The Girls (and a Boy) Are Back

I am five months behind in posting videos. This video is from mid-November 2020. Covid raged for nine months officially, about a year unofficially.

We’ve never been social. Friendly, yes. Social, no.

Except with The Wild.

One can easily be social with The Wild. Live near it, you have no choice.

Friendly? That’s another issue.

We may like to believe Nature is friendly. People who believe such have never spent time in it. Deeply in it.

I enjoy Nature. Love it, is probably more accurate. I do what I can to protect it.

And I know Nature is the ultimate egalitarian. It favors no one. You might make a case for Nature favoring the strong but one must ask “How are we defining strength?”

Numerical superiority?

Big brains?

Big muscles?

Big teeth?

Or, in this case on this day, lots of beaks?

 

Lords of the Sky, Let Us Live (Coyote are Cautious, part 2)

I mentioned last week coyote are cautious.

This week’s offering is a continuation, if you will, shot a few moments later in the evening.

What stood out here is the coyote gazing into the sky periodically and shying away. There were no astronomical oddities that night; no comets, no meteors, no blinding conjunctions.

What caused him to look up so often?

It reminded me of a story I read long, long ago. Basically, there was a killer asteroid coming at the earth. Simultaneous with the discovery of this asteroid, cetaceans as an order being singing a unified song. Some group studying whale song was close to decoding their language. Whale ancestors, it was known, survived the last ELE.

The uptake in song is part of their race memory and translates to “Lords of the Sky, Let Us Live.”

Wish I could track down that story and reread it. I remember it gave me chills back then.

 

Coyote are Cautious

I mentioned last week coyote are clever.

This week we learn they are also cautious.

With good reason, me thinks. They are misunderstood and misunderstanding’s denmate is caution, its cousin is fear.

How many times have you not been sure of something and chosen caution as the default mechanism?

Take a look at any government’s plans for an alien attack (what? you’re surprised such things really exist?) and you’ll see movies, novels, TV and radio dramas go mild in the response area. If you’ve never heard of “If I can’t have you then nobody can” as a dating strategy, check out these plans.

Can you say Scorched Earth?

Governments learned by observing their own colonizing endgames, me thinks. It use to be said, “Better dead than Red.” Seems to be their current thinking, as well.

So caution is the wisest move in the short term. Until proven otherwise.

Have you ever had the opportunity to win the confidence of The Wild?

It takes time. Lots of time.

And it’s worth it.

The Old Ones…they remember.

 

This week’s installment of “Backyard with the Carrabises”

Coyote are clever.

Not to put down other Old Ones. The Wild doesn’t tolerate poor design. You think humans are grand engineers? Everything not manmade on this planet has gone through enumerable iterations, each one a minor improvement over the last.

Then how come things are going extinct, you ask?

Because humans are stupid.

We are evolution’s “big brain” experiment. It experimented with big muscle, big size, big this and that, none of them worked out.

Want the kicker?

We won’t, either.

But the coyote…if humans mind their own business and take out only themselves, the coyote – who were here before us – will be here after us.

Coyote have urbanized in many places. They’ve adapted to us. They’ll adapt to without-us.

The coyote near us have learned to listen to the raccoons. Do they hear the raccoons munching on peanuts and dog food?

That means Two-Legs have put food out, and easy treats are hard to come by in our world.

So they listen. They approach. They rustle to let the raccoons know they’re coming, time for the raccoons to leave, and they dine.

And so we’ll let them be.

 

They’re Back (after a month’s absence)

The below video was taken one month after the This Is How It’s Suppose to Be. Not seeing our children for a month during their usual winter-bulking period concerned us. Greatly.

As I’ve mentioned in a few recent Wildlife posts, we’re experiencing loss of habitat on the other side of our woods. We’ve seen an increase in our backyard visitors. All are still healthy (thank the Old Ones) and it concerns us. Two-Legs think they’re the top of the food-chain. They forget when they were the bottom.

Keep the memory. Stay humble.