Urban Nature Observations

Once, in a land not too far away, there was a great prince named Mr. Charms.

For the first 25 years of his life, no one knew that his birth was great and that he was royalty.

After living for a long time in small quarters with very little good food to eat, his caretaker died, and he had to move to another part of the kingdom.

A gentle fairy named Michelle took him under her wing, where he lived for a time, eating well and receiving love and warmth and medicine to cure what ailed him. It was there that two people, Michael and Cordelia, became aware that Mr. Charms was living nearby. They had only heard myths about a prince named Mr. Charms who had magical powers, so when they heard that he was looking for his rightful home they came and got him as soon as they were able.

Mr. Charms moved into his family’s castle, and began to give the gift of joy to Michael and Cordelia. He entertained them with his beautiful singing, his comedy, and his quiet wisdom.

However, though he loved them both, he bonded most closely with Michael, and they became great friends.

Michael would play banjo and Mr. Charms would sing along. They would watch theatre together, and would sometimes spend hours telling each other important secrets. They settled into a nice routine of chats over breakfast, naps together, and the occasional duet.

This great friendship lasted a year, at which time Mr. Charms told Michael that his time was up. You see, Mr. Charms was not just a prince of this kingdom; he was a prince of the world. Mr. Charms explained that he had to move on and share his magic with everyone, not just us.

Mr. Charms turned into a lovely grey cockatiel with a yellow head and rosy cheeks. He and Michael and Cordelia said goodbye, and Mr. Charms flew away over the rainbow bridge.

Mr. Charms
1980-2007

I have a gift. I don’t know who or what gave it to me, but sometimes I use it to help myself or help others.

I have an acquaintance in my speech club, a wonderfully adorable man named Robbie. The other day Robbie gave me a present from his hometown of Montego Bay, Jamaica. He gave me a wooden statue of some birds. I don’t know what kind of birds they were. The “leg” on each bird was a single peg, and each leg fit into a hole in a little tree. I liked this gift very much.

Now, you see, I asked Robbie to bring me back a bird-like something from Jamaica when he went. I even offered to pay him, but he refused, which I thought was really sweet. In any case, it got me to thinking about gifts.

One of the saddest things I remembered about volunteering at the Wildlife Rescue is that I was often reminded that humans used to take gifts from animals that weren’t offered. Still do. In short, even though we can doesn’t mean we should.

For example, late in the 19th century the plumes of Snowy Egrets were used to adorn ladies hats. As a result, the birds were hunted until they were nearly extinct.

Anyway, I started thinking about the gifts that animals - human, avian, mammal, and so on - give without inflicting harm on another living being.
Just today, a friend of mine came by. We chatted for an hour, had a little tea, and then she left. It was lovely. I don’t get enough of that in my life, and I can’t tell you how beautiful that short visit was. This friend is so kind, so sweet, and I felt incredibly grateful that she took time out of her day to spend some time with me.

Other human gifts include, but are not limited to:

- strong, sincere hugs, noses touching and an intentional, sweet, glittering gaze

- sincere praise, even when one is too tired to muster a sound

- giggle, snort, need I say more

- making music, making love

Gifts from animals that are offered:

- a sweet song in the morning

- a sideways, inquisitive, meaningful gaze

- a sincere desire to live life on their own terms

- truly untold beauty, as in the delicate white feathers of a snowy egret

It’s been an interesting Christmas break. In addition to having a sick cockatiel at home, I volunteered to feed the animals at the wildlife rescue on Christmas day. I was to feed them once in the morning, and once at night.

It was a bit of a strange morning. I couldn’t get a hold of the SPEVC to see if they had any animals for us, so I called another volunteer who said she had picked up a gull the night before, and that I would need to hydrate it. There was also a squirrel there who was having urinary tract issues, and a Robin who had bonked its head, probably on a window.

I took my husband with me that morning, and we found the seagull dead, lying peacefully under a towel, its smelt untouched. I wasn’t sure why it was under a towel, so I made up a story that a seagull angel came in the night and covered it so it would be warm on its journey to its next life. It would definitely need that towel, I surmised, because I had to transfer it to the dead animal freezer.

