It begins every year with procrastination. Excuse after excuse why I can't mow my west tree row today, this week, this weekend...the procrastination is rooted deeply in some intimidating, old grouchy cedar soldiers and their proximity to one another. My grandfather planted them in eager straight rows, standing guard for the homestead against Nebraska wind. I thank them for their service. It's hard to get the riding mower in between them. There are lumpy soft soils, and stumps from fallen comrades and pot holes and old irrigation ditches obscured by tall brome and sixty years of pine needle fodder. All these obstacles are in the same places every year, all summer long; a fact I remember when I yet again whack my dad's mower's death blades against them, and think, "oh $&%#!! yep there's that stump again." Add golf balls, basketballs and action figures to the mix, and there is debris flying out the side of that mower like its a Fourth of July fireworks show of death and destruction.
What I love about mowing is the sheer mindlessness of it. Hop on that mower for an hour and my mind is free to roam as it wills. Pray for someone with this stripe - flip a U - dream about the future with this stripe - figure 8 - contemplate the past - turn about - make a checklist in my mind, etc. etc. Mowing the west tree row is more like constant vigilance so that I don't kill someone, myself included.
But it's not the basketballs, or the iron mans, or even my own injuries that concern me most in that tree row- it's the babies. Every small and common prairie creature has decided that the west tree row is the ideal place to raise a family, and they are too young and stupid to know that I am coming for them, and I do not discriminate. I am like Snow White, except the opposite. She comes to sing, and hold the baby birds, and let he bunnies hop on her lap, and stroke the sweet heads of the baby deer, and I come...well to destroy your habitat and send you running from your homes while your mothers sit in the spruce trees and plead with me with little beady black eyes. This is just not the Disney Princess I wanted to be.
To say that I don't enjoy the death would be a vast understatement. I actually go to great lengths to avoid it, the details of which include the aforementioned procrastination and other routines I won't describe in detail because I can see the incredulous faces, and hear my brother and father's tones-of-voice saying, "Are you serious?" in the back of my mind. There is a bit of a pre-mowing routine that includes a good dog nose, and some stomping and clapping; if you ever drive by and it looks like I'm imitating a bad Western movie's portrayal of an Indian rain dance, just keep driving.
You would think that the angry roar of the mower would be enough, but these mamas are not leaving their babies, which I Snow-White-think (animal ESP of course) to them- "Respect. Solidarity. But seriously- there is plenty of natural habitat pasture just on the other side of the fence, and this is where you chose?!"
The other measure I take is keeping my mowing buddy with me- my long, lean black lab/ shepherd mutt Bolt and his skilled nose. He runs each pass with me, sniffing and, when I'm lucky, scaring the animals out of harm's way before I annihilate them. It's great fun for him, which just adds to my misery knowing what an evil game I'm playing here.
Last year I took out an entire little den of tiny bunnies that could fit in your palm. The mower I use is so powerful you'd never even know this happened, except that the mowing buddy decided (for once) to let the retrieving instinct overpower the herding instinct, and brought me a very tiny, very precious, very headless little bunny kitten. He was very proud of himself, and confused by my shriek of dismay. By the carnage, I assure you it was a quick death, but it has haunted my dreams nonetheless. I have since learned from extensive Google research that cottontail rabbits have as many as seven litters a year. A year!!! So honestly, the bunny population is going to be fine even with me as a top predator. I try to comfort myself with these thoughts, and general assurances about ecology and survival rates. I pair this memory with another one I have stored in the same memory-file-of-horrors of being out on a walk at dusk and hearing a pack of coyotes team kill a rabbit, complete with a death shriek and howls of victory. Surely a quick decapition would be better than that. (Oh man, really putting the crazy out there today.)
This year, there were tiny black birds with downy soft gray-black feathers that couldn't have been more than a day or so out of the nest. Their mothers flutter in and out of the trees trying to get their babes to safety, and the helpless fledglings flutter and flap, able to fly a foot or two onto very low branches or another clump of grass that is set for destruction in the next 10 minutes. Bolt could easily catch them out of the air, but he seems to know they are babies and lets them be. Probably because right before I hit another stump, I am screaming at him at the top of my lungs, "They're babies!!! Leave them alone!!!" I'm happy to report there were no recorded deaths this week in the west tree row. No deaths at all. Until yesterday.
Luke and I were returning from the burn pile and saw some trash laying out in the middle of the pasture. Luke is fiercely dedicated to saving the planet, which means he will clean up trash in any parking lot, picking up the most disgusting things (with the same hand with the thumb he sucks) in order to save Mother Earth. I need to buy more hand sanitizer. He shouted - "Litter! We have to get it!" So we detoured off the road and headed directly for the pasture trash, when suddenly, a mama pheasant exploded off her nest at the very last minute. She flew low across the pasture as they do, stressfully shedding feathers in her wake. And I as I watched her go, I knew what I had done. I had steered another weapon into pheasant habitat, and driven over the edge of her nest. I'm so grateful we weren't six inches to the left, or we would have crushed them all, but luckily we only broke three out of ten.
As I backtracked on foot to find the nest and inspect the death I had caused, a sinking realization I've been trying to avoid settled right on in. Living out here, on the acreage I love, and trying my best to tame the wild with mowers and trimmers and herbicides for human enjoyment - i just have to accept it. Sorry mamas. Sorry babies. I will keep doing my rain dances and scaring you with my dogs, but please, please, please, just steer clear of me. I am not Snow White. I am a baby killer.
