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Children Other Wild Animals 1st Edition Brian Doyle
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Brian Doyle
ISBN(s): 9780870717543, 0870717545
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 1.48 MB
Year: 2014
Language: english
Children & Other Wild Animals
’
Other Books by Brian Doyle
fiction
The Plover
Mink River
Cat’s Foot
Bin Laden’s Bald Spot & Other Stories
poems
A Shimmer of Something
Thirsty for the Joy: Australian & American Voices
Epiphanies & Elegies
nonfiction
The Grail: A Year Ambling & Shambling Through an
Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir
in the Whole Wild World
The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart
essay collections
The Thorny Grace of It
Grace Notes
Leaping: Revelations & Epiphanies
Spirited Men
Saints Passionate & Peculiar
Credo
Two Voices (with Jim Doyle)
Children & Other Wild Animals
Brian Doyle
Doyle, Brian.
[Essays. Selections]
Children and other wild animals : notes on badgers, otters, sons,
hawks, daughters, dogs, bears, air, bobcats, fishers, mascots, charles
darwin, newts, sturgeon, roasting squirrels, parrots, elk, foxes, tigers
and various other zoological matters / Brian Doyle.
pages cm
Summary: “Novelist and essayist Brian Doyle describes encounters
with astounding beings of every sort and shape in this collection of
short vignettes. The book gathers previously unpublished work along
with selections that have been published in Orion, The Sun, and The
American Scholar, among others.”
— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-87071-754-3 (paperback)
1. Title.
PR9199.3.D617A6 2014
814’.54—dc23
2014031809
Foreword 1
A Newt Note 7
In Otter Words 9
Imagining Foxes 11
Fishering 13
Walking the Pup 15
Twenty Things the Dog Ate 18
A Note on Mascots 21
The Unspoken Language of the Eyes 24
The Bishop’s Parrot 27
The Creature Beyond the Mountains 29
The Elkometer 43
This Particular Badger 46
Cyrus 49
Joyas Volardores 51
Raptorous 55
Reading the Birds 58
II. Brief Inquiries & Observances of the Wilder Animals We
Call Children for Lack of a Better Generic Label for Those
Most Headlong of Mammals; with Sidelong Glances at
Human Beings & the Seething Roaring
Natural World in Which We Swim
The Slather 71
Tigers 73
The Hymn of Him 76
Lost Dog Creek 79
The Anchoviad 81
Mammalian Observation Project: Subject J 84
Things My Kids Have Said That
They Do Not Know I Know They Said 86
Best Napper of the Year 89
The Brilliant Floor 93
The Killer of Jays 96
Maschinenpistole 99
My Salt Farm 102
How to Start Your Kitchen Garden 105
Melting a Car 108
Unfishing 111
The Greatest Nature Essay Ever 114
What the Air Carries 117
Charlie Darwin’s Garden 126
My Land 129
In the Hills of Willamina 132
The Best Soccer Player in the World … 134
A Note on Cricket 137
My Hero? 139
The Thaw 141
The Hawk 143
Moose Poop 146
That Chickadee Must be from Chicago 148
A Moment 150
Sandy 153
Hypoxia 156
What Does the Earth Ask of Us 158
Notes 163
Foreword
1
BRIAN DOYLE
2
Children & Other Wild Animals
—Cort Conley
3
I.
7
BRIAN DOYLE
is that while we were all down in the moist velvet dark of the
roots of the ferns, trying to be solicitious about Goofy and see
if he was busted anywhere serious but also trying not to laugh
and whisper the word doofus, one of us found a newt! o my
god! Dad! check it out!
Of course the newt, rattled at the attention, peed on the kid
who held it, and of course that led to screeching and hilarity,
and of course on the way home we saw damselflies mating,
which also led to screeching and hilarity, but the point of this
story isn’t pee or lust, however excellent a story about pee
or lust would be. It’s that one day when my kids and I were
shuffling through the vast wet moist forest, we saw so many
wonders and miracles that not one of us ever forgot any of
the wonders and miracles we saw, and we saw tiny shreds and
shards of the ones that are there, and what kind of greedy
criminal thug thieves would we be as a people and a species if
we didn’t spend every iota of our cash and creativity to protect
and preserve a world in which kids wander around gaping in
wonder and hoping nothing else rubbery and astonishing will
pee on them? You know what I mean?
8
In Otter Words
9
BRIAN DOYLE
10
Imagining Foxes
One time, many years ago, when the world and I were
young, I spent a day in a tiny cedar forest with my sister and
brother. This was in the marshlands of an island the first people
there called Paumonok. This little cedar forest was twelve city
blocks long by two blocks wide, for a total of 84 acres, and
there was a roaring highway at the northern end, and a seri-
ously busy artery road at the southern end, but when you were
in Tackapausha Preserve you were, no kidding, deep in the
woods, and you couldn’t hear cars and sirens and radios no
matter how hard you tried. We tried hard, my kid brother and
I, we sat silently for probably the longest time we ever had, up
to that point, but our sister was right, and we were deep in the
wild.
