Wild Nature – Page 4 – Karen's New York Love Affair

Wascally weasel!

One of the things I love about Monkey Valley, which goes hand-in-hand with the stillness, is the presence of wild animals. Being so far away from people and their noise means being out where the animals live. Having an encounter with a wild animal is a special gift that sometimes happens out in nature. I find that if I haven’t seen a wild animal for a few days I start to feel something is missing. I believe that as a human species we evolved together with our animal friends, and our souls need their companionship. Without interactions with animals we get lonely.

This is a concern for me as we encroach on the few remaining wild areas and the space left for our wild friends to live in becomes more and more limited. Many animals such as deer and coyotes learn to adapt to human presence, coexisting with us in small tangles of brush and stands of trees, but some animals cannot. And the simple fact is that if we are using up all the room, for cities, farms, clear cuts, roads, and mines, there isn’t much wild space left for our animal friends to live in. The numbers of species are dwindling, and I think also the number of animals within the species, especially of large mammals such as wolves, bears, and elephants.

But one day last fall I had an unexpected visitor in the house at Monkey Valley. It wasn’t as big as an elephant—much closer to squirrel size, actually. I was in the living room watching a movie when I heard a strange hissing sound coming from the laundry room. My first thought was that the propane heater was leaking. I went up the stairs into the laundry room, sniffing for the smell of gas, but what I noticed was a strong skunk-like odor! The hissing noise was even louder in this room.

I noticed that Donald was crouched in the middle of the laundry room floor, focused on the corner under the laundry sink. A little creature ran out, puffed up and hissing at me! It was a weasel! It was in the midst of changing from summer colours to winter, when it would become an all-white ermine with a black tip. Right now its back fur was a mottled brown with some white patches, but the tip of its tail was black.

What a feisty creature! It hissed at me very aggressively, although it was smaller than a squirrel, but thinner and longer. I don’t know how it got in the house. Perhaps through a small mouse hole—it was certainly thin enough to squeeze through a mouse hole—or maybe through Donald’s cat door.

I opened the door to the outside, at the end of the hallway, and went to get a flashlight, broom, and towel. I’ve had some luck catching mice in towels in the past, but this creature was more aggressive. I started with the broom, trying to sweep the little weasel toward the open door. He leaped on the end of the broom, biting it ferociously, hissing all the while. What a little character! No fear at all. Donald had lost interest and left the room. I got the camera and took a few pictures of it, and continued to try to encourage the little creature to go out the door. It took many skirmishes with the broom, and retreats behind the bucket in the corner. I had to clear away everything the weasel could hide behind, and close off any spaces he might hide in on the way out the door. More broom work, and then I finally got him to run out the door. I wonder if this is how the honourable Canadian sport curling got started!

What a gift to have this brave little visitor come into my house! The magnificent weasel would be an appropriate symbol for courageous fighting against enormous odds. Also for being true to one’s nature without fearing the consequences!

Wild neighbours: cougars and their ways

At Monkey Valley, we place a strong emphasis on keeping retreat participants safe. One of the ways to do that is helping people learn about the wild animals that live in the area. I’ve written extensively about cougars on this blog, to tell you the story of how I learned about cougars and why I feel it is safe to be out and about at Monkey Valley when there might be cougars in the neighbourhood.

For some reason, this has been a very popular topic for spammers! And with readers, too. I think we are all fascinated by the magnificent cougar. If you are planning to come to Monkey Valley and would like to read up on cougars, here is a summary of the entries about cougars and their ways:

The mystery of the dead animal in my living room

$What can I say? It\'s a mouse turd$ I saw the first sign on top of the fridge: smaller than a grain of rice, and dark brown in colour: a mouse turd. But smaller than the average mouse turd. Which made me wonder if it might have been emitted from a shrew or vole… There was no question that some member of the rodent family had been in the house. Then I caught a whiff of putrid decay. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but trusted that all would be revealed in due time. Since I had a lot to do upon arrival at Monkey Valley, I let the matter lie… (but not the turd!).