I didn’t feel as sad as I normally would, probably because I wasn’t there when it died. But I always take some solace in the fact that it died someplace warm and quiet and dark, and not suffering in the cold, alone and without hope.

The black squirrel was a big black husky mammal, growling and scared. Mike helped me give it some Pedialyte and its meds, but for the most part we left it alone. It peed on me once, but it seemed to have some issues, so I could only hope for the best.

I didn’t give much thought to the Robin. He was pretty easy, was self-feeding, and would probably be released soon. He looked at me strangely when I would check in on him, but as I said I didn’t give much thought to him. I knew that he would be free soon.

But then when I thought again of the Robin I thought about my sister, who was named Robin. My sister died in 1989, at the age of 29. Her boyfriend at the time, Dave Coleman, killed her. He shot her and dumped her body in a park far from her home. She was later found by an elderly man walking his dog, her body stuffed in a sleeping bag.

My brother-in-law Jimmy had to identify her. None of us ever saw her again, and her remains were cremated. My brother Craig would join her five years later, after being hit by a train. In 2002 my brother Brian was killed in a car accident. At that point we decided to dispense with the formalities and scatter his ashes in the Mad River.

Where am I going with this? Hmmm. Well, it’s that sometimes I see people I have known staring back at me through animals, mostly birds. I was probably anthropomorphizing that poor Robin, but I guess he was there for a purpose, to remind me to never forget.

Every morning I drive to work and I look for birds on this one particular stretch of road. My gazes are fleeting - I only have a few seconds to observe these particular birds. They are waking up with the sun, warming their feathers and nares and tiny talons. They are pigeons, gulls, and blackbirds.

In winter I think alot about the birds at night. Huddled together in their nests, conserving their energy and trying to stay warm. And hummingbirds (mostly male) are in a state of torpor every night. Torpor is a state of regulated hypothermia. A hummingbird, in torpor, slows its heartrate from 1260 bpm to a staggering 150 bpm when it goes to sleep at night. This is so it can conserve its energy to wake up the next day. When a hummingbird rises with the sun, it takes 10 minutes to an hour for it to raise its heartrate back to 1260 bpm and begin its day searching for food. When female hummingbirds are laying eggs and raising hatchlings, they do not go into torpor because they must stay warm to keep their children warm.

Every day that I think of cold and warmth I think about life’s torpor, human torpor. I experience it alot, I try to get unstuck, to warm up, to begin each day anew. And I turn to the birds to find some insight. Sometimes my parrots and I watch the gulls fly overhead, and our hearts lift and long to fly away with them. I imagine what it must be like to wake with a clear view of the mountains and the sun and a pink sky, and to feel the sun on my face and the vibrations of the earth.

Where do you find your energy, your inspiration…what wakes you from your torpor? A slight breeze to lift your wings might be all you need.

May all beings be peaceful
May all beings be happy
May all beings be safe
May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature
May all beings be free

- Metta Prayer

It’s been a day of assertions, confirmations, and things that make me sad.

You may think, if you read these posts at all, that I am a sad person. I am not. I just feel what people feel, and I feel it deeply. However, sometimes I don’t always understand how to process it. I guess you could say that I lack certain life skills.

Do you ever wonder where your mother or father was when you needed to learn certain life skills? Not the easy ones, like brushing your teeth, cleaning behind your ears, saying please, thank you, no thank you…I mean where were they when you needed to understand how to let go of someone you love, that acceptance isn’t always unconditional, that asserting your needs and desires is important because it shows that you love yourself, and yet it doesn’t feel as good as being loved by another. It’s an understandably lonely place.

As human animals, we can make choices using our hearts that can change when the mind tries to apply logic to the heart. Non-human animals, like birds, follow their hearts and do what comes naturally. They meet each other, they sing to one another, they fall in love, and they make a family. When their offspring are old enough they teach them life skills. How to find food, how to fly, how to say no (in bird of course), and how to say I love you by preening every little feather.

Yet birds are good at letting go, they understand that their children must learn to move on, so they give them the skills and the love they need to do that. Love is the foundation.

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”

-Kahlil Gibran

All beings are life’s longing for itself. Know that you cannot own anything or anyone, you can only love with great feeling.

