Animal Magnetism

Birds of a Feather

A great blue heron, male, fishes at my small pond. His mate sometimes joins him, and when little herons hatch and begin to fish, they’re down there, too. Twice a year, a female bald eagle also shows up. She causes a ruckus. Since the eagle and the heron eat the same foods, they dislike each other. The blue heron has an extensive vocabulary that flies like shrapnel. The cackle is loud. I can hear it when I’m pulling weeds behind my stone wall.

The eagle rarely responds. Eventually the heron closes that long bill and gigs frogs. If you’ve ever been physically near either of these birds you will admire them. The great blue male, if he stretches to his full height, is taller than I am at five foot four. He’s not afraid of me. I can often draw within forty yards. If I stay still he allows me to watch him fish. His quickness as he uncoils that long neck startles me. We pay millions of dollars to male humans if they have good reflexes for certain sports. Compared to this guy, we’re all painfully slow.

The eagle’s eyesight astonishes. All birds have marvelous eyes, but I read somewhere that an eagle two miles up can spot a mouse moving on the ground. I don’t doubt it. She won’t allow me as close as the heron but she’s not afraid of me. Her talons terrify. My face could be shredded in an instant. Fortunately, eagles disdain human flesh, as do many animals. We can be thankful that we don’t taste good. If you’ve ever visited countries whose standards of hygiene fall below our own, you begin to understand why most animals want nothing to do with us. Humans stink. Odd to say, if a tiger or lion does kill humans and eat them, they develop a taste for it.

There’s an old saw: The bird that sits is easily shot. In the nineteenth century, a rage for feathered hats gripped Europe and the Americas. The heron survived even though its feathers are lovely. Today no one shoots herons. Why would anyone wish to do so? They are so beautiful. Same with cranes. They reflect peace and calm. To me, anyway.

The eagle, on the other hand, like all raptors, represents power, predatory prowess. Nations reveal their innermost drives by their totems. Ours is an eagle. That imperial symbol served Rome well. Remember when Caesar Augustus would occasionally fall into his cups and cry for Varus’s lost eagles? The Germans wiped out Roman legions stationed at Coblenz. It is an extraordinary story that all of us who learned Latin read if we got beyond Virgil. National Geographic, that most excellent magazine, has covered this beautifully, in words and photographs. What a thrilling piece of detective work.

Long and short: we have always wanted to be a great power, even in the beginning when we were weak. Ben Franklin thought our symbol should be a native bird, the turkey. In a backhand way, Ben got his wish. Congress is full of them.

Life on this farm finds no one day like any other. Right now the birds are mating. Calls fill the air. The male sings out; if the female’s interested, she answers. Otherwise, a depressing silence follows. The ground nesters do “the dance.” Watching them reminds me how exhausting it is to find a mate. I know I’ve said this before, but the exhaustion falls on the male.

Another month will go by before mares go into season. The foxes are mating, which means we enjoy our best runs chasing a visiting dog fox. Two years ago during February I picked up a dog fox. He gave us a merry chase for twenty hard minutes, then popped into the den of another fox. That fox, whom I know (he’s still there and fat as a damn tick), happened to be resting, maybe reading Anthony Trollope’s marvelous works on foxhunting. You should have heard the fuss. The air was blue. However, by this time all the hounds surrounded the den. When hounds put a fox to ground, they sing, dig, and are so excited. But they can’t dig out the fox, as the dens are cleverly built. Another fox who lives on my farm has many exits and entrances, one right over a creek bed. I’ve heard him leave his abode by that exit, flopping right into the water.

While my pack has put many a fox to ground, they never heard anything like this cussing and swearing. No one moved. Suddenly the two arguing gentlemen realized a pack of foxhounds stood at the door. Silence. They patched up their differences, at least until the hounds left.

Skunks are traveling today, too. Give them wide berth. House dogs never seem to learn this lesson, so during mating season I go through a lot of tomato juice, lemon juice, and Skin-so-Soft, which, mixed together, somewhat diminishes the odor. Lots of rinsings help, too.