Turd denial

That evening and the next day I discovered more turds, in the usual places: on the window sill by the kitchen sink, on the peach satiny loveseat (always an attractive place for rodents, and who can blame them), on the floor at the edges of the living room, on the window ledge in the upstairs bathroom. They varied in colour from reddish-brown to black. With one turd I could be in denial, and hope it might have just fallen out from a crack in the logs, and actually be an old turd. But with all these turds on places I had cleaned and swept only a week ago, there was no denying it was new rodent activity.

Then came further proof, in my footwear by the door. In one slipper was a small piece of rodent bait, carried and stored there by the enterprising creature. In the toe of my snowboot I found an almond, chewed by tiny teeth at either end. The little animal had been caching food for the winter. This is a little bit delightful, giving me a glimpse into the ways of the wild creature, while also annoying me because it’s not really possible to wash all my shoes every time I come home to Monkey Valley, and who wants to put her foot in a shoe where there has recently been mouse turds and rodent poison?

Still, I let the mystery continue to unravel. The second morning home, I had some phone calls to make, outside on the top balcony, in the -6 degree morning. So I put on my snow boots and parka, and spent almost an hour on the phone calls. When I went back downstairs to put my snow boots away under the shelf, I noticed a greyish shadow. Aha!, I thought. I bet that’s the little creature. And it was, a little grey mouse with brown fur on its back. Very desiccated. It must have eaten some of the poison. I was glad the mystery was solved, and that the mouse would no longer be leaving little turds all over the place.

Ahimsa: the practice of non-harming

(If this seems callous to you, dear reader, I hope it might improve your opinion of me if I tell you how I have struggled over the years with humane ways of catching mice in live traps, and releasing them into the wild, and crying when Donald catches and kills them. It is not something I take lightly, to kill a mouse, and in the end I decided that having a hygenic space was more important to me than the life of the mouse. This is the one exception I make to my practice of ahimsa or non-harming of other living creatures. It sounds like an excuse, and I know the Jains would do it better. But I do lay each little corpse under a tree outside and wish it blessings on its soul.)

Then I noticed something that almost made me throw up. There were white things, bigger than a grain of rice, all around the mouse. They weren’t moving. Luckily. But there was no doubting they were maggots. Yuck!!! One of the grossest, most disgusting things on earth, in my experience. I guess they must have frozen to death before they could spread very far. A point in favour of letting the house get cold while I am away…

So the immediate order of business was to get rid of the mouse and maggots, and clean up all around there. The universe has such nice ways of showing me I am not in control… I sometimes wonder (well, often, actually) what the hell I’m doing here! But then there’s silent snow falling through the trees, or a deep, starry black night, and I’m glad to be at Monkey Valley.

Goodness gracious, great grizzlies gallumphing!

The Western Canada Wilderness Committee, of which I am a member, has a campaign on to ban grizzly hunting in BC and protect grizzly habitat. They believe the grizzlies are in danger of extinction, and I find their evidence convincing.

If you are interested in finding out a little more, here is some info on their web site.

I wrote a letter to the premier. If you feel like making some slight changes and sending a similar letter to Gordon Campbell, you can email it to premier@gov.bc.ca. Please do!

———————–
November 16, 2008

Premier Gordon Campbell
Government of British Columbia
Room 156 – Parliament Buildings
Victoria, BC V8V 1X4

Dear Premier Campbell,

I am writing in support of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee campaign to protect grizzly bears from extinction. I enclose a report from WC2 that describes our view of why grizzlies are endangered.

It is my understanding that when the Liberal party came into power in the 2004 election, you made the decision to go against the wishes of 80% of the BC population and reintroduce trophy hunting of grizzly bears. At that time I participated in a campaign to end the trophy hunting. To my knowledge, you have not taken the steps we called for to reinstate the ban on trophy hunting.

My personal view is that humans need wilderness and wild animals, even if many people live in cities and don’t get to see them. We need to know they are there, for our psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being. The human race will be a very lonely species once the wild animals are gone. Grizzlies are an integral part of our biosphere, and each species that becomes extinct creates a hole in the fabric of the earth system that supports our life. I am concerned that the magnificent grizzly bear will soon be extinct unless you take action soon to reverse some of the trends that are leading to the habitat destruction that has so threatened our grizzly friends.

