Nature Hater

It has never been a secret that I don't get along well with nature. I don't care to look at it, touch it or let it get on me. It's messy and itchy and germy and prickly and the smell is almost impossible to get out of your hair and clothes.

Ask my father about the time we went camping and all we had was an outhouse and how I was determined to hold my pee for the entire weekend and I could have done it, too, if they hadn't forced me -- screaming and crying -- to go into the cold, dark, bug-infested, stinky nightmare of a toilet (which wasn't really a toilet at all but a broken toilet seat sitting on top of a piece of plywood with a hole cut out of it). And trust me, you don't want to know what was at the bottom of that hole.

Or the time we were riding in the Blazer (on our way to yet another camping trip, I swear my parents hated me), when the container holding the crickets came open and a hoard of the disgusting, creepy creatures swarmed out all over the car. I spent the remainder of the hour-and-a-half long trip curled up in a tiny ball, rocking back and forth, trying in vain to find my happy place.

Or the time we were camping (yes, there can be no doubt that my parents hated me) and Mom and I were sitting on the hammock and she looked down and said, "Oh, hey, will you look at that?" just as calmly as one would say, "Oh, gee, that blade of grass sure is green" only she wasn't talking about a blade of grass, she was talking about the most gigantically large alien bug that was crawling up her leg. I didn't sleep for the rest of the weekend.

But, I digress.

I do that a lot.

So, here are a few entries that give you some more insight into my tenuous relationship with nature...



Kamikaze Cardinals
July 21, 2000

How can you tell if a bird is suicidal? And what steps do you take to intervene?

For the past two hours, a pair of cardinals has (have?) been flinging themselves against my office window. I can only assume it has something to do with the fact that David Duchovny has already been replaced by that really freaky “Terminator Two” guy. What else would drive otherwise stable and sane birds to commit such a violent act against their own person?

At first, I thought they were simply bored and looking for some fun. You know, much in the same way we used to try and make ourselves faint as kids, or see how hard we could punch a tree before we really started to do damage to our fist, or try and determine exactly how much was “too much” purple Kool-Aid for one afternoon.

But after observing these two hapless creatures, I came to the conclusion that they weren’t doing this for fun. They were obviously driven by some type of suicidal mission. I don’t claim to like nature, but I couldn’t just sit back and watch this happen.

So, in an effort to curb their kamikaze quest, I taped a piece of brightly colored paper to the window. This helped for about five minutes. Apparently, the birds decided that it was just paper, so, hey, they could fly right through it.

So I taped another piece of paper up (bright yellow this time) thinking that maybe they'd see it and think, "Oh, well, now there's TWO pieces of paper up there. Certainly this is a solid pane of glass and we will immediately cease hurling our fragile, little bodies against it."

No, they did not think this.

It's a little disconcerting really. My sympathy for these poor birds is quickly turning to disgust. I have very little tolerance for excessive ignorance, even in the animal kingdom.

I walked outside to have a little chat with my feathered friends, but they flew off when they saw me coming. I looked at the window from my new vantage point and discovered that it did, indeed, perfectly reflect the trees and blue sky that the birds were obviously seeing. I was almost tempted to hurl myself at the window as well. But as I got closer to the window, I discovered that I was perfectly reflected in the glass, too.

So, my last thought is, "Okay, so it does look just like an extension of their world and it seems reasonable to think that they would assume they could soar on into that perfectly reflected blue sky."

"But wouldn't they at least try and avoid hitting the other bird flying right at them?"

Maybe I just don't understand nature.



The Mystery Carcass and Other Dead Things
August 18, 2000

Right outside my front door, in between the bushes and the house, there is the rotting carcass of...something. It’s furry. That’s about all I know. Oh, and it smells terrible.

My roommate’s cat has been really showing off his alpha-maleness every since our new male roommate moved in. I think George (the cat) is threatened by Jamie’s (the roommate) presence. Since Jamie has joined out little Three’s Company episode, George has brought home dead mice, birds, and frogs. And let’s not forget the rotting thing in the bushes. I think it may have been a squirrel at some point, but I’m not exactly sure.

Over the three years I have lived in that house, George has delivered a few gifts here and there, but he always left them on the back porch. However, the past three times he’s come home from the hunt, he’s brought his kill into the house. INTO THE HOUSE! So, okay, while I can’t understand the need for things to kill other things, I will concede that it does happen. However, I don’t feel that there is ANY reason for these things to take place indoors.