We saw woodpeckers and an owl and lots of warblers—this
was spring, and there were more warblers than there were taxi-
cabs on Fifth Avenue. We saw what we thought was a possum
but which may have been a squirrel with a glandular problem.
We saw muskrats in the two little ponds. We saw a humming-
bird, or one of us said he saw a hummingbird, but this was the
brother who claimed that saints and angels talked to him in
the attic, so I am not sure we saw a hummingbird, technically.
We did not see deer, although we did see mats of grass which
sure looked like places where deer would nap like uncles after
big meals, sprawled on their sides with their vests unbuttoned,
snoring like heroes. We saw holes among the roots of the white
cedars which were so clearly the dens of animals like foxes and
weasels and badgers that one of us looked for mail addressed
to them outside their doors. We saw scratch marks in the bark
of trees that one of us was sure were made by bears although
11
BRIAN DOYLE
our sister said she was not sure there were bears registered in
the Seaford School District, not to mention badgers either.
We saw many other amazing small things that are not
small, and we wandered so thoroughly and so energetically all
afternoon, that my kid brother and I slept all the way home
in the back seat of the car with our mouths hanging open like
trout or puppies, sleeping so soundly that we both drooled on
the naugahyde seat and our sister had to mop up after us with
the beach towel she always carried in the trunk for just such
droolery, but my point here is not what we saw, or even the
excellence of gentle patient generous older sisters; it’s about
what we did not see. We did not see a fox. I can assure you we
did not see a fox. I could trot out my brother and sister today
to testify that we did not see a fox. With all my mature and
adult and reasonable and sensible old heart I bet there were
zero foxes then resident in Tackapausha Preserve, between
Sunrise Highway and Merrick Road, in the county of Nassau,
in the great state of New York. But I tell you we smelled Old
Reynard, his scent of old blood and new honey, and we heard
his sharp cough and bark, and if you looked just right you
could see his wry paw prints in the dust by his den, and if
we never take our kids to the little strips of forests, the tiny
shards of beaches, the ragged forgotten corner thickets with
beer bottles glinting in the duff, they’ll never even imagine a
fox, and what kind of world is that, where kids don’t imagine
foxes? We spend so much time mourning and battling for a
world where kids can see foxes that we forget you don’t have
to see foxes. You have to imagine them, though. If you stop
imagining them then they are all dead, and what kind of world
is that, where all the foxes are dead?
12
Fishering
13
BRIAN DOYLE
14
Walking the Pup
15
BRIAN DOYLE
big telephone pole where all dogs leave messages, and then we
go by the tree where one time we saw a sharp-shinned hawk
almost catch a crow, that was a great day, and then we go
behind the bagel store and sniff around for old bagels, and
then we go by the coffee shop where the owner leaves a bowl
of water for dogs wandering by, and then we check behind
the pizza shop just in case, and then we head home through
the tiny park that used to be an orchard, where now there are
always baseballs and tennis balls and crows and cookies and
sneakers and worms and crickets and other good things to eat,
and then we stop at the creek for a guzzle, and usually right
about there one of us pees like a racehorse, and then we come
back downhill through the woods where the hope springs eter-
nal in both of us that there might be a deer or an elk or a bear.
One time when we were walking through those woods I
told her that me personally myself I thought it would be pretty
cool to someday encounter a wolverine in these woods, but
that this seemed unlikely, as there just aren’t as many wolverine
around as there used to be, although it seems to me that you
can never be totally sure you won’t meet a wolverine, because
just last year as scientists were saying with absolute conviction
that wolverine were absolutely incontrovertibly extinct here,
a woman ran over a wolverine on the highway, which seems
like pretty much a confirmed sighting of a wolverine to me.
Although the thing is that while the papers were then filled
with learned commentary about mustelid populations and
restoration of native species and all, I kept thinking about the
woman limping her dented car home and her husband asks
what happened to the car? and she answers I hit a wolverine,
which is a phrase you hardly ever hear.
16
Children & Other Wild Animals
While I was telling her this story the pup looked at me like
maybe I was saying something interesting, but I have since
concluded that what she was thinking is that a dead wolverine
would be something really cool to roll in, which I guess it would
be, if you like that sort of thing, which I do not, though I will
defend your right to roll in deceased members of the mustelid
family, this being a free country and all, which is cooler even
than rolling in what used to be a wolverine, you know what I
mean?
