1952

A bird on my head

The school bus drops me off at our house and as I walk toward our front door, I see a bird standing in front of me on the grass. The bird doesn’t move when I come close. Slowly bending my knees until they touch the ground, I look at the bird and see a small burr covering one of its eyes. I bring a forefinger near and parallel to its feet and the bird hops onto my finger.

Raising my hand slowly to my hair, the bird hops onto my head and doesn’t move. I slowly stand and take baby steps as I walk to the front door, open it and enter our living room.

My mother is there to greet me. She sees the bird on my head and says, “You have a bird on your head.”

I say, “It has something in its eye.” I reach up with a level forefinger and the bird hops onto it. I lower my hand and gently remove the burr from its eye with a thumb and forefinger. Then I raise the bird back to the top of my head where it hops onto my hair again. My mother opens the front door and I slowly walk outside. The bird flies away.

Mid-summer, 2009

The most perfect thing I've ever done

Late afternoon on a hot summer afternoon, I decide to get up early the following morning and pull some weeds on our land as soon as it’s light enough to see them. I roll my wheelbarrow near the weeds that I want to pull and leave it there overnight with my work gloves in the bin.

With the first light of day, I walk toward the wheelbarrow. About thirty feet from it, I notice something low to the ground on the land. When I’m about ten feet away, I see that it’s a large rattlesnake, coiled, asleep on the earth.

I step back a few feet and look at the snake, knowing that I only have a few minutes before it wakes up and slithers away to its hole in the ground, which is probably on the land near our home. I don’t want that.

A few years ago, I talked with a neighbor who told me that he had found a rattlesnake on his land and chopped off its head with an axe. I’m not going to do that. I’ve always loved almost all creatures, and though I have a fear of rattlesnakes, I would never harm them.

A plan emerges instantaneously. I roll the wheelbarrow near the garage door, which I open. Moving quickly inside, I take an empty ice chest, a shovel and a roll of duct tape, place them in the wheelbarrow’s bin and close the garage door.

I roll the wheelbarrow to the left of the sleeping snake, about five feet away.

In rapid order, I remove the chest’s lid and place it with the duct tape, ​ adjacent and to the right of the wheelbarrow. Three feet away and directly in front of the snake, I turn the chest on its side so its opening faces the sleeping reptile.

I consider how I’m going to scoop the snake into the chest without hurting it. I realize that this has to be the most perfect thing I’ve ever done.

My thinking is to shovel about one sixteenth of an inch of dirt below the snake, and, in a continuous motion, shovel the dirt and the snake into the opening of the chest.

I’m ready and focused. With the shovel drawn back for leverage, I drive it just below the snake and follow through forcefully, sending the uncoiling snake and dirt flying through the air toward the chest. The snake awakens mid-air, its rattle shaking hard as it lands inside the chest, which I quickly turn upright and cover with the lid. I hear the snake moving inside the chest, agitated, its rattle shaking warning.

I wrap duct tape around the lid and the chest, place the chest in the wheel barrow, roll it to my car and set the chest on the back seat.

As I drive toward Santa Fe, the snake settles down, with only an occasional shake of its rattle. I turn right on Artist Road and drive up the mountain, heading toward the ski lift which is about twenty miles away.

I think about the rattlesnake in the ice chest, how threatened it must feel, trapped in a dark, confined space. I realize how my fear of rattlesnakes has turned them into ‘other,’ judged by their means of self-protection — their rattle, their venom, their bite.

About five miles from the ski lift, I pull off the road and carry the chest to a slow-moving brook which runs down the mountain. This is an unpopulated area near a national forest.

I position the chest a few feet in front of the brook and cut the duct tape from the lid with a pocket knife. I remove the lid and gently turn the chest on its side so the opening faces the brook.

The rattlesnake moves slowly out of the chest and approaches the brook cautiously but confidently. It is a magnificent creature, with a commanding presence. Unhurried, it moves downstream across rocks that the brook flows over. I drive home and pull some weeds.