(HOST) This time of year, commentator Willem Lange can watch life-and-death dramas right outside his window.
(LANGE) At suppertime a doe walked past the dining room window. Her coat was all tatty. Her winter hair was falling out to be replaced by summer brown. She was alone, which was unusual, and had an unusual purpose in her gait. We watched her across the lower yard. A few seconds later she disappeared into the swamp.
Later – some time after midnight – Mother and the dog awoke to the howling of coyotes on the hill. Mother’s imagination filled in what she couldn’t see; it was not a happy night for her.
The woods out here are almost unbelievably vibrant with life. The early flowers have gone by – trilliums, trout lilies, daffodils, and lilacs — and the others are crowding in behind them. The late-leafing oaks are out, with the locust, ash, and butternuts slowly following. The tamaracks, the most graceful of our trees, have lost their early light green and darkened for the summer. The hemlocks and pines have dusted us with their annual blanket of yellow pollen; it’s drifted into the garage like fluffy early snow.
The pond is full of frogs’ eggs, and toads the size of pecans are hopping everywhere. I have to be careful not to step on them – they help by moving at the last possible second – or to lower the garage door on them (the door I have to shut to prevent the phoebes’ nesting on the light fixtures inside).
We view this annual regeneration with a certain condescension. Everything seems idyllic: the plants, amphibians, insects, birds, and mammals cheerfully reproducing in the security of the little world we provide them.
But you know, nearly all those critters out there have to eat. And they eat each other! Yet their lives – without medical, life, or homeowner’s insurance – proceed with the same amount of security as ours. Only occasionally do we conflict: a bear wrecks the bird feeder, a fisher eats the family cat, a porcupine or skunk does its thing to an aggressive dog. Why can’t they be peaceful like us, we wonder. Even the dragon fly-sized hummingbirds are incredibly competitive and nasty to each other. Yet Isaiah describes the utopia as the wolf and lamb feeding together, and the lion eating straw like the ox. Our fantasies of our fellow creatures’ lives are nothing new.
But now and then you win one. As the dog and I went down for the paper this morning, the doe was in the driveway. She watched us; we watched her. She stepped toward us; I stepped toward her. She took a hop into the deep ferns by the brook and bleated at us, but let us pass. Then something moved near her feet. The ferns were waving. A tiny head with big eyes poked up, took one look, and disappeared. “Good-looking kid!” I said. “I’m glad the coyotes missed you.” Whatever she said didn’t sound friendly. So the dog and I went on out to the paper tube.
This is Willem Lange up in Orford, New Hampshire. I gotta get back to work.