Monday, November 4, 2013

Tabby Girl 2003

My mom has a beat-up old chest—I suppose all mothers do—that contains a trove of nostalgia: her wedding dress, my dad’s love letters, old photos, kid-stuff. For obvious reasons I was never allowed to explore its contents and all my life the thing has been talismanic of the sanctity of a woman’s memory-world. When I was young I’d happily explore her underwear drawer with all those secret things but to this day would never consider opening that trunk. She has looked through it with me—once, long ago. So far as I know she gets into that special mood about once a decade. Not too long ago she did and when I came to visit last time had an item from the green chest that she handed to me without explanation but with an enigmatic smile. It was a shirt-pocket sized spiral-bound notepad that cost a dime in 1966. The first six pages were covered on one side with a child’s crude printing—mine—and it proved to be an essay about my beloved kitties. I had no memory of writing it but this was no school project and is possibly the first literary effort of an eight-year-old boy, a third-grader….

My cat tabby is going to have kittens. She will have to Mate first. But when she dos’e there will be alot of kittens. But I will start at the begaining.

Tabby Girl

One day a girl named Carry Martin had this little kitten. I saw it and asked if I could show it to my mom and dad. She said yes because her mother hated cats. So I took it home. My family said she was beutiful and so did I. She start purring and climbing on us. We petted it and it purred louder and louder and she climbed like mad. We wished we could keep her so much we could not stop playing with her. In the morning I went out side and there was the cat! And every morning she came and we broght her in the house every morning. We fed her milk and kracker too! Fineily we started feeding her with rascle and Smoky. So we kept her because we could not get rid of her. So one night we came together and named her  We called her all kinds of names. But they dild not fit. So I said: How about tabby every body said it was a good name so that was how tabby got a name. Well ever since tabb has got fun and exitment with Dogs and rascle, butterflys, birds, grass hoppers, people, bugs, and all kinds of things. Tabby is very kind unless people bother her. Because tabby gets scared. Most people get tabby and hurt her so in self Defins she scratshes them. Tabby should not do it but she has to. Some people hate cats and try to kill them. That’s what I prevint because I’m a cat lover. I go krazy about cats. But now we get to the good part. Now tabby is going to have kittens. About a mounth ago tabby had a sighn of getting kittens now in about a mounth she will have them. Tabby has started to mate. As soon as she has kittens the start nurseing. That is not far from now but tabby is a great cat and now I can hardly wait  tabby will as other cats have them in a secret place, and she will have her kittens then. This is all I know yet about tabby.                                                                                                                          

15 Sep 2003, 6 Dec 2012


© 2012 Tim Forsell
All rights reserved.

