Unscheduled interactions between wildlife and humans have become more common, and for all we celebrate the resurgence of endangered and exotic species, these meetings can be a tad ambivalent. I am here today only because the coyote that darted across Highway I-5 in full traffic some years ago in San Diego missed my front fender by a split-second.
Long ago, rounding a bend on a cliff trail in the uplands of the island of Maui, I was charged by a wild pig (both of us equally terrified, resolved by his plunging off the trail). The snapping jaws of a moray eel lunging out of a coral crevice off Waikiki beach narrowly missed my arm. A highly intelligent shark cut a researcher and me off from shore in the shallows of a lagoon on the Great Barrier Reef (resolved by taking our hammers out of our packs and plunging boldly forward).
Meeting wildlife in the wild, where you expect to see them, is scary. But what about closer to home? What about where you don’t expect to see them?
For instance.
What about my Swedish colleague and his fiancée, treed by a herd of angry elk while innocently picnicking in a meadow just outside of Stockholm? Or the mother of a Brazilian friend scattering flour on the porch of their Rio de Janeiro house near a forest only to find it covered with a latticework of panther tracks in the morning? Or the hunt for a sixteen-foot ball python, progeny of a legion of escaped domestic pets, suspected of devouring a spate of missing cats in Naples, Florida?
A very long time ago, before pythons were part of that landscape, I lived with my family on a Florida Panhandle bayou 50 miles from the Okefenokee swamp, where poisonous snakes of every variety known to North America abounded, plus the deadly coral snake as a bonus. So did crocodiles and alligators. Skipping over the numerous reptile encounters that triggered my childhood post-traumatic stress syndrome, I’ll mention only that many years later I read of a jumble of faint GPS signals that led hunters to a very old, very big alligator deep in the Okefenokee. In that alligator’s gut, once he was dispatched? The undigested tracking collars of a dozen or more hunting dogs. Distinctive smirk of the family Alligatoridae still frozen on his big dead jaws in the news photo.
As climate change and conservation continue to alter animal habitat, critters once hunted down and slaughtered are finding their way back into the human habitat. We are thankful for their return, but they are not always as grateful for the shelter afforded them by the endangered species laws. Because some of them still do their thing. That predator thing.
On the plus side, while they boldly show up at night, they do so less in the day.
So far.
My friend the history professor walks into his house in California’s Central
Valley carrying a big bag of kitty litter in his arms. Stretched out full length on the floor three feet away from the front door? A very big snake with a diamond-patterned hide. Frightened out of his wits, the professor hurls the kitty litter at the snake. The plastic covering breaks on impact, burying it under a great beige mound of imitation sand. One heartbeat later, the mound erupts. A large reptilian head rears up, fangs out, jaws gaping, hissing in fury and ready to strike. Professor flees to the street. Animal Control crew dispatched from his cell phone terminate the creature in the backyard and carry off its corpse in a capacious zip-up black bag with the gnomic parting comment: “That was a serious health threat.”
The big rattler, it seemed, had crawled in through a ventilation shaft seeking mice to feed on. Where my friend’s cat was all this time I have no idea. Prudently cooling her heels at the neighbor’s house, one suspects.
My grandmother liked to tell the story of her father as a boy in mid-1800s Petaluma, California, playing with a little brown dog in the yard. He and his sister were teasing it with switches until their mother came out and screamed. The dog was a bear cub. (Later in his life, in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, my great-grandfather had to shoot my grandmother’s own little dog when a rabies epidemic broke out among the wild animals of the county.)
As climate change and conservation continue to alter animal habitat, critters once hunted down and slaughtered are finding their way back into the human habitat. We are thankful for their return, but they are not always as grateful for the shelter afforded them by the endangered species laws.
For over a century bears were gone from settled California. Now their scat’s been spotted in suburban Marin County across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. Down in southern California, as befits the culture, the bears are bolder. They strip avocado trees of their fruit (a particular favorite), pick off the odd small domestic pet, and brazenly chill in backyard swimming pools when the temperature climbs too high, as it often does now.
In San Francisco a peregrine falcon nests near Market Street, preying on urban rats. A coyote forages on Telegraph Hill. Coyotes stalk unleashed dogs in Stern Grove, famous for its free Bach concerts in the summer. The Project Coyote organization teaches dog owners how to communicate like a predator to establish dominance over the interlopers. Participants learn to use loud voices, wave umbrellas, and shake rocks in Red Bull cans. Across the bay a fox stretches out at noontime on a warm Berkeley driveway.
Before mountain bikers took over Marin County, I loved walking up East Blythedale canyon through fragrant stands of redwood, eucalyptus, and bay laurel to the eastern ridge of Mount Tamalpais. One day, on the narrow footpath winding up the side of the dark, damp canyon full of fine old houses, I ran straight into a large, lean dog with a long snout and a silver-furred face—
But it wasn’t a dog. It was a wolf. A wolf two feet away staring at me with its wild yellow eyes. His putative owner (or I should say, companion human), a slender man with matching silver hair clasped in a ponytail, followed close behind. My heart pounded long after they disappeared around the next bend.
Long ago, camping up north in the rugged Trinity Alps, I heard a mountain lion in the night. Its cry was soft and high, like a baby’s. A wilderness cry.
Mountain lions are all around us now. A woman in Mendocino County reports looking up from her desk to see a big cougar staring soulfully back through the window. In Marin they stroll down the main streets of the little towns in broad daylight. Sometimes they attack people on trails, but so far never in Marin or in the hills above Berkeley, the city in the East Bay where I live now. In the early hours of the morning, however, mountain lions have been spotted haunting the dumpsters behind the fashionable restaurants downtown.
In those same Berkeley hills that same history professor, relocated from the Central Valley, comes home from the movies late one night with his partner to find a herd of deer stampeding through the front yard. Almost, the men joke, as if something was chasing them. Seconds later a large mountain lion thunders past, muscles taut and straining under the tan fur, so caught up in the fury of the chase he doesn’t notice the two humans standing a scant four feet away.
Vanishes with the deer into the night.
For now.
At my house in the Berkeley flatlands I store cat chow in a green plastic garbage can in the driveway. One evening high-pitched chattering comes through the bedroom window, followed by a loud thump. Get up, go out. Garbage can tipped over, bungee cord securing the lid unstrapped, vitamin-enriched high protein grain- free kibble spilled out all over the concrete—and four or five raccoons are feeding on it. When I shout, they split like lightning. I right the garbage can, refasten the lid. Check the bungee cord a couple of times. Leave next morning on a three-day trip.
Evening after my return, more chattering in the driveway. Get up, go out. There they are ranged around the can again, but this time it’s still upright, lid strapped tight. The raccoons scatter when I shout, though not as quickly as before and not nearly as far away as I would wish. In fact, they don’t actually split. They loiter a few feet away under the fluted pink and maroon blossoms of a fuschia bush.
Now raccoons can be nasty; they will kill cats and small dogs with their sharp claws if provoked—or if an unwise and sentimental human feeds, and then fails to feed them. Under their watchful eyes I undo the cord. Lift up the lid to reposition it. Then scream.
Large raccoon curled up, fetal position, on top of the kibble.
I leap back. In my haste, knock over the can.
Disoriented, dehydrated, but undeniably well fed after three days trapped inside, the raccoon surfs a cresting wave of chow onto the driveway. Stumbles to her feet. Spots her rescue team waiting in the shadows under the fuschia bush. Staggers off in their direction. Vanishes with them into the night. That is to say, splits.
For now.
