ANIMAL FRIENDS
Reading about the evolution of all life on earth and how all life is connected has made me more aware of the life around me. Living by myself I more open to the company of other animals. I am not interested in having a pet, a dog or a cat, because then I couldn’t travel. But I am more accepting of the other animals in my vicinity. I am also also becoming an old man with food that I get to my mouth dribbling down my shirt and specks on the carpet and dust in the corners not bothering me. Sometimes when my kids say they are coming over I sweep up but dust doesn’t bother me. I’ve watched this slow letting go happen to other old people and here I go, too.
There are groundhogs wandering around the yard who sometimes come up on my back porch and look in the glass doors. My neighbors have gone to great lengths to get it rid of groundhogs who threaten to make their houses collapse, they say. But my groundhogs keep me company. Their main burrows are under the lawnmower which inexplicably went up in flames at 11 p.m. several years ago, when luckily I got stuck in the mud while mowing by the fence and left it there, grateful later that I hadn’t been able to get if back up the hill to park it against the house. Now the hulk of the lawnmower is enclosed by weeds and is a cozy home for the groundhogs. Once I found two of them high up in my peach tree bickering over a peach. But most of the time they are shy and out of sight.
I once saw a fox in the pasture below me, and have seen deer in the yard and just last week saw a young bear striding across my front lawn. Often turkeys strut their way through the yards, their tails fanned out, and there are rabbits everywhere who sit very still when I come out of the house, thinking that I can’t see them.
But the wildlife that is nearest to me are the spiders in my house. I am becoming more and more considerate of the spiders. In the living room I don’t disturb the webs that they spin from the green armchair to the ceiling. Since I mostly sit at the round dining table and rarely have visitors, the spiders are welcome to the rest of the house. But they are considerate as well, only spinning their webs in out of the way places. The place where I do have to be especially considerate of spiders is when I take a shower in the back bathroom. Three spiders with tiny black bodies and enormous spindly legs live there, attached to the ceiling by long invisible threads. So before a shower I inspect closely and if I find one I cover it with a dry washcloth and move it to another spot in the bathroom where it drops lightly and runs for cover. I wonder if it gets lost there or can find its way back to the shower stall. These spiders are not pets and I don’t know what they think of me, if they think at all. I don’t know how long they live and I can’t tell them apart so I don’t know whether they have become used to me or are brand new and suddenly frightened by my presence for the first time. Sometimes, regrettably, I don’t notice a spider and it gets caught in the spray of the shower and curls up in a puddle on the shower floor. I don’t know how long a spider can survive before drowning and I don’t know if drowning is terrifying to it or not, I would guess that it is. I have read that bees have sensitive emotions, I don’t know about spiders. I am just as careful as I can be and try not to make myself too anxious about their brief time with me.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 