Seeking a Wild Life

Last summer my usual aches and pains lasted well beyond the end of the spring rush. I found myself unexpectedly harnessed to a profound bout of melancholy. I tried to excise the pain and bury the gloom in good thoughts, but I could not rid myself of this uncommon malaise. My emotional state became so irritated I could hardly go into the garden to pick a tomato or a handful of basil. Weeding, mending fences, and general cleanup were all chores I let slip.

Eventually, I fell into a meditative mood that offered some alternatives. I have lived a wickedly overworked life and my last chance to taste a little wild life is fast approaching. I decided to search the wild side for what corrective pleasures it offered. Such ideas occur to me more frequently now, after passing the personal half-century mark, but they should not be mistaken as the early onset of senility. So I am told by optimists.

I decided the best way to start my own wild life was to study some real wildlife--that among the birds and bees, mice and bugs that share my square of the earth. I did not know where to begin but I was immediately attracted to the night, where identity can be easily hidden and behavior is less inhibited.

To give my fling at nightlife a more scientific character, I set up several imagined wildlife stations around the perimeter of the house. They were properly camouflaged of course. Their design was simple, but offered hiding places from which to observe the wild activity for which I yearned. These shelters would also save me from embarrassment if a sojourning neighbor sauntered along the street while I was engaged in these night time excesses.

On our little patio, I spent several evenings with a family of fat, happy slugs. They turned out to be the perfect subjects to begin my study. I did not want to jump into the middle of overactive wild life; I wanted to take it slowly and that is the slug's forte. I was not enchanted by their slothful ways especially their eating habits. What can be said about their eagerness to drink someone's leftover beer? Nor did I care for their slime. I envied their slow, deliberate pace, however. I considered this trait one of their most valuable assets and a high point of my study.

I was near the patio, and I decided to observe the fish in their fine, clear pool that Francesco built for them. While they might not meet a strict scientific definition of wild life because they were born in captivity, they might still have the key to slow but real excitement. I had a pair of koi in an earlier pool and one reason for the new, larger pool was the amorous ways of these stately, colorful fish. There are now over three dozen of them. This appeared to be the kind of wild life that might have something to teach me.

Koi are naturally acrobatic fish capable of rare displays of individuality, but they are conformists at heart, swimming together with the easy assurance of a synchronized team. Despite their sometimes inhibited character, I discovered a wild streak in them that for years I had failed to see until the week of the great jumping contest.

At first I did not know the meaning of the dead fish that lay on the patio four feet from the pool. It was a large colorful koi and I inspected its body for cuts or abrasions that might have been made by a raccoon but there was no damage. I wrapped the fish and buried it in the garden.

The next morning, a second fish lay on the bricks of the patio in almost the same spot as the dead fish of the day before. The third day brought another dead fish on the patio. I began to see a deepening mystery. I sought an explanation from my books on koi and the mystery was quickly solved. Koi love to jump, the books said. I realized that a jumping competition among the fish had turned lethal. I immediately installed a barrier around the pool that prevented jumping fish from sailing onto the patio. There have been no more dawn encounters with dead fish. Wild life it turns out is sometimes treacherous and playful, masking a death wish.

After the breathtaking performance of the fish, I sought relief from wild life. The fig tree on the south side of the house was heavy with sweet, swelling green skins that would soon be sticky with ripe fruit. No one would ever consider a fig tree a model for wild life and I thought it would make a perfect, quiet place to rest from my studies. What a surprise lay before me.

It was a dark, warm night when I decided to pick my beautiful round figs. I grabbed a flashlight and hurried outside to begin the harvest. The fig tree is next to the house, on the South side next to the bay trees, a place of sun that is protected from chill winter winds. I flashed my light on the fat figs and found them half eaten. I blamed the birds first, but on second thought too much had been eaten for the culprit to be a bird. I moved into the bush to see how extensive the damage was. I could see many figs that were untouched and about the time I was taking a gardeners sigh, a mouse jumped on my shoulder. It was a medium-sized gray mouse, new to the area, and it was clear that he was guarding the figs from large marauders like me. He certainly had a sure fire way of keeping people away. As it turned out, like most wildlife, he never finished a fig. He ate bits from several figs for several nights and then moved on to another branch. I had not been sufficiently inducted into the Wild Life Society by that time to want to eat what the mouse had left. I was happy to go back to my on fig box protected from wildlife in my refrigerator. I didn't need a flashlight to find my figs anymore.

Finally, I realized the real wild life was not in Arlington at all, no matter how many slick watering holes are permitted to open on Clarendon's bar strip. The real wild animals, those with heft and frightful panache are in Loudoun County. There Francesco was battling a real army of groundhogs, deer, insects of both the flying and crawling persuasions, larger than nature allows in polluted areas such as Arlington, giant wasps and a woodlot full of poison ivy. And that is just what can be outlined in mixed company. On five acres, even the grass becomes a wild, untamed force of nature.

I always try to leave the farm before night fall. I tell Francesco that I have to leave before dark to avoid the traffic jams. The truth is that traffic jams occur because so many people flee the country wildlife.

If this is what is in store for those who live on the wild side, I think I will stay in my cocoon a little longer.

--Tom DeBaggio