The Way of All Things

I asked Bow what he thought had happened to the cat. "הוא מת"  --"He died." I asked him why he thought the cat had died. "כל אחד מת" -- "Everybody dies." End of story. For Bow, it's an easy answer, and completely unproblematic.

"But he was so young, Bow!" No answer.

I personally do not know what happened. It could be that Nile found a new home. But let's face it, a lot of the animals I enjoy seeing on my property probably do meet violent ends, long before they ever arrive at old age. It's the way of all things.

I saw a Prairie Kingsnake hidden among the leaves the other day. That was a day after I spotted the black rat snake above my door.

I could not see its head clearly, and I was afraid it might be a venomous snake, like a copperhead, which it somewhat resembles from a distance. So I got a fallen tree branch in order to investigate from a safe distance.

From the shape of the head and the eyes, I could see that it was non-poisonous, and so I left it alone. By the presence of the snakes on my land who eat rodents, mice and voles and even small birds, sometimes, you can tell that there is a lot of dying that happens on my land, as much dying as living. Because in order to eat, one must also kill.

That's not true of everyone, of course. If you are a plant, like my beautiful wondrous red maple, now in the process of turning colors, then you do not kill. You are a producer and rely on the sun. But who wants to be a tree? And even if we wanted to, we could not all be trees.

The butterflies on my land make a living as pollinators. The flowers offer them a fee because they serve as artificial inseminators, which is really a very odd profession to be in. But when there are fewer flowers blooming, you often see the butterflies landing on dead leaves or grass.

Do they die because their time has come? Could their life be prolonged if summer never ended?

A few intrepid flowers are still blooming, refusing to give up the fight.

I continue to spot deer in my front yard. The last time it happened was yesterday, before dinner. 

I saw the little one first. It looked so weak and vulnerable and alone. But I only had to take one step forward, and I saw it was not alone at all.

I wished them well as they took off into the pasture.  But let's face it, I don't know the deer as individuals. I don't know how many have to die at the hands of coyotes and hunters, in order to keep the herd that remains in top health.

Someone suggested that to keep the good snakes close to the house, I should put out a bowl of milk. But I don't feed the wildlife. They feed on each other. And that is what keeps an ecosystem healthy. 

Bow, in his own impenetrable way, may already have learned this lesson from his perch on the rim of the bench, where he studies nature, while remaining a disinterested observer. 

News Items of Note

http://the-cavalry-group.rallycongress.com/18797/stop-captive-primate-safety-act-hr-2920/

The Yellow Jacket on the Dogwood Bloom

Yesterday was a Wednesday. It was also April 15. If you live in the US, you know what that means. It's too ugly a thing for me to spell out, but the upshot was that I needed to have Lawrence sit with Bow for the whole day. And while he was here for that long, I asked him to  also weed-eat the backyard and spread the insecticide, because tick and flea season is upon us, not just on the Federal level, but at the grassroots, so to speak.

Bow  in a friendly mood

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Bow is always happy and excited to see Lawrence, but that does not keep him from displaying at him for about ten minuted before he will allow Lawrence to come into the pen with him. Fortunately, Lawrence understands Bow very well, and he does not hold this territorial display against him.

Brownie lets Leo do just about anything to him -- except eat his food

I don't like using insecticide, but we do have dogs in the backyard, and if they get fleas and ticks, they could spread to Bow and to me, and that would not be good. So while most of my ten acres are a haven for insects of all sorts, the backyard does get treated. The insecticide comes as a powder that is spread on the lawn, and then it gets wet and sinks into the ground. As this is the rainy season, I am counting on nature to help me with that last part.

This is how the front yard looked yesterday morning

Lawrence told me that he asked Bow to come outside with him to see him work on the lawn, and Bow even said he wanted to go out into the outer pen, but when he got to the door, he realized it was still cold out and changed his mind. Then they went back in, and when Lawrence asked Bow why he didn't want to go out, Bow just spelled. "You go out." Which meant Lawrence had permission to go, and Bow would not play a trick on him when he got back. There was no mess.

The dogwood petals have turned white

When I went out into the back yard late that afternoon, I wanted to inspect Lawrence's handiwork, but I was drawn to the blossoms of the dogwood tree, whose petals by now have turned white.

A lone yellow jacket on the dogwood

I noticed an insect on one of the blossoms, and tried with difficulty to identify it.

