Love That Bob(cat)

     Call it what you will --mountain lion, puma, cougar-- these cats are big (2nd largest in north America) elusive, fierce, and...social?  New studies recently reported in National Geographic are showing that the cats appear to share food with other possible "competitor" cats in their territories.  Said the article: “For more than 60 years of intensive research... we have said that [cougars] are solitary, robotic killing machines,” says Mark Elbroch, lead scientist for the Puma Program at Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization.  “Instead, what we have unveiled is a secretive animal with a complex social system completely built on reciprocity.  That flies in the face of everything we ever thought about this animal...Elbroch hypothesizes, though, that removing a male from a cougar population may lead to social upheaval—potentially informing how wildlife agencies approach management of the species.  "If it is creating social chaos, what are we doing to do?” 

     Personally, I've never seen a cougar in the wild, nor a coyote, nor a wolf.  We urban dwellers have tended to fence off and seal our homes almost as securely as small ranches with electrified fencing.  Of course there are many farmers and ranchers who run their sheep and cattle on leased BLM land (Bureau of Land Management)* who have seen their fare share of "predators" such as bears and wolves threaten or kill their livestock (most ranchers & farmers are compensated for the kills); according to one website citing 2014 Fish & Wildlife figures on wolves, that kill rate was a single cow killed out of nearly 45,000.  The response to those limited kills has been brutal for wolves and cougars and all out war (said the NY Times) in some states, including my own ...pups killed in dens, wolves shot from helicopters, poisonings that soon pass to kill the birds and scavengers that eat the dead animal,   Linda Hogan in her book on our human place in the natural world may have put it more succinctly: More than any other animal (wolves) mirror back to us the predators we pretend not to be and (thus) we have assigned to them a special association with evil.  Flamingos in Florida?  The entire population was virtually wiped out by hunters in the late 1800s, wrote National Geographic.  The heath hen and the "Eskimo" curlew, so plentiful that one source wrote they "clouded the sky as though storms were coming;" all wiped out by avid hunting, passenger pigeons all.  Unfortunately for the coyotes, the numbers hunted and killed are far worse than for wolves.

"Our" Angel

     These thoughts, all written from my protected home and "safe" from any natural predator (is that a rat outside?), came about because of a angel, well technically a gosling with an angel wing (so called when a wing doesn't form properly after birth, resulting in an inability to fly).  For nearly 2 years, my wife and I and a friend fed this gosling daily, throwing seed and watching it grow and mingle during the warmer months with other geese and ducks in a holding pond at our local cemetery.  Then winter and migration time arrived.  The ducks and parents and siblings left; the gosling was forced to stay but somehow made it through and before long the ducks had returned.  But the winter this year proved especially cold, freezing the pond solid and the hearty ducks again took off, leaving the gosling alone to again fend for itself...and that was when we found the feathers.  Workers at the cemetery told us that they would hear coyotes at night, perhaps as many as 8.  In the back 20-acre field, foxes were known to den.  Looking back, it was amazing that the gosling had made it through such nightly threats for so long.  But now with the pond and her protective water barrier gone, it had become a true sitting duck.  Well coyotes have to eat as well, one neighbor told us, which proved to be of little consolation. When we contacted our local wildlife refuge and asked about "rescuing" the gosling before winter, we were told that because Canadian geese were a protected species capturing it would be illegal; and if we somehow did capture it anyway and bring it to them, they would euthanize it.  Hmm, that was about as comforting as our neighbor (to add to the confusion, Canadian geese are sometimes culled as pests).  

