My Friends the Gulls

NSP Meditations , , ,

 

Some 15 years ago, I heard a story about an employee of a coastal restaurant who beat a one-legged gull to death with a stick out back of the establishment. Apparently the gull served as the establishment’s mascot, and for whatever reason, if sociopathic behavior can be said to have logical reasons, the employee bashed the bird to death.

The man who recounted the incident to me heard about it from an eyewitness who later called the police. An investigation ensued, but the perpetrator wasn’t arrested, even though killing a gull constitutes a crime under federal migratory bird law, punishable by a maximum fine of $15,000 and a maximum prison sentence of two years, depending on the offense.


The tale of the senseless and horrific murder of a gull has never left my mind. I can also never forget driving behind a pick up truck and watching a male driver purposely swerve into the shoulder of Highway 20 and kill a gull. Who are these people? What happened to their moral development? What books do they read to their children?

Frankly, I much prefer gulls to most human beings. They are my close friends on Oregon’s ocean beaches and have many advantages over us. For one thing, they can fly and ride the thermals with an effortless grace I envy. I prefer their clucking language to English. They also don’t talk on cell phones in restaurants. Nor do they use leaf blowers, murder one other over religion, experiment on primates, or snort methamphetamine. They don’t hashtag, either. Yes, they do eat terrible fast food but only because some human being came to her senses and threw it away.

Gulls are such a ubiquitous presence on the Oregon Coast, but really, do we know all that much about them? Should we?

I don’t know who wrote it, but somewhere I read something to the effect that, “It behooves us to know the names and interesting details of the sentient creatures we see and interact with every day.” I have at least one wonderful interaction a day with a gull and I can’t say the same about human beings.

Gulls fascinate me and I’d like to take this opportunity to educate people about them. For that I am indebted to a charming little book called Gulls: A Social History, written by Frank Graham Jr. with photographs by Christopher Ayers, published in 1975. In this long out-of-print book, Graham writes: “We would be poorer without gulls than they would be without us; these beautiful and fascinating creatures add to the marvelous natural diversity that enriches our lives.”

Amen to that.

For starters, there is no such creature as a seagull. There are 44 different species of gulls and some live as long as 20 years. I learned about their interesting mating, interspecies breeding, migratory patterns, and that even the sharpest birders have difficulty telling many of the species apart.

I also learned that not all that long ago, many local populations of gulls were nearly wiped out across North America by eggers, milliners, and the government, the latter spreading poison to arrest the proliferation of certain species in favor of other birds. It’s a ghastly tale, biologists killing wildlife to save certain (politically) preferred species, and still plays out today, (think hatchery salmon over euthanized sea lions on the Columbia).

Yet the gulls survived, by adapting to various wasteful human trends, like landfills, and as Graham writes, “We are contemporaries in a sense, riding the runaway vehicle that is the modern industrial world.” He wrote that two years after the Arab Oil Embargo and 26 years before the debut of the ipod. One does sort of think that when human beings wind down their time on Earth, which is inevitable, gulls will remain. They’ll adapt and keep on flying.

Mercy (Part 2)

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , ,

It was well past midnight, and a light mist fell, enveloping everything. He turned off the vehicle and exited to inspect the deer. His nostrils took in a full cloud of delayed exhaust, and it nearly gagged him. But even through this noxious smell he detected the pungent scent of an animal not yet dead but in the throes of dying a painful death. It was the same scent his dog Casey had released in his last minutes before expiring from salmon poisoning a few years ago.

Below, he heard the Wilson River, not really William Stafford’s river anymore, more of a man-made channel, riprapped on both sides, armored against the cycles of nature, full of hatchery salmon, full of silt produced from the erosion of logging on 45-degree slopes, and later downstream, full of shit from the dairy herds that produced the local famous but virtually tasteless cheese.

The deer somewhat arched its head at him and he could see the black rolling eyes, blood leaking from the mouth, nose and ears. The sternum was crushed and bore the purple imprint of a vehicle that in all likelihood was traveling at an unnecessary high speed that the driver justified because he had to press home to the coast to escape the big city haste. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if a driver drove the speed limit, he could avoid a deer that bolted into the road.

Here he was, confronted with the impatient outcome of the ninety and the nine. He surveyed the nearby landscape. Even in the dark he could make out that virtually every tree for miles around was a Douglas fir, the state tree, waiting to be clearcut in the coming months and decades, or be afflicted by blight because Douglas firs weren’t supposed to exist here, plantation style, in a densely packed monoculture setting. But they were, and the people who drove by this plantation still thought of it as a forest, as did the foresters from the state’s forestry school. They managed the plantation like a doctor who bled his patients to treat certain fevers of the mind.

Traversing over congealed blood, he walked up to the animal and knelt. It gurgled fluid. Its nose was cleaved. One leg hung by a shred of tendon. One eye was pulverized down to the socket. He thought: I am going to have to put this deer down. For a minute he didn’t know if this sentence posed a question or declared an affirmative statement.

The word obligation entered his mind, as in the obligation to the natural world Gary Snyder once wrote about in an essay. After that fleeting thought, he wished another driver would come along.

