Animal Magnetism

Natural Selection

After years of observing and engaging in the natural world all around us, I have learned an important lesson. You can’t fight nature. Calamities and death are a part of it, just as much as birth and growth are. Once you understand and accept this vast power that at times makes you feel as insignificant as a tiny particle, you can find great fulfillment in the beauty and logic of it all.

Growing up in the middle of the Appalachian chain, I had daily opportunities to marvel at the beauty of the natural world. In the spring, everything shimmered with fragrance, color, sound. There may be other parts of the world where spring and fall rival this beauty, but I’ve not seen them, and I’ve traveled a great deal, usually on business. I don’t like to travel, for it takes me away from my animals.

The willows send out a hint that the change is coming with a faint cast of yellow. The crocuses are usually up by then and the snowdrops have already bloomed, literally pushing up through the snow. The robins announce their return with a characteristic “hello” chirp. Since they are just back, they chirp a lot, like old friends getting together after a long parting. They are just plain happy. Why is it so difficult for scientists to fathom that other creatures feel the joy of life? Science is always behind when it comes to the natural world. A small case in point: for years scientists taught us that dogs are color blind. A few years ago this position was reversed. Another example, in the December 19, 2008, issue of The Manchester Guardian Weekly, on page 45, there’s a sidebar about scientists at the University of Vienna who determined that dogs get jealous. Anyone who ever lived with a dog knows this.

In spring, the redbud begins to bloom, first deep magenta, then lightening to shades of pink as buds open. Goldfinches chatter away, worse than any group of golfers at the nineteenth hole. The oaks, still barren, with rustling brown leaves still attached, might host bluejays peering down at the goldfinches wondering should they terrorize them or not. The forsythias spill cascades of yellow; as they fade, the dogwoods begin to explode. White and pink covers the whole eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which I face. The spring green glows on hickories, oaks, sycamores, and black birch, the deciduous natives of the East Coast.

I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachians. And when I was full grown, as soon as I made enough money, I repaired to the mountains themselves. Flatlanders tend to weary of our twisting roads and the fact that they can’t see around corners. I often think this explains the difference between writers like Edna Ferber and William Styron. Those who live in the Rockies or the Sierra Nevada laugh at our mountains, calling them hills. Go ahead and laugh. This was once the highest mountain chain in the world. Living here forces one to comprehend the sheer power of time as well as weather. The roundness of these mountains can make a person feel like a baby leaning against his mother’s breast or propped up on her thigh.

These mountains harbor life, nurture life, and take life.

My sixth spring intoxicated me. Mother loved to garden, so we were on our hands and knees putting additional loam on the beds. No mulch back then. Or if there was, we didn’t know about it. We’d buy crushed seashells from the Chesapeake shores to put on the lawn and we’d buy what folks called turned dirt, a kind of light-textured loam but deep brown in color. Anything to retard the weeds, which I swear will still be here even if there’s an atomic war.

Little insects ran away when I disturbed their nesting places. From time to time I’d unearth a gross fat white grub. The chickens considered them a great delicacy.

A warbler called.

Mother’s head went up. “Ah, they’re back.”

“What?”

“Warblers. Those little birds with the big songs. Usually they’re high up in the trees. I don’t see them as much as I hear them. Thing is, there’re lots of kinds of warblers, and their songs are similar. I have a hard time distinguishing.” (Me, too.)

“Not like crows.”

She smiled. “No, but people confuse bluejay calls with crows sometimes.”

These were so distinct to me. “They do?”

“Honey, people don’t really listen to the birds. They might like a song—a thrush, say, which is so beautiful, but they don’t know it’s a thrush.”

“Are they stupid?” Diplomacy was a long time coming.

“No. They don’t value or understand the birds.” She spied a cow killer, giving it a wide berth.

A cow killer is a large ant with a vivid red velvet abdomen, the point being that their bite is so fierce it could kill a cow. In truth, it probably couldn’t, but it sure hurts like hell.

A red-shouldered hawk let out a two-beat holler high up. She was over a cornfield, teeny sprouts. The lilac scent infused everything, for at the edge of the cornfield Mother had planted masses of lilacs, white, pinkish, and the beloved purple.