     Put me outside at night, my arm injured and knowing that I could be attacked or shot, and I'm not sure how or if I would survive.  For a wolf, its numbers dwindling drastically, that daily endeavor means hunting for food while staying out of the realm of hunters and dogs and whatever else might "legally" be after you.  One of the few remaining collared wolves, OR-93,** was the first to make it back to California's Central Coast in 200-300 years, crossing the Sierras and making its way through cities and heading west; this absence of wolves was due to the federal government's successful wolf-eradication program in the 1900s meant to protect ranchers and their cattle.  Said author Teddy Macker, "There are just twenty wolves in California and more than 39 million human beings."  He wrote this reflection on OR-93 in The Sun: OR-93, forgive us...As you roam the Central Coast of California looking for a mate, as you take down a shuddering hare or young deer, as you plunder a plastic bag along the freeway at night (chicken wings, shit-filled diapers, clammy banana peels, melted pint of 7-Eleven Double Cookie Dough ice cream, empty can of Monster Assault); as you nap under a tractor or eat cold thimbleberries dipping on their vines into a creek; as you roll on your back in pine needles to itch your right shoulder; as you sniff for a track of scent; as you follow your long, tawny snout south, running the wrong way, farther and farther away from any possible track, the track of a possible mate, lost here without a track, no track, none; as you drink water erupting from the earth on a green hill above a fire-desolated double-wide (water that makes, on the hill below you, a lacework of little white streams); as you wake to six Canada geese’s frost-edged cronks in a lavender dawn; as you run through a meadow of lupine, your limbs unlatching the pods and sowing the agatey seeds; as you bark at two dragonflies hovering above a stock tank; as you slope across a Best Buy parking lot, all loping, shifty-eyed stealth; as you scatter into a cowering gallop when some teenagers scream at you from a van; as you scare away a hawk from the wispy wreckage of a mourning dove, then eat the bloodied body, its feathers, pink meat, and neat bones; as you approach bees boiling from an oak snag; as you sleep in grasses under an Orion-ceilinged night, dreaming again of burning nests falling from trees, that mother robin, reluctant to leave her clutch, wresting herself from the plummeting flames at the last moment and flying away; as you smell the Pacific Ocean for the first time, the salt of it, the sweet fishiness, the curious tar — may your glory be as a hot brand upon us, the perfectly asleep, seared awake from this edgeless dream. 

     Being the last, or among the last, of something brings to mind Stephen King's book The Stand or similar human-oriented apocalyptic tales...the search for food, the search for another human, the search for a mate, all while trying to avoid the very real threat of death.  Said King about his inspiration for the book: For a long time --ten years, at least-- I had wanted to write a fantasy epic like The Lord of the Rings, only with an American setting.  I just couldn't figure out how to do it.  Then, slowly after my wife and kids and I moved to Boulder, Colorado, I saw a 60 Minutes segment on CBW (chemical-biological warfare).  I never forgot the gruesome footage of the test mice shuddering, convulsing, and dying, all in twenty seconds or less.  That got me remembering a chemical spill in Utah that killed a bunch of sheep (these were canisters on their way to some burial ground; they fell off the truck and ruptured).  I remembered a news reporter saying, "If the winds had been blowing the other way, there was Salt Lake City."  That's Salt Lake City in Utah...wait, I'm in Utah (a somewhat similar situation may be brewing today as the Great Salt Lake continues to dry up due to diverted water and drought, as mentioned in an earlier post).  Still, our human efforts to want to be the top predator and control the order of things --take out sharks and wolves and lions and elephants and whatever else is "bigger"-- has consequences.

     Said a piece in The Conversation: All species are part of intricate food webs, and a change in the numbers of one species can have drastic effects on others.  For example, the sea otter was nearly hunted to extinction in 19th-century North America as a result of the fur trade.  The loss of so many of the critters cascaded across the ecosystem.  The urchin populations that otters had kept in check through predation exploded.  Masses of urchins overgrazed kelp forests, dooming thousands of inhabitants.  Something similar is underway with sharks.  As bycatch and the shark fin trade has depleted Australian populations, smaller fish predators such as snappers have increased, reducing the number of algae-eating fish.  In many areas, algae has engulfed coral reefs as a result, limiting their ability to grow and survive bleaching events.

     Wrote Catherine Reid in her book Coyote: It's not surprising that I want to hear the snarl and see the teeth of a coyote, that I want to turn a corner and find one there, facing me, so that I can experience all that rises at the moment of the encounter -- fear, awe, or great gladness that such a resident and large animals exists in the world.  In the weeks or months before that happens, I want to feel shadowed by a presence that raises the hairs on my neck, that leaves an odor I can't name, that deposits scat on the path and fades between trees, disappearing mere seconds before I look up...Yet it's that very possibility that Linda Hogan brings home in "Deify the Wolf."  In pursuing these large mammals, she writes, "we are looking for the clue to a mystery, a relative inside our own blood, an animal so equal to us that it reflects back what we hate and love about ourselves."

     Think of the moment during a hike when you spot a deer, or if you're lucky, a moose.  For my wife and I, the thought of raising a gun and smiling at the possibility of shooting it is as distant as the next galaxy.  Make that animal a cougar or a wolf and I would realize that I was way out of my league, that I was somehow in a place I shouldn't be.  I was now in "their" territory.  And yet, as the NY Times piece noted on wolves: Hunters in Idaho can shoot or trap as many as they like year-round on private land.  They can lure wolves within gun range by putting out bait, run them down to exhaustion using A.T.V.s and snowmobiles and stalk them after dark using night vision technology...In Wyoming, there is no limit on the number that can be killed across 85 percent of the state.  This is all legal...In all three states, even wolf pups can be killed.