Then there’s eau de possum. A possum inhabits my attic. There’s no getting her out, which means there will be more possums. I will sometimes see her moving out at night for gleanings. Ugly as a mud fence, they are dear animals.

I usually go to bed by nine, read until ten, and get up at 5:30 A.M. in winter, 4:45 to 5:00 A.M. in summer. I rise about 1:30 A.M., read a little more, then go back to sleep. I’ve always done this, as did Mother. The night envelops one. That’s when I see my waddling possum. If I have them, I put out marshmallows near her entrance. She gets a treat coming home near dawn.

Squirrels in the attic present more commotion than the possums, who are quiet and respectful. The squirrels run around, thump, thump, thump. Rude, too. If I sit under the oak tree that they use as a launching pad, they chatter. If the cats join me, they throw acorns. A well-tossed acorn smarts. The cats, outraged, climb the trees. More acorns. The squirrels then leap to the roof and slither under the eave. The cats leap to the roof, too, but can’t reach the squirrels.

Deer, raccoon, bobcat. My bears (whom I like, but from a distance), all the hawks, kestrels, and kites, the indigo buntings and bluebirds, all the animals are perking up. Even though it’s winter, they know before we do when spring is arriving. Given the breeding patterns, this will be a normal spring: not too late. Based on their carryings-on, I figure the crocuses will be up in mid-March. After that it’s a progression of color, beauty, tremendous excitement. The winter birds return, including certain breeds of hawk who use the thermal spirals to rest on their way to New England and Canada.

Spring fever grips all of us. The horses get silly. The cats are always silly, only more so. The dogs evade my calls to come in but finally comply. The symphony of life will hit the first movement. Mid-March is the overture.

Do you come down with spring fever? I do. I’ll rise extra early so my daily pages are knocked out by the second hour of sunlight. Then it’s out the door, not to return until sundown. For one thing, I like to visit the different hunt fixtures (the farthest is two hours away) to put out higher protein food for my foxes. I don’t want the vixen to have to travel far to eat. She rewards me, come hunt season in the fall, with bracing runs. I know many of my foxes, and most know me, too. It’s a pleasant arrangement.

A gardener’s shadow is the best manure. Time to start digging. The finches, robins, bluejays (they’ll fly right down and look up at you, they are so bold) watch intently as I stir up grubs and insect goodies. When the praying mantis pods open and those tiny green babies pop out, the birds really are in heaven. It’s amazing any survive, but many do, and by September these huge praying mantises hang on everything. They eat the bad bugs, so I’m not complaining, but it gives you a shiver if one flies to sit on you.

Our bee population has diminished. This is a tremendous worry, bigger than the economy. If the bee dies, we die. It’s that stark and simple. As two of our hunt members are deathly allergic to bees, I have not put out bee boxes, although I’d like to. For whatever reason, bees will sit on me and not sting. Butterflies sit on me as well. Since butterflies also adore sitting on horse manure, this may not be flattering. As for the bees, I take it as a compliment. I have loved them since childhood, since Mother explained to me that all human life depends on bees.

The ticks and chiggers emerge, too. Hateful. What does God need with chiggers? I have bemoaned this all my life with no answer forthcoming. Better a wasp sting you than chiggers get you. The scars last for months.

I mentioned the economy. As you read this, we’ll most likely be at the bottom of this worldwide depression euphemistically called anything but. The Great Hypocrite, Gordon Brown, points the finger at the United States, ignoring the fact that his Labour Party is equally responsible. London is the world center of finance, even more than New York. As the world castigates us—much of it deserved—why do they look to us to pull them out? Well, if the eagle is our totem, we’d better start flying.

Here’s a partial answer, and it is provided by animals. Forget old capital. It’s lost. Create new capital. When a skunk has a litter and one dies, she may mourn but she turns her attention to the living. We should do likewise.

