As I left the house this morning, I encountered a rabbit running out of the fog across the driveway and onto the opposite verge, attempting frantically to draw me away from a lair hidden somewhere among the bushes and hillsides that line our driveway. Ironically, his very act of trying to mislead me through a myriad of unpredictable twists and turns is what revealed him to me in the first place and granted him specific existence within my perception. Absent his movement, I would have been reduced to speculating (if it had even occurred to me to speculate at that hour of morning) about the existence of a mostly invisible rabbit population on the Farm, speculation driven by such not-so-rare, early morning sightings and by periodic glimpses of faint clues their nightly sojourns sometimes leave behind.
His sudden bolt to the opposite side of the road made me wonder where his lair was, a lair I could only find, if so inclined, by assiduously following his every move – a feat I am no longer capable of, if I ever was. Since I have not the facility nor the inclination to seek his lair, from the standpoint of human logic I wondered why he moved at all since he would likely have remained invisible in the foggy darkness had he stood still. But rabbit logic and human logic aren’t congruent. So given this logical mismatch, I chose to do what I always do when scaring up a rabbit on my way to work – I slow down until I am certain the rabbit is no longer where I might inadvertently hit him, and then pass him by so that he might go on with his life on the Farm without further interference from me.
Having negotiated the rabbit, I turned happily into the lane that services our small community and immediately had to slow again due to a vague perception of movement to my left. And so it was that I saw the stag first, standing magnificently in my neighbor’s field, his appearance rendered magical by a vaporous mixture of headlights and fog. Since I long ago learned that deer, unlike rabbits, are usually found in groups, I stopped and peered mystically into the fog ahead of me – a task made more difficult by having my headlights reflected back at me by the dense fog. I quickly sensed further movement on my right, and a doe ran from my property to the neighbor’s to join her mate. As she reached the stag, he rolled his head in seeming invitation and they bounded, together, into the cover of the trees which blanket the steep slope above the river’s catch basin, some 40 feet below and behind my neighbor’s home.
The deer make their home either on the neighbor’s slope or on the forested hillside behind our house. In the Summer, I often find their grassy nests in the high grass of the untamed meadow below our house. In the winter, deer sign is harder to spot, although I sometimes find their footprints commingled with bird scratching in freshly fallen snow. Once we came home to find a deer carcass alongside the drive, the doe – for such it was – apparently dead from natural causes. We dragged her across an open field and into the hillside woods so that she might return to her home in all senses of that verb.
And so it is that I interact from time to time with our fellow residents of the Farm – short, quick glimpses of foreign lives that are simultaneously intriguing and beautiful, even if incomprehensible. I suppose I could read more about the history and habits of my fellow residents to enrich the interactive experience, but I confess that I prefer the mere glimpses, if only because they assure me that much is afoot in the world other than things of petty human concern. I would rather speculated why the rabbit runs wildly to divert my attention while the deer stands stalk still in an attempt to evade it, than to have it scientifically explained.
Of one thing I am certain – I will not mention to Helen tonight that the deer were on our property, since it will surely fuel her ongoing war with them over whether certain vegetation is edible, as determined by deer logic, or sacrosanct, as determined by gardener’s logic. She doesn’t have the heart to shoot or otherwise injure them, but she is capable of a perfectly good foot stomp or a loud shout to drive them away from prized roses or other plants, and I don’t want her to feel that it is time to go back on guard duty. The late fall weather is simply too uncongenial for such a purpose, especially at night when the deer roam free.
It is clear to me that all of us – deer, rabbits, humans, and all other varieties of critters resident on the Farm – may be partners in the use of the land, but we don’t necessarily follow the same rules or share the same goals as to that use. All I am completely certain of is that it is only human logic that maintains that a single species – ours may own land outright to the exclusion of fellow residents.
The other creatures survive on the land by interspecies sharing and if they have any logical notion in common, it is that running is the means by which to stay free.
Good one Gavin.
The interaction in Humtulips reminds me of the encounter with a porkypine two weeks ago in proximity to Sky Mesa, aka, 4120 San Juan Blvd, Anacortes. Bingo and I were engaged in an evening stroll to the North and 100 acres of woods in the cul de sac of our small development on the West side of Fidelgo Island; when his hackes went up and he bounded after a porky. My shout went un-noticed until he was 2 feet from his intended victim. He regained his wits and turned off, just in time to avoid being quilled.
And so Helen and Bingo share a dislike for the invasive presence of some critters with whom we share space.
You must be a Pogo fan. Only Walt Kelly would spell Porky Pine quite that way. I have a set of Walt Kelly Pogo characters and Porky Pine is among them.