Monday, October 15, 2007

Mortality: Coiled and Ready to Strike

Today I stayed home from work and got a speck of squamous carcinoma carved out of my head; I’ve now got a delightful inch-long gash in my forehead that will need to get de-stitched in two weeks, during which time I will probably wear a hat all the time whenever I step out in public.  This puts me in mind of the eternal verities, the true nature of life, and the limitations of this animal flesh we inhabit.  And as it so happens, I’ve got a bit of a screed on that very subject, so let’s have it, shall we?

First it was the owl.  I got up early one morning and decided, capriciously, not to go to the gym – I’d run through the park instead.  The new day was dark but clear, and dew was just forming.  Though I hadn’t run in weeks the path was so easy and familiar that I really hadn’t even broken a sweat as I rounded the far end of the rose garden and headed east along the edge of the redwood grove.  I was drinking deep draughts of the cold clean air that welled up from the densely wooded ravine beside me, my heart and shoulders and legs and eyes all working in unison to propel me more vigorously on my predawn way, when suddenly something flashed past a few feet from my face and into the woods, wide and white and soundless.  Without breaking stride I peered into the trees and found it quickly – a good-sized barn owl, perched on a nearby bough, watching me watch it, head swiveling iconically to track me as I ran.  I nodded as I ran and I swear it nodded back.

Then it was the raccoon.  Z and me were on our way out for a rather long stretch of inside time, so I wanted to start off at a playground so he could burn off some juvenile steam.  But it was Sunday and many of the car routes through the park were closed, so I seized upon the inexplicable idea that we should instead visit a meadow across the street from a picturesque lake on our way out to the highway. 

As I pulled over I couldn’t help but notice the prominent sign reserving the meadow for some corporate-sounding picnic.  I re-figured that we’d just make do tramping the paths by the margins of the lake itself.  We shortly found ourselves at the foot of a trail looking into filtered sunlight through the woods for a clearing where Z could do some playful exploring. 

“Daddy, what’s that?,” he calmly asked me, clutching my finger with his whole fist.

“What’s what?,” I glibly replied, still gazing in my unfocused way toward the trees.

“That!” With his free hand he pointed a yard or two in front of us.  In the center of our path, curled quietly and blended into the equinoctial colors of the landscape, lay a good-sized raccoon.  It looked fine, well-furred and well-fed, its humanoid feet relaxed like a baby’s little hands, but black and sharp-nailed.  Its eyes were closed; its mouth, relaxed. 

There was only one explanation: the coon was dead.  I didn’t know how to explain that to Z, though.  I would up saying something about it being a raccoon, that we shouldn’t touch it, that it was dirty.  He stood rooted to the spot, staring at the immobile little animal. “It’s sleeping,” he eventually concluded.  “Something like that,” I deflected. “Let’s play over there.” And with that we went back across the road and spent the next few minutes kicking his little mini-soccer ball along the slender verge abutting the gutter.  I never checked, but I assume that the raccoon’s body was removed in due course.  I know, however, that it remains lodged securely in my mind.  I wonder if Z still remembers it. 

Since then we’ve had an invasion of ants in our kitchen, now quelled by dint of much pesticide and thumb-crushing; there was also the “bee hole” at the handiest neighborhood playground, back in a corner near the play structure and the basketball court, where hundreds of wasps shuttled in and out on their diligent way from a creepy dark fistula debouching from under a neighbor’s fence.  Now all that seems cleared up too, with nothing left of the industrious hymenopterae but a scant handful of their corpses strewn in front of the now-quiet cave that had been their home.

And then this weekend Kel and I were wheeling Z’s stroller back homewards after a civilized ramble through the formality of the museum concourse, with stops at an amateur art show and through the echoing old tunnels and in a playground full of squealing kids.  We cut up through the wooded path from the pristine Eden of the huge arboretum, towards the rectilinear plots of the rose garden that would lead us back out of the park - a path we knew intimately, a short sheltered path bordered on one side by the back end of the Tea Garden and on the other by the east slope of Stow Lake hill. 

The sky was steel grey and sound was muffled by the verdure surrounding us; we were crossing past the site of the old lingam shrine when I saw a grey streak coming down the hill in our general direction.  “Coyote,” I said with sufficient urgency to draw Kel’s and Z’s attention to it, but not so loud, I hoped, to spook it further.  It was a good-sized animal, with clear eyes and a thick coat, and as it dashed down the densely-overgrown hillside it threw us a wary but confident glance.  In an instant it was gone, but not before even Z had gotten a good look at it. 

I’ve seen coyotes before, and even seen them in the park, but never on the run in broad daylight.  A few yards further down the path we stopped to visit a makeshift shrine where the lingam had once stood, now replaced with old carved stone, raw rocks, and branches and vases and plates.  In the center of the crude new shrine had been placed some dog tags and a small picture frame containing a handwritten message – a farewell to two animals, tender and touching till the end, when the author, in a looping feminine hand, vowed vengeance on whomever had taken her pets’ lives – “so help me God.” In the serenity of the shrine, her words rankled.  In the fleeting shadow of the coyote, the shrine itself felt like an intrusion. 

Birds and beasts and bugs, living and dead and hunting and hunted.  Any of them by themselves wouldn’t have aroused in me a second thought.  Now, though, they get me thinking - thinking that Mother Nature is trying to tell me something, but damned if I can figure out what it is.  I’d just better make sure I’m up to date on all my vaccinations.