     One has to question what it is we're trying to accomplish, and what might we be losing?  Are we unwillingly destroying something beneficial to us before we've had a chance to study or learn from them?  Take the case of maggots, said Jonathan Balcombe in his book Super Fly: Maggots have a taste for only decaying tissue, not healthy stuff, so they know when to stop.  They debride wound sites by removing and dissolving infected and dead tissue, they disinfect by ingesting bacteria, and their struggling movements help stimulate circulation and promote bruise healing...Each maggot can remove 25 grams of dead or infected tissue every 24 hours.  That converts to a pound of removal a day for every 18 maggots.  Maggots do more than remove infected and dead tissue; they secrete allantoin, a compound with antiseptic properties that accelerate the breakdown of dead tissue and promote new cell growth.  Greenbottle fly maggots also release ammonia, which is associated with zealous cleaning by humans, and thus the horrible odor of decaying flesh can be suppressed by their presence."...As of 2013, some 80,000 patients were being treated by thousands of physicians using maggots produced in at least 24 laboratories and shipped to patients in over 30 countries.  Maggot therapy is equally effective for veterinary applications and is regularly used on animal patients.   Wait, maggots?  Never Cry Wolf...

     Should you want to mix two groups of pedestrians, or two ensembles of colloidal beads, one of the worst possible strategies would be pushing them towards each other...the most significant collective phenomena in active matter stem from the interplay between their position and orientation degrees of freedom, said a study published in Nature.  Author Catherine Reid put it another way: It takes a while, pulling weeds, before I realize I'm not the only large presence in the field.  I sense the other being before I hear it; I feel its moving body before I catch the snort of air...Without turning my head, I catch the snap of the tail, the deer visible now in a gap between saplings.  It watches me as it chews, its ears and tail in steady motion, before leaning down for another bite.  It's tempting to mimic it, to begin grazing on tender lettuce, to further this commensal relationship.  Instead I enjoy the concept of "commensal," meaning, as an adjective, both eating at the same table and living peacefully with another, and, as a noun, both the meal companion or the companionable animal or plant.     

Photo of portion of BLM oil-leased lands: Center for Western Priorities

     This is not meant to be a one-sided view of predators and prey since I know that I can visit those ducks and hike those trails because they are relatively safe for me to do so.  Animal "control," in various forms keeps wild populations down so that our own population can grow; but in the process, we have cut and parceled much of the "wild" into a checkboard of "do not cross" lines and pushed animals into smaller and smaller territories.  Looking for a commensal ending seems to grow more and more distant, echoed in one of my earlier posts.  Still, it's naïve for me to think that I can know what a hunter feels, good or bad, much less know what a wild animal feels as it too hunts.  It's also naïve for me to think that nature is a land of commensal species or even peoples.  Imagine no more fighting, no more wars...among animals or people.

      It's a nice thought, a nice reflection, a nice thing to imagine.  So it was also nice to read Rob Bowers, publisher of The Sun write: My favorite time of year to walk is near the winter solstice, which will soon be upon us.  It’s an occasion to pause and reflect before the long nights begin to recede and the daylight advances...The other night, the clouds obscured the moon, making it difficult to see the path, and I stumbled along.  It can be hard to find the clarity we need, even in something as simple as a daily walk.  And clarity has been especially elusive during the pandemic, amid all the suffering, loss, anger, and starkly revealed inequity.  If we’re lucky, we find the courage and the footing to take the next step...As we slowly emerge from the challenges that began nearly two years ago, the coming of the light feels more important than ever.

*The issue of government-leased land is complex but basically, grazing leases run about $1.30 per head of cattle or sheep, while oil leases run about $2 per acre if bid upon, and far less if entered into a non-competitive auction.  Such leases can tie up land for a decade or more whether work is done or not; or for ranchers such as Ted Bundy, you can simply run your animals without paying the bill (much to the ire of his neighboring ranchers who do pay for the leases).  It's obviously far more complicated but one simplified version trying to explain such leases can be found at the Center for Western Priorities.

 **OR-93 was recently found dead on the side of the road, apparently hit while trying to cross a busy road.  On a similar note, hunters have already killed the most wolves in 25 years outside of Yellowstone National Park, said Smithsonian.  Among the wolves killed were two pups and a one-year old...

To discover more about wolves, visit the interactive exhibit, blog, and the dedicated work being done by Living With Wolves.