You’d think I’d have learned to keep the back door closed after the hummingbird tragedy a few weeks ago. I had set up my work computer on the patio on a rare lovely day to Zoom in for our weekly staff meeting. Thank goodness I was muted, because my Beautiful Killer sauntered right past with a hummingbird in her mouth—straight into the house. I screamed, then leaped up to save the bird, exquisitely small. Sadly, it perished later that day.
And then the other night my predatory housemate trotted in with something that at first we thought was a rat. (OMG.) But it was a baby bunny, miraculously unharmed. Ross chased the cat out of the house; bun-bun ran under the couch. I was able to scoop it up and return it to the garden, where I hope it will survive, lesson learned.
My heart pounded in my chest a good while after. Hare-raising.
Haha! Kidding. Or not. Because just a few minutes earlier, I’d found a wasp nest in the greenhouse. Not excited about wildlife right at this mo.
Earlier this week I was gassing on about the importance of names, and here I am telling you about the nameless killer in my house. She was born in a fish hatchery to a feral mother. One by one her litter mates disappeared into the woods. This creature was the smallest, and the first to venture out exploring, and at at eight weeks she climbed a small mountain to set up a-howling outside my son’s house. Three days, straight up, about a quarter mile. Eli found her under his car and had to pry her wee claws off the tire. “That was work right there.” Fully grown, she’s still only about six pounds.
So for a while she was called Runty, but that is not a proper name. My friend Alison, who is definitely an animal person, began calling her Beautiful Killer, and it’s stuck.
And while that is also not a proper name, it’s apt. The killing spree is new, revved up at just the time I’ve been pondering the best parenting book I’ve ever read, Noah’s Children: Restoring the Ecology of Childhood, by the late botanist, Sara Stein. This book is now shamefully out of print.
In the ’90s, before the Internets, I had read Stein’s other books. I kept thinking—she has a book about children in her. Back in the olden days we used to have to go to the library to find reading material. And I remember the day I discovered that she had, in fact written this book I knew needed to be written.
One of her ideas that has stuck with me all these years is this—that we should not have to bundle children into some form of motorized transportation in order for them to experience Nature. Nature is, in fact, all around us. She made me rethink the built environment and what I wanted my own children to experience the moment they walked out the door.
But the door is the thing. I want nature to stay out there. No tiny corpses in my house, please. At the same time, I am working on an essay about my years working at the church where Ted Bundy was raised. So I am hyper-aware that humans are predators, although the degree to which our brutality is manifested varies. Uncomfortable.
The Beautiful Killer is snuggled near me as I write. I’m not a big cat person, and she’s not fully tame, so the fact that she seems to be somewhat bonded with me is perplexing and charming. Bless her evil heart. Whenever I am sitting, she prefers to be nearby, supervising. I’m okay with this because it means she’s not hunting.
Also, she’s sleek and gives me cred during Zoom meetings. When we’re inside.