We’re at a turning point. If we lead the world, then we must lead in reconstituting our relationship to vital resources, in developing new industries and technologies. I’m willing to bet that many innovations formerly disregarded will now be revitalized. And some will be just miraculous. If we don’t do this, billions will die. Not millions—billions. It may not be our responsibility to save the world—our first responsibility is to save ourselves—but if there’s any left over, we should share.

And we must rethink our relationship with our sentient creatures. Let them be. Better yet, learn from them. Basic survival concepts: Don’t breed past the food supply. Always, always protect the female. Don’t waste.

Few animals waste. A dog may overeat; a horse certainly will if you forget to close the feed room door. They’ll kill themselves on food provided by humans. It’s not that they’re stupid. Watch them eat in a natural setting: they put their heads down, pull up sweet grass, chew, move on. It takes a lot of pulling and chewing to fill that big stomach. But if the food is right there in front of them they don’t know to stop.

Stupid? Well, how stupid is it for humans to eat so much fat when living in cities? Fat is to keep you warm. I eat far more fat than is recommended. There are days when I’ll eat three thousand calories and I’m small, weighing between 125 and 128 pounds. I can’t keep the weight on. But I live outside. I work hard physically. I burn calories like the Great Chicago Fire. I need the fat. Many Americans with less active lifestyles don’t need so much fat, hence the obesity epidemic.

Animals rarely commit the mistakes we do, which is one of the main points of this book. If we respect them, observe, and learn from them, we will commit fewer mistakes.

Nature’s mistakes die. Cruel but effective. We have a mania to preserve life, even if that life cannot be lived without terrible suffering and pain. It should be the individual’s decision (and this will upset some of you). We prolong agony, exhaust cash reserves. Wouldn’t the wiser course be to encourage a life to be well lived? Allow people dignity, and that also means the dignity to die. Suicide upsets me to my core, but if someone is dying and refuses their medicine, I don’t think that’s suicide. I’ve seen my hounds, dogs, cats, and horses make that decision. God willing, I will know when to make it for myself, barring an accident that will hasten me out toward life’s red exit light.

What animals have taught me is wisdom, deep wisdom.

Chaser, an Orange County hound drafted to me as a puppy by Adrian Smith, then the huntsman there (he’s now at Deep Run), taught me about dignity. As I mentioned before, my experience with the Orange County C line is that mentally they take an extra year to mature. Many huntsmen think they’re stupid and draft them out. The Master might say, “Get rid of that hound. He isn’t going to amount to a hill of beans.” If the huntsman knows the line’s history, the hound will be drafted to some other lucky hunt.

Adrian gave me Chaser because he had so many puppies that year and he kindly remembered I liked the C line. (There isn’t a bad Orange County line, just like there isn’t a bad Deep Run one, either. You can’t miss.) Well, he was ungainly, slow. Year one he learned his name and came to the horn. Of course, I didn’t hunt him. I knew better. Most of my hounds of Orange County blood are slender and elegant. Not Chaser. But that voice! Deep, resonant, clear, and majestic, truly majestic. Verdi would have loved him. By year two, I allowed him to hunt at the fixture that includes my farm. His attention did not wander, though he was often puzzled. By year three he was matchless. Steady, determined, and very patient, he would find the line and sing out in his basso profundo.

Once over at Oak Ridge (a miracle in itself), Chaser, although not terribly fast, had gotten ahead of the pack, all of whom were milling about a pool of scent perhaps three hundred yards off. He came up on a thicket where a deer and her tiny fawn hunkered down. He stopped cold. He sniffed. He looked up at me. I didn’t want to bolt the deer. I hadn’t known they were there, as they were so well hidden, but Chaser could tell. I can smell deer in rut but I could not smell the mother and fawn. Human noses are so frustrating. Deer will run to live, but the fawn looked still wet to me. I couldn’t take the chance.

