Redefining Wild

Redefining ‘Wild’- It Is Not ‘out there’ it is everywhere among us. A VEIW OF NATURE FROM MY BACK YARD“They are all dying, all the ones who make living worth the price, and there is hardly time to lament the passing…”---------“Death as History” Jay WrightJAY WRIGHT was an African American poet from the 60’s; this particular excerpt comes from a poem about death from war, genocide, racism and all the horrors that befall ignorance. Jay Wright’s poem is how I often feel about the rapacious extinctions taking place on our planet, to too much of its inhabitants. And quite frankly it wares me out. Fear Politics, fear conservation, I am sick of it. Like hanging on to the tail of a dragon, being whipped and unmoored with every atrocity that befalls the wild, I often feel as if we are always coming from behind, one salamander, one panda, or polar bear, one bird or golden tree frog, one bonobo or wolf, one tortoise or whale, one lost or endangered species at a time, to late, to late to save the wild. So I asked myself the hard question. Can we… with 7 billion people and still breeding ever go back? Can we get it to be the way it was? Even 10 years ago? And if we can’t what are we to do? What must we know about ourselves so we can change? To look at things from a different angle, a different perception, a different attitude, so maybe we can give all living things an advantage. Change the rules, the paradigm , the game that makes us feel, makes me feel, like we are always losing and on the defense of this up hill battle.. So I am walking out of this ball field, this bloody battlefield, to look with new eyes and an open heart at what surrounds me. Instead of looking at what is wrong, I want to see what is right, see where things are thriving and build from that. I am taking the old and wise advice, that change starts in your own back yard. Even to re-wild I must start there. So I considered mine. OUR DOG got skunked again. When will we all learn that nightfall is when the nocturnal darlings come out to grub and forage. We have three dogs, one of them, Nashville or the Ville, or just simply Nash, the only male, can’t leave the skunks alone no matter how many times he gets hit in the face with their pungent mercaptan musk. Neither Gretchen nor Tallulah care much for skunks, but are insane for squirrels. Gretchen has suffered greatly for her obsession, jumping fences and not always clearing them. Our dogs the holy trinity, the domesticated wild things, that love all that is wild, will chase, bark, toy with, roll or try to eat anything that strikes their fancy. WE HAVE an out door aviary. It started innocently enough with a few Agapornis, small Connors, as homage to my mother, a gargantuan lover of all earth’s flora and fauna. It has now turned into a very large brood of Love Birds, an appropriate name, as the 6th extinction is news to them. These little ancestors to the dinosaurs will find away to make a nest, breed, and have successful offspring in ways that boggle the mind, Aga-porn-is indeed! THE BREAK of dawn often finds a lone coyote or whole packs cruising down the street, looking for dog food most likely, small critters, or a drink of water, while still others distant and haunting songs can be heard rising from a hidden den. On this morning over head, almost simultaneously, was a flock of geese heading to the golf course, or the Arroyo in concert with the numerous and comic green parrots, their numbers close to one hundred as they browsed in trees above my yard. Housed in a near by tree is a family of screech owls, while several times a day the sky’s are graced with a plethora of red tailed hawks. I find them magnificent, although when they dine on an occasional Asian dove or sparrow my lovebirds watch in horror from the safety of their aviary. Kestrels and Falcons have been known to have a bite or two of what is available to eat in my back yard as well. Happily I noticed the Blue Jays are coming back after much decline from the bird flu several years back. Are they stronger for it, the ones that survived? And I considered the bats with white nose syndrome and wondered, like ourselves, who have come back with a vengeance after the plague, that maybe too the bats, those that can adapt and survive will come back stronger. And those gophers, the menace to your yard, what great movers and shakers, soil aerators, burrowing, digging, and mining. Lets let them be, it is their yard too. And I looked at all the beauty that surrounds me daily, possums, assorted variety’s of finches, chickadees, woodpeckers, humming birds, butterfly’s, fly’s, bees, grasshoppers, moths, praying mantis, grubs, red worms, earwigs, sow bugs, mosquito’s, and more, much much more that I couldn’t see or missed. All thriving in