6:44 a.m. 54 degrees, wind SSE 2 mph. Sky: gray and overcast, a foggy, misty, drizzly dawn that builds to rain, steady and fluent. The constant sound of dripping leaves, mostly burnt-orange and auburn; many let go, drifting specks of color—the enthusiasm of autumn. Permanent and intermittent streams gather and channel rain and runoff. Wetlands and pond receive what the sky and Earth offers. Black cherries and white ash, leaves down, reveal a metropolis of webworm tents. One cherry hosted thirty-one; an ash thirty . . . no wonder cuckoos arrived this summer for the smorgasbord.
First bird of the morning: hairy woodpecker, sharp tongue in dim light. Then, a second and a third. Two crows pass over, as silent as flowers; feathers soaked. I glimpse a sparrow, a pair of juncos, and a few chickadees, high in spruce. Many nuthatches, both species, move through the damp woods, proceeded by their voices. No sign of kinglets.
Before I moved to Vermont, I had an assortment of jobs: a national park naturalist, a loon biologist, a sanctuary manager, a busboy in Yosemite, and an Atlantic lifeguard, where I studied the sky and gray chop, noting birds as well as bobbing heads. I've taught, tutored, dug fence holes, stained houses, caddied, shoveled snow, moved lawns, and been a night watchman. My favorite job was as an educator at the Bronx Zoo. The menagerie was my teaching tool, and I had access to most zoo babies, including a mountain lion kitten named Carlos, confiscated by federal agents at the Port of New York. When Carlos joined the Zoo, he was seven weeks old, soft and spotted, no bigger than a corgi, and very playful.
As he grew, his spots disappeared. He became tawny, like a summer whitetail. Together, we invented a game that we played in the auditorium during lunch hour. I'd unleash Carlos, and he'd disappear into a maze of bolted down chairs. Then, I would jog up and down the aisles until unseen and silent, Carlos sprang phantom-like from behind a row of chairs, grabbed my legs, tackling me. We played until I hurt.
Carlos was aware of everything: ducks overhead; elk grazing in the distance; an errant rat or squirrel; bison along the banks of the Bronx River. Everything held his interest. He was, after all, a cat . . . a considerable cat—iron tough and independent, which was why the Zoo limited his contact with people after eight months. But for the remainder of his short life—Carlos died of pneumonia in his third year—he remembered me. And, purred.
In 1997, Vermont's first conservation license plate featured a peregrine falcon. The second conservation plate, released in 2006, featured a catamount the Northeast alias for the mountain lion, Puma concolor. (A beast that roams two continents, from southern Alaska to Patagonia, collected many names, including panther, puma, cougar, and painter.) On Thanksgiving morning in 1881, a cat was shot in Barnard, the last reliable sighting of a Vermont lion. (It's mounted and on exhibit at the statehouse in Montpelier.)
Last year, Vermont added three new conservation plates: white-tailed deer, common loon, brook trout. Although the license plates are attractive, I would have preferred less charismatic animals, animals in need of recognition. Say, pine marten or lake sturgeon or common tern or Jefferson's salamander. My personal preference: a timber rattlesnake.
And, in the future, if the state wants to grace our conservation plates with an animal we can no longer conserve, I'd nominate the passenger pigeon.
This: "Carlos sprang phantom-like from behind a row of chairs, grabbed my legs, tackling me. We played until I hurt... the Zoo limited his contact with people after eight months. But for the remainder of his short life—Carlos died of pneumonia in his third year—he remembered me. And, purred." Ouch, my heart. Didn't see that coming.
Thank you, Ted. The power of story to illustrate a bond across the species boundary and that you had the opportunity to help improve the quality of life of such a magnificent wild creature constrained to live in captivity. Who among us can say we were once a close friend to a young mountain lion? Love that you got to be a playmate to Carlos and invented the auditorium stalking game together. Cats are magical like that. They're good hockey goalies with tinfoil ball.
There is a pair of mountain lions at Squam Lakes Natural Sciences Center in Holderness NH. I visited as soon as I could when they first arrived and just that once. Watched a cat watching a group of children approaching the glass and then the crouch, wiggle, coil and pounce. The adults all laughed a little nervously behind the glass and I thought about that child had the glass not been there... thought about child, mountain lion, food chain. Uncomfortable and beautiful.
Bronx Zoo. I was captivated by reptile exhibit... too young then to think about ethics of zoos. Biophilia finds a way to children and vice versa in formative years. Mice, frogs, baby birds. Maybe feels like a consolation for keeping wild animals in cages and exhibits that zoos are for education and species conservation -- better than wild animals as circus entertainment. Sometimes people visiting seem like an exhibit. Myself included.