Welcome to the Wild Kingdom 2006

Here at Crooked Creek Station (where I work in California’s White Mountains, east of the Sierra Nevada) I’m presently hosting a group of two dozen undergrad geology students from U.C. Santa Barbara. They’re presently studying “structure” (how different rock formations are arranged) and the fieldwork—geologic surface-mapping exercises—is out in Deep Springs Valley at the famous Poleta Folds, well over an hour’s drive from here. It’s been scorching-hot down in the high desert so they’ve been climbing into their big, white vans well before dawn to beat some of the enervating heat and get back by mid-afternoon to do “homework.” Breakfast is at the unholy hour of four a.m. A couple of days ago I was too tired after dinner to do any prep work and set my alarm for the even unholier hour of one-thirty. (There’s at least a hundred individual tasks to perform, what with laying out an elaborate spread of brown–bag lunch-fixings and a homestyle breakfast; these I perform in a half-awake, chaotic, non-routine.)
            The kitchen/dining room is about seventy yards from my cabin. I walked across a dark, sandy parking area and into light cast by a sixty-watt bulb above the broad, concrete walkway fronting our lab building where, in 1957, Dr. Edmund Schulman had a “Eureka!” moment. When done counting the growth rings, revealed by a core sample taken from a Bristlecone Pine that same day and only a few miles away, he realized that he’d just identified the oldest-known living organism. It soon became famous as the five-thousand year-old Methuselah Tree.
            Since breakfast has been so early I’ve been leaving this light on all night to aid my passage across the broad parking area. (I’m not anywhere near fully-awake when I leave my cabin.) This morning in particular it was shockingly warm for ten-thousand feet—50° F—and, when I stepped onto the brightly-illuminated concrete, saw scores of insects swinging in crazy arcs around that light and perched all over the wooden wall. This would be nothing of note in lowland country, especially our humid southern states, but up in these high mountains it’s seldom warm enough for bugs to fly at night. I got kind of excited (I’m quite fond of insects…) and paused to take a quick survey of my light-worshipping visitors: moths various and aplenty, delicate Ichneumon wasps, fearsome-looking but harmless snakeflies and craneflies. Farther along, as if under a spotlight all by itself on stage, something large and utterly different. What…? A few paces and I found myself kneeling before a beautiful and exotic insect which, again, wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in Alabama. But here in the dry White Mountains you seldom see moths with three-inch wingspans and fat, furry abdomens. (Later that morning I found from my field guide that this was a “Cerisy’s Sphinx.” Its wings, held at an unusual angle and the forewings with a half-twist, were exquisitely-patterned in rich tones of tan, brown and chestnut. Perched against the bark of a willow (where they live) it’d be invisible; but all by itself on the white concrete under that sixty-watt bulb this strange critter was a stirring sight.
            I walked back out several times while working on breakfast to see if the thing was still there. It hadn’t moved and refused to budge, even with a little nudge from my fingertip. I feared that one of the half-asleep students would step on it but no one did. (I checked while they were all eating.) And, as I’ve done on various similar occasions, walking past my diners I spoke up and said, to no one in particular, “We had a big insect-hatch in the night. There’s a crazy, huge moth perched out there on the sidewalk.” I must say, I’ve been disappointed to find how seldom I’ve sparked interest with these casually-delivered pronouncements. Such as, once, “Uh…there’s a cormorant down on the pond this morning.” And no one even looked up…alas.
            But this time I got a taker: A big, jovial, gregarious fella—Scott, one of their three TAs but only member of his group who’d come into the kitchen to chat—actually wanted to see the whatever-it-was. So out we went (sky still pitch black, full of stars) and knelt side-by-side on the walk. Perhaps because of the “commanding presence” large insects have, along with the moth’s finely patterned wings and aesthetic coloration, Scott was suitably impressed. I sure was….
            After admiring it for a minute we headed back to the dining room but, rounding the corner, I glanced back. “Oh! There’s a mouse!” We stopped to look: one of our native Deermice was making its way up the walkway right toward us, darting in and out of shadow, following the lab’s wall in mouse-fashion. It’s somehow humorous to see a mouse’s furtive nocturnal scurrying out in the open. I thought, wordlessly, How tiny! How utterly vulnerable and defenseless! We both stood watching it come toward us and I also thought that if my cat was around….
             Just then it finally dawned on me what was going to happen and I said in a whisper,  “It’s going for the moth.” (Lots of people aren’t aware that mice are omnivores and some, like the Grasshopper Mouse, mostly carnivorous.) Sure enough, the Deermouse turned away from  the wall and, in a final bee-line rush, it fell upon the lovely (but hapless) Cerisy’s Sphinx.
            There was no ghastly roar, no battle-churned dust cloud, no shrieks of agony, no gore. But this brief drama encapsulated the same brutality and primal violence of a Cheetah dragging down a Gazelle. Except in miniature. The struggle lasted only seconds—but long, long ones: attacking, mouse seized moth (perhaps a bit more than half mouse’s size and weight). Seized it with deft, clawed toes, and sank its minute fangs into the neck region. There was some tumbling, some fluttering of wings, and it was over. Carrying its prey in its jaws, a suddenly-fearsome, ruthless predator dashed forward, still coming straight toward the stunned witnesses and disappeared under a sagebrush bush right at our feet where it would gorge itself on warm moth-flesh in safety. Scott, obviously shaken by the savagery, said, “That was intense!”
            “Welcome…to…the Wild Kingdom,” I intoned. Scott was too young to have heard of Marlon Perkins. Or about the very first TV nature-show. But he knew exactly what I meant.
           
Later, in daylight, I went out and parted that sagebrush bush’s low-lying branches and, sure enough, there were the moth’s beautiful wings—neatly clipped off at their base and discarded like hooves or horns or hide. The gorgeous, earthy colors and tasteful patterns reminded me of an Indian blanket so I gingerly picked them up and put them in a little wooden box with other of my found treasures.                                                                                       


                                                                                                            27 Jun 2006, 3 Nov 2013


© 2013 Tim Forsell
All rights reserved.