The yellow jacket focuses o a little black dot in front of it

It turned out to be a yellow jacket, which my friends warn me can sting very badly. But this lone yellow jacket was not interested in me. It was focused on a little black speck in front of it. Could that have been another, even smaller insect that it wanted to eat?

Yellow jackets look a little like bees, but they do not gather pollen, and they are in fact predatory wasps. No bees are attracted to our beautiful dogwood in bloom, because even though these look just like flowers,the white petal-like things are really bracts, and  the middle part is composed of flower heads that have not opened yet, and there's no pollen there to be had, I wondered if the yellow jacket seemed so passive because of the insecticide we had just scattered on the lawn. I felt a little guilty about that. Yellow jackets may be disliked for their sting, but they do help us by eating other pests.

Part of the end of semester handout for biology

My daughter is taking biology this semester. Looking at her review handout, it reminded me of the weird use of  "community" that certain artistic types make. One of my artist friends criticized some of the artists in her community for being too competitive -- as if there were no place for competition in a community. But the very first concept under "community interactions" in the biology handout is competition. Competition is normal. It is part of what makes a community healthy.

While none of us like parasites, some symbiotic relationships are healthy, as both sides benefit. The trick is to recognize which is which. Sometimes we err. But whatever the community, the concept of balance requires competing forces to be in equilibrium.

It is not possible for everyone to love everyone. It is not possible for a human to give the same consideration to a flea or a tick as to his own children and other non-human dependents. Sometimes a useful yellow jacket may be harmed by an attempt to get rid of parasites. We try to make appropriate distinctions, but mistakes can be made.

Even the story of the helpful wolves introduced into Yellowstone National Park has another side to it.

I am not necessarily endorsing the content of the documentary above, any more than I did that other film sponsored by the establishment that I shared a while back, singing the praises of the wolves. I think it is important to consider many sides of every story.

I like wolves and trees and honey bees and yellow jackets. But I am not a tree hugger, either. I wonder about the agenda behind all these competing nature documentaries. Were the wolves introduced to improve the health of deer and elk? Or were they ultimately meant to trim down the herd of humans grazing on the land?

The real balance in nature comes when we each take care of ourselves and our dependents first. If there are wolves, then there also need to be wolf hunters. If there are parasites, there have to be anti-parasites. For every force there has to be a countervailing force. This is the only way to keep everything in balance.

Unplanned Persimmons

Bow examines the persimmons he is eating

When I first moved here in 2001, there were no persimmon trees on the property. I owned five acres of pasture, and another five acres that were lawn, orchard and woods and where the house stood. But I let the pasture go, stopped mowing it, and in thirteen years time it has grown all sorts of trees and bushes and vegetation that was not there before. A friend once asked me: "How do you grow trees on your land?" The answer: "Just stop mowing." That's it. That's all it takes.

The trees just kind of sneak up on you, when you're not looking. You don't watch them rising up from saplings, because the grass is too high to see that. You  don't  cry over each one that dies, because you never even knew it was there. You only see the ones who made it, long after their roots are securely fixed deep in the ground. 

I noticed my first persimmon tree around Halloween a year or two ago. It was completely bare, except for this round orange fruit that reminded me of pumpkins. It was a little spooky to see a tree all decked out like that, when all the others were in mourning or near-death hibernation. I called it my Halloween tree.

You're not supposed to pick the fruit until after the first good frost, otherwise it will be too bitter to eat.

No matter how beautiful and smooth it looks, you have to wait until the skin has been shriveled by the frost to pick it. Some of the persimmons burst as they fall to the ground when you shake the tree. Be sure to wash them before presenting them to the chimpanzee in your life.

Presentation is everything. I use Blue Willow China

Bow loves persimmons.

He eats them very daintily. 

He is not sure he wants to eat the skin and definitely won't swallow any of the seeds.

But he loves the sweet stuff that is in the middle, and he will go to a lot of trouble to eat it all.

It's nice to have free fruit that you neither planted nor watered. It's like getting a bonus you never expected.

After Bow finishes, I have a bowl full of seeds, which I throw outside in the yard, to fall where they may. Most will never find fertile ground and will not become new trees. Nature is wasteful that way.  But that's how paradise works. That's why we have so many persimmons to eat free of charge. One out of many sprouts from the ground, and no one can know which one it will be! Isn't that better than planning?