urban-ville, Los Angeles, my habitat, my home, their home. A CLIENT of mine in Altadena, is concerned that a cinnamon mother bear with her two cubs won’t make it through the year, as she has wandered further down the neighborhood than is safe in search of food for her babies. She informs me, “ Folk’s off the hill are less apt to be adaptable to the ‘intrusion’ of a wild animals. Most people that live up top of the Altadena Mountain’s are used to deer, coyotes, bears, and mountain lions. You have to keep an eye out for the mountain lions, but if you leave the bears alone you will be fine. Most of us that live up here are thrilled there is still so much wildlife roaming around.” Most, but not all. And I’m putting my money down on the side of history and our future that bets there is more, not less, that feel like her, feel like me, feel like you.ANYONE who works or volunteers for an animal facility gives a peace of their heart everyday. We work to protect what remains of the wild ‘out there’, while we hang on to the dragons tail with all of our might. So what do we make of these ‘interim wild’? The animal kingdom that lives right under our noses, that we often miss, dismiss or have conflicted relationships with? These fierce and ‘wildly’ adaptable critters that are beating all the odds, which share the habitat we dwell on now because we have stolen theirs. These animals co-exist with the most ferocious predator ever to evolve, man. AND THE second question I asked myself was this, “If we are so capable of adaptation, then why not other species? The wild still crops up where we least expect it, or a species thought to have been gone forever, reappears. Maybe, just maybe these wildlings are much smarter and stronger than we have given them credit, and that we the scariest species to come down the food chain may be smarter too. I believe billions of years of evolutionary skills counts for something, so it must count for all the other species as well. That this inherent drive to survive and pass on our DNA could over ride what looks like mass suicide, and lead enough of humanity to see our global connection, sooner, not later. So in history, as in nature, it is darkest before the dawn. As Jeff Corwin stated in his beautiful book “100 Heartbeats” “Ironically, the only species capable of saving these animals is the same one responsible for putting them in danger”. Are we capable.? I have been stunned that humans have been able to regroup and flourish after, Rwanda, Kosovo, the destruction in Iraq, Japan, World War 11 with its death camps, Viet Nam, Cambodia after Camorouge where not a bird was left singing for over a decade. And yet the relentless and unstoppable heart of humanity held out its hand beneath the rubble, cruelty and destruction and lived. Denial and innocence fell from whole nations, with broken hearts and unspeakable losses; they rebuilt, towns, provinces, villages, homes, cities, countries, and families, and saw the value in all living things. Wounds healed that seemed so deep there would be no closing them. But rebuild and heal they did. If our species can do this, along with the millions upon millions who work quietly in small and large ways to sustain life, then we can surely turn the tide and save our planet with all of its beautiful diversity, and do it in time. One-inch worm, one butterfly, hummingbird, Californian Condor, or Pronghorn, one back yard at a time. WE CAN learn and teach and work.... People want to see what they have been so severally severed from as they have become ‘civilized’. There is an unrequited longing for what we once lived among and were apart of. The closest thing to nature the majority of humanity sees is at our sanctuaries and zoos. More people visit zoos each year than all the sporting events combined in the United States. Maybe, just maybe we need to redefine wild? It isn’t just out there, away where we can’t see ‘it’, or in another country, or even in our zoos,t aquariums, sanctuary’s or preserves. It is every living thing around us. And while we can not, while I will not give an inch or acre if I can help it to those who would rather have a dollar than a frog or an orangutan or cheetah or a forest filled with rain, I will start with the wild in my yard, I will live with them and be glad for their thriving. I will take my grand daughters hands and at night we will go spelunking to see the wild life with there distinct and pure language and teach her what has real meaning and value. SO WHEN you go home tonight from whatever place you’ve been, smile at your snails, be grateful for all the spiders, bugs, caterpillars and crickets.. Kiss your cats and dogs, and let your heart grow glad that there is still the sweet sound of nature all around you in your own back yard.