I didn’t make it to wildlife rescue last week. I came down with a stomach bug and I was also way tired. I missed it, but I needed the break.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been almost three weeks since I’ve written. It comes in waves, all of a sudden I’ll have the urge and out it comes. Wish it was like this every day - but I cannot force it.

It’s baby crow season around the bay area. They are perching in the pines above my bank, looking inquisitively down at me while I eat lunch (they don’t take “bait” especially the croissant I was enjoying). I think my peers at work think I’m nuts - I’m always looking up and talking to the birds or chatting with the dragon flies in the duck pond. Oh well, it will give them something to talk about other than protocols.

Sigh. Well, I think I might be a little nuts sometimes, too. At least I felt a little weird at wildlife a few weeks back. First…dizzy. Then…curious. Finally…thoughtful.

Some of my buddies at wildlife don’t like to see a dead animal or watch one become euthanized. However, two weeks ago one of the animal care coordinators (Carrie) asked me if I wanted to “help with” a pigeon. I had seen it come in, saw the sideways glance and heard the dire prognosis. But you see, on earth when we euthanize an animal it’s about ending suffering and time is not wasted. I wish we could be quicker with humans, too. I mean, I wonder what are we waiting for with some of these lost souls hooked up to machines, dreaming of their next life. If I was in a terminal state and could talk I would say “let me go so I can see what lies ahead of me!” How exciting!

But I digress.

Jeannie and I held the pigeon’s wing out so that Carrie could administer the drug. She blew the vein, and it took a little longer for the pigeon to die. However, I don’t believe I saw it struggle or suffer - it was dying from severe malnutrition and weighed half what it should. She covered its face, and when it finally died and she saw me look at it longingly, and she covered the rest of its body. I don’t know if she thought I was weird or in shock - really I was just dizzy. When the pigeon’s soul finally left its body I physically felt it take a little of me with it. It was a feeling I had never had before. It was almost a relief, too, because I finally got to witness death.

Maybe that’s why Carrie was wondering about me, but I wanted to “hold on” to the feeling of loss. For the last 15 years or so all of the grieving I needed to do was kept from me in some way, either by myself or by others. But that’s another rumination altogether, and not about wildlife. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to write about the pigeon. But it’s not all about me, I remember. I hope that sweet bird got to see what lies ahead of it.

Wild Thursdays are so fresh Thursday night that I should really remember to blog that night. But spending the evening at wildlife rescue is like going to a great concert. You get home, you can’t sleep, and all you can think about is how much fun you had.

It’s squirrel season, and squirrels are CUTE. Friggin’ cute. I’ll say it again. They are cute. Why the hangup about cute squirrels you ask? Read on.

The animal care coordinators at the wildlife rescue I volunteer at are young. Smart, but young. Given that they deal with young, inexperienced volunteers and also women in their 30s with a hankerin’ for baby animals, they decided to put out a rules sheet and have us sign it.

I’m cool with most everything on the sheet. Don’t walk around with an animal, don’t talk too much (stresses the animal), close the door when you’re running the blender, call if you’re going to be late, out, etc. However, there’s one rule I don’t get.

Because these animals are wild, we are not supposed to refer to them as cute. Kinda silly. As one of the other volunteers, Juliann, said, we wouldn’t be here if the animals weren’t cute, and she doubts any squirrels or baby great egrets will be knocking on our doors anytime soon because we boosted their ego with a little sweet talk. ;-p Now, if it was mealworm rescue I could understand. But if you are ever asked to feed a baby squirrel and your knees become weak from watching it grip the little milk bottle you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Speaking of mealworms. Mockingbirds that are a little bigger than babies (teenagers maybe?) that come in to the rescue are fed the Basic Nestling Diet and mealworms. What I love about feeding these birds is that they are such awesome gapers, and it’s so wonderful to me that a wild bird would go, “wow, cool, food…worms” and take it right from the medical tweezers from whence it came. I’m honored that a wild animal would trust me enough to feed it and accept the food willingly.