So there are three things I request that you, as leader of my province’s government, do:

– reinstate the ban on trophy hunting of grizzlies in BC.
– develop and implement a recovery plan for each grizzly population in southern BC. This will require protecting core habitat and working with U.S. border-states to protect grizzlies on both sides of the border.
– create a community education program to teach people how to co-habitate with grizzlies and other wildlife such as cougars and wolves.

Please write back to let me know what steps you are taking to protect grizzlies and their habitat.

Kind regards,

Karen Rempel, MA (Ecopsychology)
President
Monkey Valley Enterprises Inc.

Cougars: spirit guides on the vision fast

When you are on a vision fast or medicine walk, you enter into a mystical realm where all events and encounters take on a significance that is bigger than what most of us experience in ordinary waking life. During this time, an encounter with an animal is not just a coincidence. (If it ever is!) Usually a particular animal will appear to you with a message or lesson that only that animal can bring. And of course, the circumstances of the encounter will help you to understand more about the message or meaning. Also your own history, belief system, and connection with particular animals will help you to know what the animal is saying to you. Therefore, the information provided here about cougars is a possible starting point, but may not touch on the fullness of what a cougar means to you, or the gifts that your own encounter with a cougar may hold.

Ted Andrews, author of Animal Speak: The Spiritual and Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small and many other books, is my favourite source for reading about the significance of animals in different mythologies. Ted says that the cougar symbolizes coming into your own power. This is easy to see, given that the cougar has the many powers described in other postings: physical strength, leaping ability, power of hearing and sight, stealth, beauty. Ted writes, “If cougar has shown up in your life, it is time to learn about power. Test your own. Most young cougars learn how to use their power through trial and error. It strengthens them and hones their skills. When cougar shows up as a totem, much of the trial has been worked through. Now it is time to assert.”

One of the things I like about Ted’s writing and understanding of the animal world is the connection between predator and prey. Given that the main prey of the cougar is the deer, which symbolizes gentleness (including a gentle beckoning into new adventure), the deer is also significant in understanding the message of the cougar. Ted suggests that in learning to use our power, we can do so with the gentleness of a deer, when that is appropriate. This is a lesson I keep needing to learn! The cougar knows with decisiveness when to attack forcefully, but its prey teaches us that we can also exercise power with gentleness.

One thing that sometimes prevents us from showing, owning, and using our power, is the fear of loss of those who will not approve of or like it. I would suggest this might be especially challenging for women, who are socialized to appear weak and helpless. Cougar medicine can help all, male and female, to assert ourselves, show our capabilities, grow and stretch. And this means risking upsetting those around us, who may want us to stay the same. Are you willing to risk loss to realize and express your true nature? This is a question cougar asks.

Recently I was seeing a naturopath to learn to balance my power and weakness. My strength was distorted into outbursts of rage, which covered up feelings of helplessness. When we explored the animal that I identified with in these situations, it was the cougar. I felt that I had the wild, magnificent power of the cougar, but I was repressing it because I felt those around me would reject me if I showed this strength. I had a dream during this time, in which I was in a hospital room, awaiting surgery. The doctor came in, and pulled a limp cougar out of a dustbin, where it was covered with grey dirt and garbage. There was another similar bin in the room, containing another cougar. I knew the doctor was going to use some of the cougar’s life energy when she operated on me. The cougars were being kept in these bins for that purpose. I was shocked and horrified that this is what I was doing to my wild, fierce, free true nature; I was keeping it in a bin, covered with garbage, and just allowing the tiniest portion of it out to sustain my life. This dream made me wonder what it would be like to allow the cougar out of the dust bin. To allow her the fullness of her expression in my life. This question is intimately related to my spiritual journey of expressing the mystery of my true nature as I live in this world. How can I know this mystery, and learn to express it? The dream has only awakened questions, not answers. But it is clear to me that the cougar is speaking to me to set me on the path to exploring these questions.