17
Twenty Things the Dog Ate
2. Young sparrow
I kid you not. Sparrow falls from nest in the pine by the fence,
flutters down ungainly to unmerciful earth, dog leaps off porch
like large hairy mutant arrow, gawps bird in half an instant.
Man on porch roars drop it! Dog emits bird with a choking
coughing sound, as if disgusted by a misplaced apostrophe.
Bird staggers for a moment and then flutters awkwardly up to
fencepost. I wouldn’t have believed this if I had not seen it with
my own holy eyeballs. Wonder how fledgling bird explained
that adventure to mom.
3. Crayons
I don’t even want to think about this ever again. Crayola. The
big box—sixty-four crayons, all colors. Sure, he barfed later.
Sure he did. Wouldn’t you?
18
Children & Other Wild Animals
4. Yellowjacket wasps
Every summer. Even though he gets stung again and again
in the nether reaches of his mouth and throat, and jumps up
whirling around in such a manner that we laugh so hard we
have to pee. He cannot resist snapping them out of the air as
if they were bright bits of candy, and then whirling around
making high plaintive sounds like a country singer on laughing
gas. I have to pee.
19
BRIAN DOYLE
skull appeared magically in the grass two days later. The Dog
declined to eat the skull a second time, probably for religious
reasons. After a while a crow carried it off, probably for religious
reasons. One of the great things about our country, I think, is
the range of religions here, each one odder than all the rest.
20
A Note on Mascots
21
BRIAN DOYLE
22
Children & Other Wild Animals
23
The Unspoken Language of the Eyes
24
Children & Other Wild Animals
25
BRIAN DOYLE
26
The Bishop’s Parrot
27
BRIAN DOYLE
28
The Creature Beyond the Mountains
There are fish in the rivers of Cascadia that are bigger and
heavier than your car. To haul the biggest ones out of the
Columbia River fishermen once used horses and oxen. These
creatures are so enormous and so protected by bony armor and
so averse to biting or eating people that no one picks on them,
so they grow to be more than a hundred years old, maybe two
hundred years old; no one knows. Sometimes in winter they
gather in immense roiling balls in the river, maybe for heat,
maybe for town meetings, maybe for wild sex; no one knows.
A ball of more than sixty thousand of them last year rolled
up against the bottom of a dam in the Columbia, causing a
nervous United States Army Corps of Engineers to send a small
submarine down to check on the dam. They eat fish, clams,
rocks, fishing reels, shoes, snails, beer bottles, lamprey, eggs,
insects, fishing lures, cannonballs, cats, ducks, crabs, basket-
balls, squirrels, and many younger members of their species;
essentially they eat whatever they want. People have fished
for them using whole chickens as bait, with hooks the size of
your hand. They like to follow motorboats, for reasons no one
knows. As with human beings, the males wish to spawn in
their early teens, but the females wait until their twenties. The
females then produce epic rafts of eggs, three or four million at
a time, from ovaries than can weigh more than two hundred
pounds. On average three of those eggs will grow to be mature
fish. Some of the fish that have been caught have been fifteen
feet long and weighed fifteen hundred pounds. There are docu-
mented stories and photographs of fish more than twenty feet
long and two thousand pounds. A fish that long would be as
tall as three Shaquille O’Neals and heavier than six. There is
29
BRIAN DOYLE
30
Children & Other Wild Animals
’
At the Sturgeon Viewing and Interpretive Center, at the
Bonneville Fish Hatchery, in Cascade Locks, Oregon, where
Tanner Creek empties into the Columbia River, near the im-
mense Bonneville Dam, there are three enormous sturgeon in
a large open pond. Two of them, each about eight feet long
and weighing about an eighth of a ton, have not as yet been
given names by human beings. The third is Herman, the most
famous sturgeon in Oregon. Herman is about eleven feet long
and weighs perhaps six hundred pounds. No one knows how
old he is. He might be ninety years old. There are references to
Herman the Sturgeon in hatchery records beginning in 1925.
It is thought that there have been several Hermans, some ex-
hibited annually at the Oregon State Fair. This Herman, who
is probably not the 1925 Herman, arrived at Bonneville twelve
years ago, a mere nine feet and four hundred pounds, then.
Many thousands of people come to see Herman every year,
as they visit the hatchery’s spawning rooms, holding ponds,
rearing ponds, and egg incubation building, all of which are
for salmon and steelhead; the three sturgeon here, and the pool
of massive rainbow trout, are show ponies only, sturgeon and
trout not being as close to extinction as salmon and steelhead.
This hatchery alone raises a million coho salmon, eight million
chinook, and three hundred thousand steelhead every year, for
release into various Oregon rivers. There are fish everywhere
at the hatchery, leaping and milling and swirling and startling
visitors, and it is remarkable and amazing and moving to see
so many miracles at once, so many mysterious beings, so many
individual adventures, so much excellent flaky accompaniment
to pinot noir, and to think where they will go and what they
will see, some of them headed into the deepest thickets of the
ocean, others into the bellies of animals of every size and shape,
31
BRIAN DOYLE
but pretty much every human visitor is here also to see Herman,
and I station myself in a dark corner of the center one afternoon
and view the human beings who come to view Herman.