I shook my head at Chaser and put my finger to my lips. He knew finger to lips and he walked over to me. We reversed the hunt in the opposite direction. A good day, too, for we flushed out one of Oak Ridge’s famous black foxes. How beautiful they are, and how clever. Once this one tired of the chase he jumped from cow patty to cow patty, then took off to pop into his den which is (still) under a large rock across the railroad tracks.

Chaser won my heart. I love all my hounds but some stand out. Strong—I could hunt him twice a week. A few times, if the ground was tight as a tick or there was ice, he became footsore. He’d sit down and lift a paw, and on would go the bag balm. He’d follow me around in the large boys’ run. Not particularly talkative, he liked to be close. Sometimes I’d take him out for a special walk. You can’t do this often: if you single a hound out for special treatment, the others become jealous. If you aren’t careful you can set up terrible kennel fights. I would take along other hounds, too, who needed some exercise due to muscle strain or whatever. If I’d sit down on the kennel flower box, he’d sit at my feet. If I allowed him into the tiny office, he’d lean on my leg as I sat in the chair. We’d sit side by side discussing our thoughts on how to improve the pack. Ours was the physical rapport of deep friendship.

Years passed swiftly. Chaser got some age on him, so John and I included him in hunts only once a week. I lived to hear that sonorous voice, so recognizable that even people in the field knew it. This is no slur on the field. Few foxhunters can identify the different hound voices, whereas as Master I need to do so. It’s like hearing your children. A mother usually knows which one is speaking even if everyone is yelling at once. Where you run into difficulty is that often a hound will sound like one of his parents. But that’s not so bad, because that hound often hunts like one of his parents, too.

A big, powerful hound, when he neared his tenth birthday, Chaser began to thin down. The oldest foxhound I had, Tassel, made it to sixteen. Her last years verged on spoiled luxury as she flopped on Bob and Sue Satterfield’s rugs. That was a happy, happy girl.

Chaser didn’t want to leave the pack. He hunted the rest of that year. During the summer he walked out with the puppies, providing leadership. For the youngsters, walking out with the pack of hounds is a big step up. The first few times it might overwhelm them. Chaser would be coupled to one and the kid’s confidence would rise. Didn’t take long for that youngster to walk without a mentor.

More time whirled away and we put Chaser in his own special run. No one wanted to see him get bumped by another hound. He’d been a power in the pack and that’s how he should be remembered—with dignity. He deserved his dignity. I’d walk him alone; no need to worry about jealousy now. John fed him extra rations. He hung in there, tail wagging, happy with life.

My wonderful editor at Ballantine, Judy Sternlight, visited. She met Chaser, who behaved like the Virginia gentleman that he was. He impressed her. When she’d call, she’d always inquire about the big boy. Judy was so taken with Chaser that he gave her the idea for this book. I wouldn’t have thought of it. Three cheers for Chaser and Miss Judy!

I should explain, I am published by two houses, both under the Random House umbrella. Judy Sternlight is one of my editors; the other is Danielle Perez at Bantam, another animal lover.

One day, Chaser looked up with those large warm eyes. He’d started into renal failure. It wasn’t bad yet, and I was going to make sure it never reached that point. We talked. The kennel’s interior bunk is long so we could sit side by side, pressed close. We said our goodbyes. He left this earth with love and gratitude and he kept his dignity.

Chaser loved me and I him. He was kind to other creatures, even during the occasional insufferable cat visits to the kennels. My former whipper-in, Dana, lived across from the kennels and one of her cats, Maybelline, is a real pisser. No other word for it. Maybelline would sashay down to the kennels and sit outside the chain link fencing to inform the hounds what she thinks of them and dogs in general. It is not complimentary.

Behind the kennels, a Manhattan of fox dens covers the earth. Hidden in the undergrowth and pines, those reds come and go. At night they, too, will sit outside the kennels. Sometimes the hounds announce their presence. Other times I swear they swap stories. I’ll find fox scat all around the kennels.

Chaser knew these foxes. When we’d hit one—not often, because they’d recognize hunt kit and go home (very unsporting)—anyway, on the odd occasion when we’d pick one up, Chaser would sing and sing. Then he’d go to the den and sit down. No point digging. He knew that. He could be so funny about it.

