I’m trying an experiment this week. People have complained of weird symbols in
the text so I’m trying cutting and pasting from a PDF. Let me know if this
improves matters.
Death causes change and questioning, but constants carry on. The constants this
week? A competition between the apex predator and the other kind over who gets
to kill a rat. I haven’t yet seen the potential victim but I’m assured by both
types of animal that there is a rat and that he or she needs to be eliminated.
Hamish is affronted by the presence of a rodent in his domain. He can barely
wait for the sliding door to open before he bursts out the door in the manner
of a clattering squirrel- frightener and...the squirrel that’s eating the
chickens’ food leaves...temporarily.
Hamish begins each morning with an attempt to re-create the breakthrough in
Normandy, as if he were driven by arrows on a map. A couple of quick steps
later and a magnificent spin, lots of tail wagging, just a pinch of barking,
and then he’s wondering what the best next move might be. He oncludes that
exactly what he’s done for the past thousand years would be his best bet—take
off on a circumnavigation of the half acre, pretends that he is going to be no
longer present, and then returns at speed. Bound to catch a rat with that.
Doesn’t, but we have a happy dog.
Sonsie has a different understanding of predation. His idea is that he needs to
conserve energy, and so he rests. And then rests some more. At some time in the
evening he feels ready to hunt. On Friday we looked out the window and caught
his imitation of a polar bear above the seal hole. The most important thing a
polar bear needs—and I’ve watched a mother try and fail to teach her cubs
this—is patience; if you want to eat a seal you have to be willing to sit still
on ice for hours. The cubs gave up after half an hour, not so Mum. Sonsie had
the technique down...Patience on a momument...but when I went out the next day
there was no corpse in view. Another time perhaps?
As I went to sleep I heard an owl and thought, “Possibly that’ll get the rat?”
Which was uncharitable. I mean what harm does a rat do us? Or a grey squirrel?
But I’d like both of them to move away. I prefer the company of Douglas Fir
squirrels—which don’t eat corn. And I can do without rats, snakes, mosquitos...
I’ve been reading about malarial mosquitos in places I never imagined them to
be. I knew we had them in Oregon, but mosquitos were a danger at Anzio and
elsewhere in the Italian campaign of the Second World War. We read about what
damage DDT did to the environment, but maybe we should nod towards the good it
did?
Several times this week Mimo came running out, first thing in the morning. The
routine for me is to spread two handfuls of food beneath the table, where it
won’t be affected by the rain, let the chickens out, attend to their water
supply. Many things are important in the care of chickens—for example, washing
carefully after you’ve handled them or things they may have touched. Chickens
are disease vectors; they translate wild bird viruses to humans. Everyone loves
chicken, but everyone could die of chicken too.
So I tend to their water supply—daily fresh water and seeds help their
health—and Mimo comes running by repeating, on two or more occasions, “Gotta
go. Gotta go. Coming through.”
We have maintained the fiction that I don’t know where she lays eggs, so we
were in the awkward position of me knowing where she wanted to go and her
knowing where she wanted to go and me pretending I didn’t know. I concentrated
my eyes on the water container as she ran past shouting “Ohmygod, ohmygod.”
Sometimes there’s an egg, sometimes there’s just the urge.
While I had Pecorino on her own, I talked with her about grief.
“So sorry for your loss,” seems to be the standard line nowadays, so I tried it.
Pecorino, “Do I own a loss? Seems unlikely.”
“I meant...well I was wondering how you’re dealing with the fact that
Appenzeller died.”
Pecorino, “Died?”
This seemed awkward. “I found you last week looking at where her corpse had
been.”
“When was this?”
“Maybe you were just having a rest?”
Pecorino sighed, “Appenzeller has gone to be with the eggs.”
“Meaning?”
“Eggs are strange. You feel the urge, you push one out, and then they
disappear. I’d ask why you designed the universe this way but I gather there
are gods above your pay grade. Maybe you didn’t design eggs?”
“Ask me which came first, this god or the egg.”
“I thought as much. Which is why we postponed the sacrifice.”
“The what?”
“Mimo suggested, in the absence of Appenzeller, that we sacrifice a worm to
you. I said you were not easily appeased.”
“You think I have something to do with her absence?”
“Mimo caught you raising her up. Followed you to the large brown bin. What
transformation begins in the large brown bin?”
I told her that the journey from the large brown bin is a long one and that I
do not know what the end point looks like.
The two remaining chickens do not quarrel over who gets the food. Things are
quiet this week on the Western Front.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