That wasn’t going to happen tonight and he knew it. He was in undiscovered country here, as were most people who lived within one hundred miles of the deer. They didn’t know why the sky was blue, that the sound in space was b flat, what elevation they stood at, that no such species as a seagull or starfish existed, that we came from the sea, what a real tomato tasted like, or any conception that the watershed they lived in should be the geographical unit they pledged allegiance to, not an invented and self serving political entity. But a lot of these people who lived within one hundred miles of the destroyed deer knew for a fact that polar bears were not cannibalizing one another in the warming Arctic, that urban homosexuals had forged a conspiracy to ruin the country and that Jesus had blonde hair and blue eyes and quite obviously did not really mean that people would have to give up all their wealth as a precondition to follow him and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. A camel could fit through the eye of the needle if a radio talk show host or a preacher said it could.

He didn’t have a gun. Rifling through the vehicle he found a hatchet and a tire iron. He then remembered the Leatherman in the glove department, a gratuitous Christmas gift he had used twice–to slice a cheese sandwich and cut a loose cord on a tennis net.

As he walked toward the deer, he opened the serrated blade. He positioned himself, steadied the animal’s head with his left hand, hesitated, swerved for a moment, and then drove the blade into the throat. The deer moved, but barely. Life was leaving its body. He whispered to the deer, apologizing for everything, even himself. As he began to cry, he started cutting left and right, up and down. It took all his strength. This was not like cutting defrosted chicken. He suppressed an urge to vomit. Entrails burst forth from the deer’s stomach. Something smelled sweet. Blood erupted onto his face and chest but he kept cutting. Soon the motion changed to sawing. The wilderness was not listening.

As he worked, he thought hard: One day, when the time comes, would there be someone to put him down, to put us all down? And what is the color when black is burned?

Mercy (Part 1)

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , , , , ,

Traveling through the dark on the Wilson River Road he saw something bulky, misshapen, moving in a strip of foliage a few feet off the shoulder. It moved slowly, awkwardly, crawling not toward or away from the road, more like crawling in a circle.

He slowed, turned off the music, powered down the passenger side window, looked, but could not verify what he assumed was some nocturnal creature. He sped up, but fifty yards later, seized by curiosity, he stopped his vehicle. Normally he would have never stopped, but earlier that evening, in Portland, he had heard a prominent environmental journalist from New York tell a packed audience sitting in the most environmentally friendly office building in the world, that Americans lacked curiosity about the ongoing and obvious destruction of the natural world and did so at great peril to their continued existence. Her new book documented it all. It was a tour de force according to reviewers, and although he didn’t know anyone to give the extra copy to, he bought two books, which she signed with an impressive signature. Her autograph alone made the four-hour round trip from his home on the Oregon Coast through the Coast Range to Portland, worth it. Certainly this was not a superfluous trip. It had purpose beyond his edification. How excited he would be the next morning in class, showing off the book to his high school government students, and trying to convey the urgency of the journalist’s clarion call by writing some of her harrowing statistics on the white board and quoting from memory some of the sayings the ancient holy men had said about caring for the world. As a result, for a week, his students might drive a little less, buy less crap, redeem their soda cans and bottles for the deposit, disassociate Christianity from capitalism, practice what is known as ‘shallow ecology’ and consider that the meek certainly shall not inherit the Earth. No one would. Rather, everyone and everything would live out an unscripted gritty and groveling aftermath when the Earth finally played itself out. Of course, in this scenario, the meek shall die first. They always did.

He shifted the vehicle into reverse and backed up. He passed whatever form caught his attention in the strip and he angled his vehicle in the shoulder so the headlights cast their brilliance on the mystery. What he saw: illuminated, writhing counter clockwise, ten feet away, a deer, a buck, splayed in the gravel, contorted at horrific angles, oozing, gasping, convulsing, and outlined by the detritus of Fast Food Nation, an unused condom still in its packaging, a smashed CD, cigarette butts, dented cans of tasteless corporate lager, and various non-native plants such as English ivy, Scotch broom and Himalayan blackberry. Collectively, these things served as a shrine of sorts, but not a shrine to the wounded deer.

He knew this scenario was coming. In recent months, precursors had assaulted him: when he picked up a shovel to finish off the mortally wounded gray squirrel in the yard one of the dogs had partially gutted; when he searched for a suitable piece of driftwood to finish off a delirious Western Gull stranded on the beach, its right wing eviscerated by a coyote; when driving to work only two weeks ago and encountering a deer, a fawn, grotesquely prone in the roadway, flattened, but still twitching, a victim of a landscaper’s flatbed pickup, which had overturned and spilled herbicide and pesticide in all directions. The accident occurred a few vehicles in front of him, in broad daylight, on Highway 101 in Lincoln City, and the carnage immediately halted traffic in both directions while calls went into the authorities. He waited in his idling vehicle, watching the deer spasm. A few drivers, all obese, with coffee in hand, exited their vehicles, congregated, pointed at the chemical spill, and talked to the driver of the pickup. One chatted on a cell phone while eating a maple bar. They all seemed utterly indifferent to the suffering animal. He felt a rising urgency inside him as the scene dragged on. Would none of these people do anything? He wanted to pound the horn, prompt someone to some action, any action, but suddenly it dawned upon him that everyone was probably waiting for a police officer with a sidearm to fire a bullet into the head of the deer and succinctly and humanely conclude the drama. Before the police officer arrived, however, traffic started to flow in both directions. He began to accelerate, and just as he passed the deer, at most ten feet from his vehicle, he flinched and turned away from looking at it. Instead, he swung his head to the other side of the highway and locked eyes with a four-foot, red and green gnome standing in the window of a lawn and garden shop.

