it out before it stung me.

The other night at bedtime was the last straw. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, and there on the floor was the biggest spider I had ever seen. (Well, except for the tarantulas at Reptile Gardens, which don't count as they are safely behind glass instead of in the middle of my bathroom.) This one was huge and thick and black.

For an instant I stood frozen, trying to decide whether to step on the spider, run for the flyswatter, or just screech. That instant gave me a chance to take a closer look at the terrifying critter.

It was a plastic hair clip. Never mind.