If you are ever out on a vision fast and a cougar comes to visit you, know that it is a rare and remarkable gift. While remembering the information about how to survive a cougar attack, also try to open into communication with the cougar. Observe everything about the cougar’s physical relation to you: direction of approach and leaving; what the cougar does around you; whether you can sense a feeling-tone coming from the cougar; or even hear the words or thoughts of the cougar. In the sacred space of the vision fast, it is unlikely that the cougar has come to harm you. More likely it has come to teach and to give you a gift and a wonderful story for your people.

Cougars: fun physical facts

“Puma, cougar, catamount; Felis concolor, the shy, secret, shadowy lion of the New World, four or five feet long plus a yard of black-tipped tail, weighs about what a woman weighs, lives where the deer live from Canada to Chile, but always shyer, always fewer, the color of dry leaves, dry grass.” Thus writes Ursula Le Guin in “May’s Lion,” a story in Sisters of the Earth.

An adult cougar weighs between 90 and 200 pounds! Including the tail (which is counted as part of its body length, oddly enough—at least, this seems odd to a vertical bi-ped with a mere vestigial tail), a cougar can measure 6½’ – 8′ in length. This is a big cat! But if you take off the tail length of 2 – 3′, it is a mere 4½’ – 5′ in length.

Part of the problem for me is that the oft mentioned Mammals of British Columbia, which I consult for my animal facts, provides all its measurements in metric, so it has been hard to figure out how big the cougar really is. I hope these imperial conversions will help you avoid the same confusion! (Unless you are under the age of 40, in which case it is no help at all.)

The cougar’s perfected, low-energy hunting method is to ambush prey from a tree or ledge, attacking from behind and biting the neck. They hunt by day and night. Cougars prefer to avoid humans, and likely will hear you and vanish long before you come into contact with them. The exception is young cougars, who haven’t yet learned to avoid humans and still have the curiosity that comes easiest to the young.

Cougars live where deer, their main diet, are abundant. Usually they need about one deer a week to survive. In the winter, if a carcass freezes before they get a second feeding, they can starve to death. Their teeth are not made for biting frozen food. In addition to deer, cougars eat sheep, goats, elk, moose, American beavers (a mammal unrelated to the famous aquatic Canadian beaver!), mice, rabbits, birds, bobcats, porcupines (!), and domestic dogs and cats. In the winter, they will prey on other animals that have been weakened from starvation. In a pinch, they will eat insects too.

Young cougars become independent of their mothers anywhere from one to three years of age, during late spring or summer. These young cougars might need to roam for a long way to find unoccupied territory. This is the time when they are most likely to come in conflict with humans. Tracker Barbara Butler has seen tracks of two cougars side-by-side, and reports these were likely the tracks of two den mates who had just left home and set out into the wild world together. Otherwise, it is unusual for two adults to travel together.

Barbara also writes, in Wilderness Tracks: How to Sleuth Out Wild Creatures and Wayward Humans, that cougar leaps of up to 47 feet have been reported! They track their prey to within about 30 feet, if not waiting in ambush, and then give a short burst of speed for the attack. However, they can’t outrun a deer for very long. They have very keen hearing, sense of smell, and eye sight, and can hear prey a mile away! They can swim a mile, too! Cougars have been known to live up to 18 years in the wild.

The physical characteristics described here overlap with and influence the mystical and spiritual qualities that cougar can teach us… (to be continued)

Cougars: sign of the cat

When you are out in the wilderness, it is helpful to know the signs of the cougar, which might tell you that the cat has been by recently, and could still be in the area. This information can be helpful for self-protection, but it is also interesting for its own sake, to be able to understand and interpret the clues in nature.

Cougars leave the same types of signs as many other animals: scat, marks on trees, and tracks. A cougar might also leave uneaten food lying around for a while. Depending on the size of the animal it has killed, it might take a few days for a cougar to consume the entire body. The cougar covers its food cache with a thin layer of dirt and leaves. If you ever find such a cache, you might want to leave the area immediately, as it is very likely the cougar is nearby. But perhaps take a minute or two to look for signs of the kill, such as blood on the ground or drag marks. The cougar will also mark the cache by leaving the scent of its urine nearby, scratching up dirt to cover the urine.

