A Report from the Shack

That is the view out the patio doors to the right of my writing desk.  It is a small patch of woods that  comprises most of my world view during these slow days. I feel fortunate to have it.  More happens out there than you might think. 

I saw the fox last week.  He was moving through the bottom of the ravine twenty feet below me.  Even though I don’t see him often, I think of him and smile.  I imagine him living near me, in a den somewhere in the ravine.  If I could, I’d fix him a little home under the shack.  Not that he needs my help. 

Last time we met he was sunning himself by my bird feeder not far from the patio.  It was a summer afternoon. I walked around the garage and he was looking at me, stretched out on our lawn, legs straight behind him.  I stopped dead in my tracks and stared.  He looked back at me calmly.  Neither of us moved.  We had a moment.

After a while he stood, did a downward facing fox, and trotted off nonchalantly through the neighbor’s yard.  His tail disappeared into the trees that line the ravine.

From my chair in the shack I notice wild animals in the ravine first by their movement.  It distinguishes them from the stillness of fixed things around them, the trunks and branches of the trees, the leaves and sticks covering the ground, the sky.  While sitting at my desk something moves to catch my eye.  When I look closer, I see a squirrel hurrying along a fallen log or maybe a bird pecking the ground.  Sometimes a rabbit picks up its head and sniffs the air.  Occasionally it is the ground hog waddling here and there.  Often the deer move slowly up from the ravine, enter my yard, and eat my hostas.  Most of those animals move warily, constantly looking around, afraid of predators.

The fox is different.  He moves as if he has somewhere to go.  I saw him on the far side of the creek that runs along the bottom of the ravine.  He looked good, his coat thick and full, his tail bushy.  He trotted along until he came to the bend in the creek. There are rocks in the water there.  His back arched slightly while his front feet left the ground together, touched a rock in the middle of the creek lightly, then lifted off reaching for the other bank.  His back legs followed, landed on the same rock for a split second, and pushed him over the creek.  He resumed his trot, disappeared under a fallen log, appeared on the other side, and then was gone.

While my eyes were glued to the fox, caught up in the presence of a wild animal, I completely forgot how difficult life has become for humans in the last month.  I was watching a fox in his environment, living his life with no regard for me.  A fox being a fox, nothing more and nothing less.  They would do fine without us.  Probably better.

I keep an ash bucket on a nail outside the door under the eaves.  Every week or so during the winter I scoop the ashes out of my stove, dump them in that bucket, and when the bucket gets full I empty it into my compost pile.  If I don’t remember to take it down in the spring, birds build nests in there and lay eggs.  I’m not mean enough to tear out their nests, so I’m stuck without the use of that bucket till they leave.

Usually the nest builders are sparrows, but this year a pair of wrens built an elaborate round nest of soft grass with a small hole on top.  The nest rested on a half bucket of gray ashes.  I pulled down the bucket like always one morning and both wrens zoomed out, landed on top of the woodshed roof, and began scolding me like a bad boy.  There they were, six feet from me, jumping around trying to appear mean.  Tiny birds with their tails in the air hopping mad.  Squawking.  Putting up a big racket.  I put the bucket back.

They scold me every time I open the shack door and every time I leave.  Now I hear the sound of baby birds in there.  I found another bucket for my ashes.  I suppose by the time the wrens are done getting their babies out of the nest it’ll be warm enough I won’t  build fires anymore.  But we manage to co-exist.

Visiting birds are travelling through.  Today, Cinco de Mayo, I spotted the first oriole eating the cheap grape jelly and oranges I put out for them.  The brightness of those orange feathers and the way they shine up next to the black on their body pleases me no end. It’s a welcome sight.  They don’t stay long.  Are they on their way to Baltimore?  I have no idea.  I just enjoy them while they are here.

The orioles arrived only days after the rose breasted grosbeaks showed up.  They grosbeaks must be cousins to cardinals. They have the same beak, eat the same seed, and are about the same size yet the cardinals stay year-round and the grosbeaks stop by each year on their way somewhere else. The lives of birds intrigue me, but not enough to learn all that much about them.  I prefer to let their lives remain a mystery, as my life must be to them.

I don’t know if building the shack where I did blocked the sunlight  or otherwise affected the small patch of level ground outside the big east window, but nothing grows there now but moss.  It’s a bare spot.  I think of it as a small stage where animals perform for my benefit.  As if they exist for my entertainment, which they do not.  Be that as it may they are very entertaining.

Two robins landed there a week ago in the middle of a furious fight.  Wings flapping, beaks open, they cawed at each other, flew up off the ground, twirled around, landed, charged after each other.  I was totally taken in.  I pushed my chair from the desk and got closer to the window for a better look.

They must have seen me. Both robins stopped their battle and cocked their heads towards me as if to say “What the hell YOU looking at?”  Distracted they flew away.  I felt like a voyeur.

In late fall last year my friend, in the middle of a heated backgammon game, looked over my shoulder through that big window and spotted a barred owl in the tree by the woodshed.  You don’t realize how big owls are till you see them up close.  As we watched him, hoping he didn’t fly away, he swooped down onto that bald patch of ground and snatched up a ground squirrel, the little chipmunk looking guys who hang around the shack compound.  The owl dispatched him with his beak, slowly flapped his wings, gained a little altitude and went elsewhere to finish his snack.

  

Come to think of it I haven’t seen any ground squirrels lately.  Maybe between the owl and the fox they’ve been driven from the neighborhood.
  

It’s a bad time for humans, and Americans especially.  We lead the world in deaths to the pandemic.  We cannot seem to figure out what to do or how to get it done.  I mourn for us.  I mourn for those that have died, for their families, for those who are charged with caring for the rest of us and keeping us alive, for those who have turned this natural disaster into a partisan political fight rather than seeing it as an opportunity to come together.  Mourn for us as human beings.  We’re in trouble.

But feel good for the animals.  Perhaps our loss is their gain.  They seem to be doing quite well.

That completes my report from the shack on this fifth day of May.