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An Essay by Stephen Geez
www.StephenGeez.com
Art by Dizzy
Most property owners mistakenly think they hold exclusive rights to a specified amount of space in a surveyed place, but where other two-leggers might agree not to tread, there lives a world of fauna not bound by the boundaries of man.
I’m talking about critters.
I’m talking not only about the bigger fellers such as mammals, but also your reptiles and amphibians, and don’t even get me started on the plethora of birds and bugs out there. They’ll watch, and they might even wait while you clear a plot, fence it off, and commence to build, but make no mistake: you’re in their space, and soon they’ll be in yours.
Aunt Mildred and Uncle JD retired some decades ago and headed for the hills of Alabama, there to set up a lovely homestead on a mostly cleared lot amid the old-growth timber of sugar maple, walnut, and stately pine. I’m sure their intrusion annoyed some of the local vermin. Most more likely eyed their efforts with a bemused eye for opportunity, especially when Mildred planted her garden, an effort she took quite seriously. She liked putting aside quality produce for sustaining family and friends during long cold Alabama winters.
Now, people generally enjoy living among wildlife, supporting conservation, minimizing disruption to the natural world. Many encourage a pleasant and friendly sharing of space, erecting houses and feeders and baths for birds, putting out salt licks and carrot/apple snacks for deer, submerging cover in adjacent waterways for fish, and of course leaving natural areas for groundhogs and all manner of, well, critters that live around and about.
Mildred has always enjoyed wildlife as much as anyone, but there in the hills she drew the line at her buildings and garden. Spiders were decidedly not welcome indoors, just as all things that spiders eat were considered more appropriately left outdoors. Rodents were advised to keep their distance. Birds were offered sufficient territory to nest away from the eaves, and anything interested in lingering in the garage found itself quickly and decisively dissuaded from such a notion.
Yet with all that gentle-but-firm nudging for squatting rights, none proved more entertaining than Aunt Mildred chasing varmints from her garden, especially rabbits and chipmunks—ground squirrels, she calls the latter. Anybody observing while these hostilities escalated would have to think: This is going to get ugly . . .
And I’m talking about those fearsome rabbits with their guerrilla tactics.
While Aunt Mildred did achieve limited progress from time to time, we all know that’s a losing battle, one where victories are measured in degrees of sustainable loss. Let’s call it rent, extortion if you insist, palm-greasing for the locals who don’t understand, let alone respect, man’s folly of fence-lines and ownership.
But then the chipmunks made their move.
Aunt Mildred started having trouble with the family Ford losing power, so she took it in for service. The technician removed its air filter cover and found the compartment packed with walnuts. Yes, the chipmunks had co-opted Mildred’s transportation as a place to put aside quality produce for sustaining chipmunk family and friends during long cold Alabama winters.
It’s good when people find ways to share the world with the critters around them, but most would agree we have to draw the line at lending them a car.
So Mildred’s Ford was put back in good working order, and while many might thereafter have been tempted to make futile attempts at sealing off the garage, she settled for monitoring and occasional walnut extraction as a means of ongoing discouragement. Until the day came that she moved northward to share space with one of her daughters and son-in-law, she kept a big bag of nuts in the back corner of the garage just in case, you know, somebody needed a bit of help sustaining family and friends during long cold Alabama winters.
Now Aunt Mildred enjoys living in the Tennessee hills, there on a wonderful spread with a sluice of rock-gouged stream running right out front. She likes to take walks along the water, but of course that’s where an ornery mama-duck likes to nest.
I’d bet that quacker thinks she owns the place.
Yeah, this could get ugly.
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© The Fresh Ink Group, LLC, 2008
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