The first time it happened, I was sitting in the den watching television. When Amy opened the door to come in, George came tearing in after her. This is not unusual as George is often tearing from one place to another in a mad effort to be on time for his many cat appointments. After a moment, I could hear George making terrible noises in the kitchen. He was growling and mewling like I’d never heard him do before. Jamie was standing in the foyer, eating a piece of pizza and watching George do whatever it was George was doing that would make him produce those noises.

I asked, “What the hell is wrong with George?”

Jamie, very calmly, replied, “Oh, he’s brought a mouse in here and he’s playing with it.” Then he took a bite of pizza.

“What?!” I screamed as I jumped up from my chair, “Are you serious?!”

“Yeah.” Again with the calm, again with the bite of pizza. “He’s batting it around the kitchen.”

After several moments of shocked silence I managed to scream, “Well, don’t just stand there....DO something!”

Jamie looked at me witheringly and asked, “What do you want me to do about it? He’s obviously having fun with it.” Calm. Bite of pizza.

This is when I realized that living with a boy doesn’t mean that you are automatically supplied with a bug catcher, light bulb changer, fuse reconnecter, all-around handy worker who will rescue you from things like dead mice in the house. Instead, it means that you are now living with a creature who is so unaffected by carnage that he can stand there and calmly consume his dinner while watching the cat bat a limp, lifeless mouse around the kitchen. (Did I mention it was the kitchen? Where we eat? Where we have food? The very last place in the house where you would want a dead, diseased-filled mouse?)

In the end, I watched Amy wrestle the mouse away from George, scoop it up and dump it outside. I watched all this from the safety of the staircase. I didn’t want to even be on the same floor as the mouse. Jamie watched from the foyer. He was eating pizza.

After that, George brought in two dead birds on different occasions. Thank the Lord, I was not at home either time. I did discover the dead frog on the front steps, though. I was thoroughly repulsed.

And now there’s this mystery carcass in the bushes. I certainly hope George regains his sense of manhood soon. I can’t take much more of this nature invading my personal space. Especially dead nature. That’s the worst.



Little Piece of Nature
October 12, 2000

This past weekend I was visiting a friend who was house-sitting. And at this house where my friend was sitting there lives a young squirrel. Okay, so I have absolutely no idea how old this thing is, but it makes the story sound better.

Anyway, this squirrel will come right up to you and take a cracker or a nut right out of your hand. At first I wasn't overly-impressed by this. A two-year-old will do the same thing. Hell, so will a man. But once it was explained to me that this is not normal behavior for the typically cautious and paranoid squirrel, then I reluctantly agreed that it was actually kind of cool.

I picked up a handfull of peanuts, still in the shell, and walked outside to greet this creature. I crouched down (as to appear less threatening) and held one of the nuts out to the squirrel. "Here, squirrel," I gently cooed. "Here, Mr. Squirrel," I said, hoping to sound more polite. "Here, you little piece of nature, you!" That did it. It came scampering over and took the nut right out of my hand. Suddenly I was like the Crocodile Hunter, getting in tune with the wild beats that share this planet with us!

So, I offered it another nut, and then another. I was determined that before I left, this squirrel would think I was Mother Nature herself, bestowing gifts upon my many animal children. As I sat there watching my new friend, reveling in my new-found connection with nature (while at the same time battling the thought that this creature was probably flea-ridden and possibly carrying deadly diseases in its scrawny body -- you didn't expect me to embrace nature all at once, did you?), I noticed that it took the squirrel quite a while to crack open each shell to get to the nut inside. So, I went that one extra step to prove to this animal that I was a good and kind person. I cracked open the next shell for it and laid my offering out open-faced on the ground before me.

The squirrel scurried back over and picked up the opened shell, but, as it picked the shell up, the nuts fell out of the shell and back onto the ground.

Then this little piece of nature looks at the empty shell, then back up at me as if to say, "Is this some kind of a cruel joke?" Then it dropped the shell, and with one last look of disdain thrown back over its shoulder at me, ran away.

And I thought, "Well, that's certainly the last time I try and do something nice for a squirrel."

Obviously, some of them just don't want to be helped.