Rain Things

NSP Meditations, Of Walking in Rain , ,

I took a walk in Friday rain, a morning walk, and thought about the blue REI raincoat I was wearing. I have owned it for 33 years and walked in rain on four continents with it. It is a trusted friend, much like the pea coat I have owned for 22 years. It is good to have garments like that, such as the black leather belt I’ve had for 26 years and the green Puma sneakers I’ve had for 30. I also still use the sleeping bag I took to Europe, Asia and Mexico 30 years ago. I’ve slept out in the rain in that bag. I long for a new rain dog, like Ray, Sonny and Jo Jo. I just move so much better in rain with a dog. New rain territory is beckoning. I mean that both in the literal and metaphorical sense. I’m watching rain fall upon a cedar as I write this. I hear the squeaking of swing set nearby. Someone is swinging in the rain. Tonight there will be high school football in rain, but unfortunately for the players, many of them will have to play on fake grass, made from oil. There will be no poetry in that. This is soup weather and I will whip up something soupy for lunch. I received a nice email from someone who once told me I redefined rain for her with my book about rain, which wasn’t about the weather at all. I’ve noticed more umbrellas for sale in thrift stores. You used to never see them. So much about Oregon is changing, even more or less rain, depending on where you live. We’re into October and the big rain blow that annually sweeps across Western Oregon is imminent. It will then be Sometimes a Great Notion time, to read and rain. This season, I’ll be listening to rain striking a metal roof. It will be occasionally deafening, and when that happens, I’ll smile, talk to myself aloud, and wish I had a dog.

Oregon Tavern Age: The Hearing

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age , , , ,

An OTA man and woman sat across from one another at a table near the bar. He drank a Bud draft. She nursed a well scotch and soda. They were a couple. I’d seen them in here a dozen times and they always kept to themselves and talked quietly.

I sat a table away writing a letter. Television played a hot rod show with the sound muted. Crap country was on the radio.

We were the only customers in the joint. It was noon on a weekday and rain was imminent. I could feel it in my sinew, and of course, the elk and gulls already knew.

A few days earlier, the Kavanaugh confirmation “hearing” had engrossed the nation and ripped through American life like an army of chainsaws through a forest, a very sick forest, I might add.

Their conversation drifted over to me like wispy clouds. They were talking about Kavanaugh and Ford and lying and liars. There were Fox News talking points and I distilled a a general agreement between them—Ford was a fraud. But I didn’t sense they were cheering.

Then the agreement disappeared, like a cloud undergoing instant evaporation. Their weather had changed abruptly, deadly, like weather can change at sea and kill boats an crews. I couldn’t discern why but I sure wanted to know why.

She stood up, and prepared to leave. She sat back down and worked the scotch. All I caught this time were table scraps from a story from his youth. Something about being drunk in high school with a girl, she got sick in his truck from drinking, and they had sex, more or less. I think the man was wrestling with the idea or nuances of consent, then and now.

I couldn’t hear a word of the woman’s response, but she was asking questions, I heard that.

Oregon Tavern Age: Screwdriver Western

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age , , , , , , ,

An OTA woman limped into the South Jetty. It was a Festus-from-Gunsmoke kind of limp. I reckoned she got it from either a lawnmower accident or a botched attempt shooting squirrel.

Outside, rain limped from the late morning sky. Everything was the color of the barrel of a shotgun.

I was sitting at a table writing an erotic story about a randy fish biologist. Or was it a preacher’s smoldering wife? I no longer recall but I do remember dumbing down my vocabulary.

The woman made her way to the bar, slowly. I ached with her every step.

She ordered a double screwdriver. “I haven’t had a drink since my husband died,” she said to the bartender. The bartender merely nodded.

The woman carried the screwdriver over to the video gaming area. I didn’t think the screwdriver would survive, but it did.

She set the drink on the table. She fished out a sawbuck and fed it to a machine. She bet it all on Flush Fever. She never sat down.

The bet was a loser. She picked up the screwdriver and chugged it. She set the empty glass on the table and limped to the front door. The door was wooden, thick and heavy but she pushed it open and limped into the pistol-whipping rain. Before the door slammed shut, I saw a mutt come up to her.

I quit the erotica right then and started a Western, an Oregon Western. She was my Sheriff and she could drink any man under the table. The meth people feared her. They feared her dog more. I needed a name. It wasn’t coming. It would once I ordered a double screwdriver and channeled her soul.

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