On Wild Stuff
There are times in our lives, when we’re sitting in an airplane going six hundred miles per hour thirty-five-thousand feet in the air, or when you’re watching a movie while also scrolling through social media and eating fast food, or when you’re driving your two-ton-car through a sea of other massive vehicles without a thought in the world, that being a human truly feels like existing on a different plane of reality to all the other animals of planet earth. There are, however, moments that bring the veil crashing down…and sometimes those moments can be really wild.
I started thinking about this while watching a show called Dr. Stone. It’s an anime where a mysterious light turns all of humanity into stone and three thousand years in the future, the smartest kid in the world breaks free and has to rebuild society from the ground up. Suddenly, humans aren’t at the top of the food chain. We don’t have claws or fangs or wings or anything like that. We’re just smooth apes who found cool stones and smashed them together until something interesting happened.
After watching a few episodes of that show and thinking a lot about how little really separates us from the animals of the wilds, I was playing golf when I saw something that brought the illusion down even further. It was a beautiful, clear, day and as usual there were hawks everywhere. I love seeing hawks around golf courses. They’re so spectaular, so graceful, so majestic. Now and then you see one catch some prey. On this day, I saw an unlucky squirrel walk through the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time.
My ball happened to be about fifteen yards from where this hawk had settled on the ground with its squirrel lunch. As I approached, the hawk decided I was too close and extended its wings and “skreeed,” at me. Needless to say, I (an animal easily 3 or 4 times the size of this bird) was terrified. I know what those talons can do. Well, the hawk must have realized I was much bigger than it because it decided to take flight, food in hand. Unfortunately for my feathered friend, it lost its grip on the squirrel, which miraculously survived. Unfortunately for my furry friend, a coyote had been watching this whole exchange and as soon as the squirrel made its break for freedom, the coyote sprung into action.
The squirrel got about six feet up a nearby tree before the coyote did some incredible ninja gymnastics, scaled the tree grabbed the squirrel, and landed as gracefully as a ballerina. It then looked at me with an animal ferocity that shocked me back to the bottom of the food chain.
As that series of events played out, I couldn’t help but think about how in the grand scheme of humanity, it was not that long ago that I could have been the poor squirrel caught between a pack of wolves and a grizzly bear. I wouldn’t have lasted a single week in the Stone Age. Anyway, I hit my wedge to about 15 feet, made a tidy par, and filed the whole experience away to be written about later.
Have you had any experiences that reminded you of how wild the world really is out there?
One of the great things about living in LA is that there are so many parts of the city where you're not that far from nature. We're far enough from the hills that we don't have to deal with bears (and those California brown bears are adorable), but we do get ducks in our swimming pool, coyotes wandering down the street, and this morning, past the french doors that lead to the already mentioned pool, and skunks who used to love surprising Sophie. Hawks circling overhead and on a few magical occasions, a silent majestic owl swooping across the backyard. And Susan once saw a bobcat on the hillside a block from the house. Easy to forget when you're trying to pick somebody up at LAX, but pretty incredible once you've out of the car.
Maybe the irony of being tear gassed by the National Guard while protesting the war in Vietnam. Sorry about this lacking an animal context. On second thought...