My enthusiasm for laying down the loam waned. I kept at it, though. Mother disdained those who started a job and didn’t finish it.

We worked together in silence. When a bird called, I’d tell Mom who I thought it was. She’d correct me if I was wrong. Songs, for me anyway, are easier to identify than call notes. For one thing, they last longer.

The bluejay, tiring of inactivity, swooped down over the goldfinches, wrens, and sparrows who had left the bushes to visit Mother’s birdfeeder. They flew up, made half circles, returned to the shrubs. Satisfied that he’d exercised his superiority, the bluejay busied himself on the ground, languidly picking up seeds that had shaken loose from the feeder. Full, he left. The little birds returned with a lot of noise.

Finally, job finished, we put our tools in the garden shed. Mother insisted I wear gardening gloves to protect my hands and to keep my fingernails clean. Back then a lady was supposed to have soft, well-cared-for hands. Working outside as much as we did, this proved a major challenge.

Walking toward the house from the shed I spied a baby bluejay, feathered, on the ground. I rushed to pick it up lest Tuffy, the cat, find it. Mother inspected this treasure.

“Should I climb the tree and put it back in the nest?”

“Climb up. I’ll hand you the bird.”

I shimmied up, which wasn’t easy as the trunk was wide. At the lowest branch, I leaned down, Mother lifted up the baby. Finding the nest was easy because bluejays don’t go to great pains to hide their nests. Being bold, they probably figure they can handle any crisis, which usually means a cat or even an owl eyeing those little bluejays.

Pleased with my salvation project, down I came. (Going up a tree is easier than coming down.)

The next morning I found the bird again.

Mother, at the kitchen sink, looked up when I ran in, door slamming behind me. “Don’t slam the door.”

“Look. Fell out again.”

The little beak was open, the mouth pinkish, eyes dark. I lightly rubbed my forefinger over its head. Most animals like their heads rubbed, including humans.

“The mother pushed it out.”

“Why?”

“Maybe it’s sick or weak or she plain doesn’t like it.”

“That’s cruel.”

“No, it isn’t. Nature is wise. We’re the only animals that will keep alive those that can’t fend for themselves.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Maybe not wrong, but unwise.” She dried her hands on a dishtowel with a blue stripe down the middle. “Weak creatures demand care. That ties up able-bodied creatures that could be finding or producing food, that’s all.”

“Oh. You mean like Aunt Dooney?”

Aunt Dooney, an old lady with an ambling gait, was Big Mimi’s sister. Big Mimi was Mother’s and Aunt (Little) Mimi’s mother. Big Mimi had many brothers and sisters, I don’t know how many, but some died in infancy or quite young. Given that they were born in the 1870s and 1880s, this was not unusual. It’s only in the last sixty years in the developed countries that the death of a child is seen as unusual. Aunt Dooney endured mild retardation. People didn’t use to hide their mentally or physically infirm, unless they were dangerous or beyond all social intercourse. In the South, in the country, we still don’t hide them. Aunt Dooney had lovely manners and was quite happy to perform regular chores. She spoke clearly, but she couldn’t fathom ideas. Events she understood.

After Big Mimi died, PopPop couldn’t take care of Aunt Dooney. PopPop could barely take care of himself. The two sisters, Aunt Mimi and my mother, shared her care. She’d spend a month at Aunt Mimi’s, then a month with us. When Aunt Mimi’s eldest daughter, Virginia Bowers, died of breast cancer at thirty-three, leaving three children behind, the boys’ care fell to Aunt Mimi with help from Mom. Aunt Mimi’s other daughter, Julia Ellen, named for Mom, was studying to be a nurse. She couldn’t take care of Aunt Dooney. Aunt Mimi was very proud that Julia Ellen made such good grades. This was 1950, a terrible year for our family, for Ginny had inspired love from all who ever met her. She came as close to being a saint as anyone I have ever met in life.