There are nuns. There are schoolchildren. There is a man
wearing a cat on his shoulder. There is a woman wearing not
much more than a smile. There is a woman wearing white plas-
tic thigh boots and a baseball jacket. There is a deputy mayor.
There is a long-haul truck driver smoking a cigar that smells
like something died in his truck in Ohio. There are teenagers
holding hands. There is a man dressed head to toe in Seattle
Seahawks fan gear, including sneakers on which he has written
the number 8, for the star quarterback. There is a man with a
cane and a woman with a walker. There is a girl in a wheelchair.
There are tour groups, family outings, and a man wearing tux-
edo trousers and gleaming black shoes and a motorcycle gang
jacket. People eat and drink and joke and curse and smoke
and spit and gape and dawdle and laugh and several ask me
where’s Herman? I say I am a mere onlooker as well and my
experience is that he will hove into view after a while. Some
people don’t wait. Some people express annoyance with the
hatchery management and the lack of organization as regards
Herman’s appearance. Others mistake Herman’s eight-foot-
long companions for Herman. Others wait silently for Herman
to hove into view.
The most memorable viewing for me that day was a young
man with a small boy who appeared to be his son. The father
looked like he was about nineteen, with the wispy first mus-
tache and chin-armpit of a teenager. The boy, wearing a red
cowboy hat, seemed to be about three years old. The father
tried to line the boy up for a photograph, tried to get the kid to
stand still until Herman hove into view, but the boy skittered
here and there like a rabbit, the father alternately wheedling
32
Children & Other Wild Animals
and barking at him, and finally the boy stood still, but facing
the wrong direction, with his nose pressed against the glass,
and the father sighed and brought his camera down to his waist
at exactly the moment that Herman slowly filled the window
like a zeppelin. The boy leapt away from the window and his
hat fell off. No one said a word. Herman kept sliding past
for a long time. Finally his tail exited stage left and the boy
said, awed, clear as a bell, holy shit, Dad! The father didn’t say
anything and they stood there another couple of minutes, both
of them speechless, staring at where Herman used to be, and
then they walked up the stairs holding hands.
On the way home to Portland, as I kept an eye out for os-
prey along the banks of the Columbia, I thought of that boy’s
face as Herman slid endlessly past the window. It’s hilarious
what he said, it’s a great story, I’ll tell it happily for years, but
what lingers now for me is his utter naked amazement. He saw
ancientness up close and personal. He saw a being he never
dreamed was alive on this planet, a being he never imagined, a
being beyond vast, a being that rendered him speechless with
awe until he could articulate a raw blunt astonishment that
you have to admire for its salty honesty. He saw wonder, face
to face. Maybe wonder is the way for us with animals in the
years to come. Maybe wonder is the way past the last million
years of combat and into the next million years of something
other than combat. Maybe the look on that kid’s face is the
face of the future.
’
The woman who married me, a slight mysterious riveting
being not half as tall as Herman, grabs me by the beard in the
kitchen one day and says What is up with you and sturgeon,
why are you so fascinated with sturgeon? And I spend days
afterwards trying to answer these questions for myself.
33
BRIAN DOYLE
34
Discovering Diverse Content Through
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Transcriber’s Notes
Several minor punctuation errors have been fixed.
Page vi: changed “Fusi San” to “Fuji-San”.
Page vii: changed “Murdock” to “Murdoch”.
Page 44: changed “Rhone” to “Rhône”.
Page 50: changed “distined” to “destined”.
Page 107: changed “vendure” to “verdure”.
Page 142: changed “destoy” to “destroy”.
Page 144: moved the second Gibraltar illustration to the appropriate chapter.
Page 148: “Oxeraa” left in place; modern spelling is Öxará.
Page 152: changed “obsure” to “obscure”.
Pages 160 and 168: Both Tindafjall and Tindfjall have been retained as printed
in the original publication.
Page 166: changed “aneriod” to “aneroid”.
Page 205: changed “verdue” to “verdure”.
Page 208: changed “guage” to “gauge”.
Page 216: The open quotation mark before “There was a roaring ... has been
left unmatched as published.
Page 255: “Etna may be is” retained per original publication.
Page 269: changed “Gramnaticus” to “Grammaticus”.
Page 271: changed “quiescient” to “quiescent”.
Page 358: changed “preclude” to “prelude”.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREATEST
WONDERS OF THE WORLD, AS SEEN AND DESCRIBED BY
FAMOUS WRITERS ***
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