Sigh. I’m not too inspired tonight, but I would like to say that I held my first big bird by myself (the crow being the only other exception), to give it meds. It was a pigeon, and when I went to go and retrieve it from its cage, it GROWLED at me. I was so shocked that I laughed a little and asked Jeanie what I should do. She said, well, he might bat you with his wings and bite you, but it won’t be that bad. That said, I sequestered pigeon-dog in a towel and all he did was look honestly up at me. All bark and no beak.

I started reading a book the other day called Ecopsychology. The premise, it seems, is that if we live in harmony with the natural world we will help the planet and help ourselves.

I see why people struggle. You see, I go to work every day, like everyone else. Many people like their job, even I do somedays. I work at a really big company with many nice people, but it’s all about making the shift once you leave for the day. It’s so hard to return to the natural world. And as my friend Jo likes to say - “money and momentum” does something to people. When I finally get out in nature, either by hiking or observing the hummingbirds and mourning doves that visit my little porch, I’m struck by the fact that the wild is foreign to me, but I know it’s someplace I have to get back to. It’s a hunger, a longing, a very deeply rooted feeling.

But here’s the rub. The natural world is so removed from us now. We try to “escape” to national parks and we try to bring some of the natural world to us through our gardens and our pets. I know why people struggle - they have been entrenched in concrete for so long that they have forgotten their place in the natural world, and when it makes the occasional visit - a snake in a basement, or a rat in a storm drain, our first impulse is to kill, and in doing so we kill another part of the wildness within us. In the river of life we are in boats with no windows and few opportunities to jump in to the ocean and swim alongside. The waters are murky and we are afraid we will see who we truly are when we part the silt.

How do we begin to heal? I know I’m getting close to something but I too fear the waters sometimes.

Last night I went to a beautiful wedding reception at a placed called Blake’s at Boundary Oak in Walnut Creek. The other couple that were supposed to be at our table couldn’t make it, so from our table I had a clear view of the golf course, the mountains, and an amazing sunset. As we stepped outside to enjoy the remains of the day, I had this feeling that I wanted to go take a nap in the grass next to the duck pond below. I wanted to feel the earth below me, and in my head I welcomed the sprinklers.

Magical creatures are everywhere. You can find them just by looking up. Just think of it - the stars, the moon, the sun, the clouds, the mountains, the birds.

Yesterday my husband Mike and I decided to beat the heat and go up to San Francisco for the day. Turns out it we wouldn’t beat the heat at all, but at least it was only in the 90s.

We had no real plan, only to go up to SF and get near the water. We accomplished that by taking CalTrain up to the last stop, and then we took the N Judah and the F Line to the end of the line. There past the warfs is the marina district where there is a little beach. We watched people enjoying their day - bicycling, swimming, and we even got to see a bit of a Regatta! Funny that the sound of a cannon firing can bring a smile to your face.

Mike and I were hungry, so we wandered over to Pizz’a Chicago, only to find it wasn’t there anymore. I suggested we walk over to North Beach and eat at a cafe over there, which is a hike up quite a few steep streets, from the marina in to the Russian Hill area of SF. Lovely houses and streets in this area. Little alleyways, stolen glances of someone’s personal zen (there sits a Buddha in the garden!), a few small steep stairs that lead to a basement or otherwise, and a leaning house never fixed after the last quake.

After some significant hiking up some unforgiving hills, we found ourselves in the stranges of places, the bottom of Lombard Street. For those of you who might not know SF this is the street that is supposedly the most crooked street in SF. It’s lined with beautiful landscaping and people that are trying to sell their houses on both sides. And it’s full of tourists doing what? Watching people drive down Lombard Street. It’s really one of those WTF? moments, though it is a neat-looking street.

But herein lies the secret. Those silly tourists know nothing about good vacation deals.

Next time you are at the bottom of Lombard Street looking up at that street turn around and head down Lombard Street toward North Beach. Walk about a half block until you see a tree with pods on it and look up.

There, in the tree, you might see about five cherry-headed and green-cheeked conures, having their brunch and talking about their day. It might sound like “honk” and “you don’t say?” and “caliente!” (which is conure-speak for it’s bloody hot today).

So when you’re outside tomorrow, remember to look up - you’ll never know what you’ll see.