So here I sit. The Blue Ridge Mountains, those ancient sentinels to time, face me. Behind me, Ennis Mountain offers a hint at the glaciers’ power. Some of the boulders at the top of the ridges look as though a stonemason smoothed their sides. They’re beautiful, and also full of foxes.

These mountains, once the tallest in the world, now soft and caressed by time, threw up the first barrier to westward expansion. I can see, far away on the other side of the Shenandoah Valley, an Allegheny peak, another barrier that stretches all the way to Charleston, West Virginia—of course, it was all part of Virginia until the War Between the States. Once past Charleston you approach the Ohio Valley, a source of such rich soil.

The Blue Ridge separates Celtic and English ways from German ways, for the Valley is very German. On this side there is a tacit recognition that people are no better than they should be, that life is theater, so play your part. On that side, they tend to be more serious. If they stray from the straight and narrow, I think they carry more guilt. A few of us here might carry some, too, but mostly we figure to be human is to make a mess. The point is: Is it an interesting mess? The worst sin we can commit is to be boring. Small chance of it, I declare.

People ask me, “Where do you get the ideas for your stories?” All I have to do is look around or plumb my family or anyone else’s family history. What an inexhaustible vein of pure, pure gold.

While people give me the ideas, animals give me the energy. I draw sustenance from them, perspective, wisdom, and such loyalty. By their loyalty they put ours to shame. Mostly, I live on the love.

Lately I have been entertaining the idea that God might not be an American. Allied to this is the suspicion that this Great Spirit doesn’t resemble us at all. To say we are made in God’s image is outrageous human vanity. But if it truly is the case, then man was the experiment; woman, the perfection. Poor old Adam and his rib!

Animals eschew stories like that. Their spiritual dimension is deeper. We used to embrace this back when we worshipped the twelve Olympians and the various demigods. The American Indian—I just can’t say Native American, it sounds like an insurance company—still believes.

As an aside, the people changing these designations like undergarments usually are doing so for some political gain or to siphon money out of Washington. Someone told me you can’t use “Native American;” now it has to be “First American.” The first American was a protozoan.

Whatever you call them, when you think of the sheer guts of those people who took on the army even when they saw the technology we possessed, the only word that is appropriate is “warrior.” Those who don’t understand how they could ride to their deaths have neither honor nor heart nor animal courage.

Unfortunately, that covers so many now. Animals certainly have courage. As to honor, I believe it. Chaser had honor. My beautiful Diane had it in spades. A cat may have honor but it’s not quite the same. Some humans will scoff at these ideas should they ever pick up this book. I can’t help them. They are not as smart as they think they are, and in good time, life will make this abundantly clear.

As to heart: whatever the species, we recognize this. As we trod across the rubble of many civilizations, what pulled us through? Heart. No matter how intelligent, if you don’t have heart you won’t work for your salvation or anyone else’s.

The core American experience is loneliness. A New World. Vast spaces. Miles and miles before coming upon another human, whether of European, African, or Warrior descent. Sometimes days, months. It’s deep in our character.

But alone as one might have been back then, there was probably a dog walking with you and your horse, should you have been fortunate enough to own one. Cats killed the mice even if you lived in a sod hut. We never were truly alone.

And neither are you.

I hope you are lifted by the love of a cat, dog, horse, even a parrot like Mother Brown’s Franklin. More, I hope you recognize it and return it. I pray, and I mean pray, that you will send a few dollars to your local SPCA to help those that have been abandoned, some mistreated.

We are all in this life together. We need one another.

I hope that those animals and people I missed—creatures who were in need—will forgive me. I’ll try to forgive myself. It’s vanity not to, because it implies that I should be better than anyone else. I’m not. I hope my dear horses out in the pastures and my house full of rescues will be patient with me and continue to guide me. I’ll do my best and I think you will, too.

Remember: we left Eden, they didn’t.