A Series of Unfortunate Wildlife Encounters

The ants are back, so I put out poison, and they are flocking to it, and it makes me sad.

I do not want to kill them. I do not want to kill anything, really. I make an exception for invasive plants: star thistle, Himalayan blackberries, breath of heaven trees, Velcro burr weeds, ivy. I get rid of as many of those as I can, and do so merrily. Also, I still eat meat, which I realize is a glaring inconsistency, one that I feel conflicted about most everyday. But today, I am feeling sad about the ants. They are not bad, but they are in the wrong place, which happens to be my kitchen counter, and if I ignore them, they will take over, and then we will have a big problem.

Apparently, it is a season for unfortunate wildlife encounters. I had one last week with a wasps’ nest. The ant invasion makes a second unfortunate event.  This week Biscuit also had one, and both of us are still recovering from it.

I wake up early on these summer days. The bedroom windows are open to let in the breeze, which thankfully has returned.  I’ve been complaining quite a bit here about the heat and how insufferable it has been, with night time lows coming in at 20 degrees above normal for this time of year. The last few nights, though, have been cooler again. Let me say how grateful I am for that. But in an interesting aside, I just heard from a dear friend whose upstairs bedrooms got up to 95 degrees during the peak of the heatwave, because they couldn’t open their windows at all due to smoke from nearby wildfires. So that made my warm nights seem not so bad.

(And that just reminds me of the unfortunate truth that no matter how bad things seem for me, they usually are worse for someone else.)

With the windows wide open, and the shades up to maximize the breeze, it gets noisy early. I wish it was all mellifluous bird song, but most days, it is the caw of crows and the squawk of Steller’s jays that wake me up. I get up, feed the cat (who sometimes has jumped on the bed to sleep with his backend by my head, and he does not smell great, so I don’t mind getting up much), let Biscuit out, and heat water for my tea. It is the peaceful, steady way I start most days.

Except the other day, while waiting for my tea, I heard a terrible yelping coming from down the street, close to my neighbor’s home.

I ran out in my pajamas and saw a fox tearing through the backyard, getting as far away from the crying as he could. Then I saw Biscuit race up the street, toward the main road. Then a deer ran past me, just inches from where I was standing, on her way to the backyard.

Then my neighbor was on the street, also in her pajamas, somehow managing to look both sleepy  and alarmed at the same time.

“What in the heck just happened?” she asked (although she did not say “heck.”)

“I don’t know!” I said. “There was a fox, and a deer, and Biscuit running away, and I don’t know where he went.”

Later, my neighbor’s husband told me that he woke up to the yelping and burst out of bed to find  a deer stomping on Biscuit, and that the deer wasn’t letting up until both he and his wife raced out and yelled at her. And that same deer was so on edge that later that morning, she galloped down the hill from my backyard to his yard and gave one of his little dogs a good stomp before he chased her off again.

The deer has apparently lost all her patience for small, yippy doggos.

Biscuit was waiting by the front door.

He had a bloody spot on his backside, and blood on his foot. He stayed in all day. He didn’t want to go for a walk, and almost didn’t care if he had his nightly treat. As the week passed, he perked up, but still won’t go out in the morning or at night by himself.

I don’t blame the deer, really (just like I didn’t blame the wasps last week when they stung me) If you missed that story, you can read it here: https://www.ordinaryholy.com/unfortunate/. Biscuit is a fluff ball with illusions of being a German Shepherd or a Doberman. One of his favorite pastimes is to bark at deer through the front window until they run away, or to bolt after them when he comes across them in the yard. I’m sure that’s what he did the other morning.

Except this deer, we are fairly certain, has two tiny, spotted fawns. And she was apparently fed up with Biscuit and his fuzzy headed nonsense. This time, when he raced at her, she did not run, but stood her ground and fought back. She protected her babies in the best way she knew, by using her strong hooves, until my neighbor chased her away.

The deer didn’t know that Biscuit wasn’t  a threat to her babies, that he is just a fluffy creature who thinks that chasing her is great sport.  Just like the wasps didn’t care that I am a tree hugging member of the Sierra Club when I accidentally stepped on them.  The deer and the wasps (and Biscuit, too, I guess) are acting out of their true natures. I think there might be some kind of lesson here for me. Like it’s rough out there, that most of the world is wild still, but I’m mostly able to ignore that, because my life has been pleasant, with my house and car and electricity and running water and stocked supermarkets and Hallmark movie mornings, all things that separate me from the natural world.

Except I am being reminded often lately that I am not so separate.  The wasps and ants and attacking deer remind me. The fires, floods, pandemic, and drought remind me. The fact that we are making “go bags” to keep by the front door, and parking our cars facing out to save time if a firestorm comes, remind me. I have long lived with an illusion of safety and comfort, but the foundation is shaking, crumbling. And it is starting to seem like it won’t take much before it collapses.