Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

Walking in the rain with a cat
August 29, 2004

On that rainy Tuesday (the last Tuesday in July) I gave a breakfast program at Manor Park, and then returned to the Gone Native Arboretum. I had to be among the plants as it rained. I learned to love walking in the rain when I spent several years in the Pacific Northwest. My 6 year-old grandson thought I was crazy – nobody in their right mind likes to get wet on purpose, not when wearing clothes and the water falling is cold. He stayed inside, watching a bilingual kid’s show. His family is bilingual – Spanish and English are two wonderful and beautiful languages.

I headed first to one of my favorite “garden rooms.” Its sitting area is known as the Fossil Porch, where Deborah set fossil imprinted stones into the substrate. The location is on the southwestern corner of the 2-acre planted area of the arboretum, where the hottest and driest winds come scowling head-on to smack into the gardens. Because of a tall Afghan Pine and Arizona Ash that shade the Riparian Courtyard just beyond, the vagaries of wind currents often make the Fossil Porch the coolest place to be outside when it is 100 degrees and hotter. The Riparian Courtyard seems to ooze coolness from its shaded enclosure as far as to the chair on the Fossil Porch.

For thirty feet to the east of the Fossil Porch, a trail and two flower beds border the south side of “the little house,” where someday Deborah and I will offer B&B accommodations to bird, butterfly, and plant enthusiasts. This flower bed is amazingly drought resistant. In the driest of years, I only water three times a year. Purple lantana, yellow bells, Mexican oregano, the Frances Williams Chocolate Daisy, purple passionflower, Chinaberry, Havard’s penstemon, Lancaster Hill mockorange, asphodel, Russian sage, white desert zinnia, Wizlenius senna, purple robe, santolina, California buckwheat, texas sage, vitex, pride of Barbados bird of paradise, Mexican redbud, bouvardia, salvia greggi, salvia chamaedroides, and Wright’s eupatorium provide seasonal color among the agaves, guajillo, Mexican persimmon, goatbush allthorn, California ceanothus, popotillo, and littleleaf ash. Silktassel and evergreen sumac provide broadleaf evergreen accents, while Creosote Bush adds another evergreen form. False Grape and vinca crawl around on the ground.

In the rain, the garden along the trail reflected the sky in the raindrops on every leaf. Trees, leaves, rocks – everything gleamed – seeming to glow with an inner light. At the Fossil Porch I swept fallen leaves and blooms from the stone shells. Fossils in the rain! The reflected light of their wet surfaces brought the shapes of their striations into clearer focus. The trees of the Riparian Courtyard extend their branches over the sitting area, and as a result were catching most of the rain. The ash trunk glowed with water slithering down the trunk. The very tips of the pines dripped steadily, but underneath only an occasional large drop plopped and splatted down. Plop! Right on the neck!

The birds were not happy. I spotted a cardinal sitting bedraggled and besotted, and it did not fly, even though I was within ten feet. A brooding female mourning dove sat hunkered on the ground, and did not fly even when my feet almost nudged it. I reached down and examined it in my hand, the skin on her belly (the brood patch) shone in the foggy glowing light. After I held it for a minute, the warmth of my hand revived it enough for it to begin struggling. I opened my hand and it flew to a branch of the pine. Does hypothermia kill birds in the summer?

One of the local skunk family snuffled around down in the arroyotito of the Riparian Courtyard. We had just been working there on the weekend, and over a cubic yard of soil and rock had been rearranged. We had covered the scars of the earthmoving with part of the mulch cover of the planting area. The skunk was busy pulling the mulch away with quick flips of its forefeet, digging so fast it seemed to be dancing. I decided to watch. It was not aware of me. I was in range of its spray, so I hoped that when it noticed me, it would shrug and think “oh, it is just the big hairy guy,” and go back to its digging. I follow my skunk neighbors for amusement, so I have a reputation!

It kept digging. Little Kotchie, the new black kitten that came to us as a stray, appeared on the other side of the courtyard. Kotchie had asked the grandkid to be let out after I went out. The cats like to go for walks, but being cats, it takes a while for them to make up their mind. One recent night he had come inside one night for a petting blessed with the faint odor of skunk.

Kotchie angled down into the arroyotito, jumping from boulder to boulder. When his feet were near the level of the skunk’s head, the skunk stopped digging. The two creatures stared at each other for a second, then the cat jumped down to touch noses with the skunk. They stood sniffing each other for a longer period of time, made longer by my holding of my breath.

Realizing I needed to breathe, I exhaled audibly, to see what the two would do. Both turned to look at me, and Kotchie immediately walked towards me, casually brushing the skunk lengthwise with his body. Kotchie leapt up the slope of the banks of the “ornamental” watercourse as the skunk watched. What is the true nature of the relationship between the two? When Kotchie came to me, I reached down to scratch his head. “Oh, so that is your adopted mother? Did she raise you after some horrible person tossed you out of a car?”

I glanced back at the skunk. It was clambering up the slope away from us, standing on its hindlegs and carefully selecting the proper rocks to step on. Some of the smaller stones there can roll if pushed a bit. It stopped to sniff at another fresh strewing of mulch, nosing around for a dozen seconds. Crack! It raised its head, busily chewing. The moist air quickly carried the diffused tangy whang of crushed stink beetle. The skunk gulped, and then ambled away, on to the “Pineyard.” It wandered between trunks of the pines, traipsing ever so lightly on the fallen pine needles, then suddenly began digging rapidly again. Before the walk was over, I was to find several dozen examples of its busybody scratching around. I did not see it again, but I am sure it saw me – and I wondered – “what else has been watching?”