Money was tight, too. Ken, Ginny’s husband, also needed care. A strapping blond Marine, handsome as the devil, his wife’s slow, agonizing death tore him apart. He fought in the front lines at Okinawa. Aggressive and tough, he became separated from his unit, facing the Japanese alone. He lived in a foxhole sitting on three rotting Japanese in that jungle heat for three days. The maggots ate on him and he was hit. It was Ken who told us how brave Ginny was. She never complained, remained cheerful, and did little chores until the very end. She died just six months after giving birth to the cutest little boy.

Mother considered my comment about Aunt Dooney. “She’s useful. And if we were bluejays she could find her own seeds. I’m talking about animals that just can’t survive on their own. We’ll keep them alive, and if you think about it, everyone suffers.”

“Because they’ll never get better?”

“Pretty much. It’s a terrible thing to be useless. Bad enough to be weak and sick, but to be useless is the worst thing that can happen to a person.”

Having heard, countless times, “Idle hands do the Devil’s work,” I finally started to understand what it meant.

“Well, I’m going to try to keep this little guy alive.”

I took one of Mother’s shoeboxes, put in some fennel seeds and other little seeds from Mother’s stockpile. I also put in a little saucer of water, but I gave the bluejay a drink from an eyedropper. It did drink. I put the shoebox in my bedroom window for light and closed the door since the cats would have dispatched him.

Mother came to my bedroom each night before I went to sleep. Dad was at work but if he ever got home early, he did, too. Old as I am, I miss that. I miss someone sitting on the edge of the bed telling stories, recounting the day, or just seeing to my well-being.

She walked over to the window and peeped in at the little peeper. “Honey, in the morning he’ll be dead, but you’ve done all you can.”

“Oh, Mom.” I refused to cry.

Crying or displaying too much emotion figured into many a lecture, since all too often I displayed my temper.

Early the next morning I hopped out of bed. Sure enough, the bluejay had gone to the Great Bluejay in the Sky. Blasting down the stairway to the kitchen, I found Mother putting on a pot of water. I loved tea, we all did. A glass of orange juice sat on the table.

“Would you like to bury your bird?”

She’d come into my room while I was sleeping, something she often did, so she knew about the bluejay.

“Okay.”

After breakfast (which I had no appetite for), I carried the shoebox up to the crabapple tree and there we planted Birdie. I recited the Twenty-third Psalm, my favorite.

Mother walked back with me. How she could keep a straight face I don’t know, except that she did love animals and my childish attempt at ritual was accepted.

“You can cry sometimes. Some occasions.”

“Nah. He was a little bird and I didn’t know him too well.”

She laughed. “You’re a bird, a catbird.”

Being a catbird in the South is a compliment.

I felt instantly better.

Nature not only abhors a vacuum, she abhors waste. A creature that can’t fend for itself is wasteful. Animals have litters, culling out those that can’t survive. Humans, centuries ago, also culled. Often if there was little money they’d get rid of the girl babies. The ancient Greeks practiced this. The Greeks gave it up but we all know other cultures do this, usually aborting the female fetus. There will be hell to pay when males outnumber females and they reach breeding age. Of course, Europeans and those in the Americas don’t do this anymore. Given modern medicine, many newborns survive that couldn’t have even twenty years ago. This is a blessing until you start thinking about the dangers of overpopulation.

Later day that, back at the loam, Mother said, “It’s a funny thing. I was thinking about Birdie. His mother knew. I said to you maybe his mother didn’t like him. I was joking, but you know, I started to think about that. A human being who can’t get along is another kind of burden. There are those who are violent, those who are bad crazy, not good crazy. But even those who lack all social skills are a burden. You have to continually repair the fences they’ve broken. Next time you complain about your tea lessons, remember that.” (Tea lessons were pre-cotillions. Learning manners in the South starts before kindergarten. The formal training ends, at least for us, with a huge Christmas ball in the year one turns eighteen.

“But, Mom, you tell me to take people as I find them. That means even the ones that will tell a lady she’s fat.”

“Me and my big mouth.” She put down her trowel. “I don’t know, I’m just thinking about people who don’t fit in. I don’t mean we’re supposed to be alike. That would bore me to death. But I truly believe we’re all capable of exhibiting good manners. Birdie just got me thinking.”

Me, too.