Cougar claw marks on trees are a rare and precious find. With territories as big as 100 square miles or more, the chance of finding the tree a cougar has scratched is smaller than finding a needle in a haystack! Cougar scratch marks can be as high as six feet from the ground, or lower down. Sometimes cougars will use the same tree several times, so there could be multiple sets of claw marks. According to Barbara Butler, author of the fascinating book Wilderness Tracks: How to Sleuth Out Wild Creatures and Wayward Humans, the spaces between cougar claw marks are narrower than those of bears. However, this isn’t that helpful unless you are familiar with the width of the space between bear claws! Barbara luckily provides some additional information: the fore print of a cougar is 3.5″ wide, versus the print of a bear, which is 3¾ – 4″ wide. Ian Sheldon and Tamara Hartson, in Animal Tracks of British Columbia, provide a bigger range: 3.3 – 4.8″ width for cougar fore prints, versus 3.8 – 5.5″ for black bears. Clearly, there could be quite an overlap, making identification based on the claw marks alone unreliable.

However, there are usually other signs nearby for the watchful tracker. Cougar scat is often composed of chunks of dense whitish matter, about the size of charcoal briquettes. There is usually a lot of fur in the scat. Whereas bear scat is usually a big pile or several pieces of looser material, ranging from blackish to reddish, depending on what the bear has been eating. In the later summer and fall there will be lots of berries in bear scat. At other times grass and twig bits are more common.

And then there is the track itself. It is easy to distinguish between a cougar print and a bear print if the print is clear. Look for animal tracks in mud, soft sand, snow, or bare dirt. Bear rear foot prints look almost like a human foot print, longer than wide, with tapered heel, and often all five toes displaying clearly, with the claw mark well in front of the end of the toe. Cougar prints are roundish in shape, with four toes, and the claws seldom show. Barbara says that cougar claws register about 5% of the time.

I took this picture of a cougar track beside the barn at Monkey Valley, a few springs ago. I spent quite a while looking around the area nearby, but didn’t see any other signs of the cougar. The hind print is slightly smaller, almost registering over the front print in this example. It seems the cougar must have had its thick winter fur on, obscuring some of the details of the print, such as the front lobe, which is usually clearly divided in two, and the toe prints. Here the front middle toes have blended together. Notice that the prints are wider than long… (to be continued)

Cougars: planning for an encounter

Just kidding! A little hubris was creeping in there…

Even if the chances of a cougar encounter are very remote, and the likelihood of an attack even slimmer, we must all be aware that the possibility exists, and prepare ourselves with a plan for what to do.

Children: Remember, most cougar attacks have been on children and youths under the age of 16. Cougars are especially drawn to small children, perhaps because their high-pitched voices and erratic movements make them harder to identify as humans and not prey. So keep your kids close by, and if you encounter a cougar, pick small children up off the ground immediately.

Adults: If you meet a cougar while hiking or working in cougar country, follow these guidelines:

Never approach a cougar. Normally they will avoid a confrontation, but they can be dangerous when protecting their young or their food. All cougars are unpredictable.
Leave the cougar an avenue of escape.
Face the cougar and remain upright.
Back away slowly. Do not run or turn your back to the cougar.
Stay calm. Talk to the cougar in a confident voice. “Good kitty, that’s a good kitty…”
Make yourself as big as possible. Pick up sticks or branches and wave them about. Raise your arms in the air.

If the cougar becomes aggressive:

Convince the cougar you are a threat, not prey.
Throw rocks at the cougar.
Speak loudly and firmly.
Brandish a big stick. (Or cattle prod, if you happen to have one handy!)
If the cougar attacks, fight back.

Many people have survived a cougar attack by fighting back with rocks, sticks, bare fists, fishing poles, back packs, and so on.

Now you have a plan for protecting yourself and your children if you should encounter a cougar. And you also know that the chances of encountering a cougar are very small. You run a much greater risk of being harmed by a bee, another human, or a car.

In the next few postings I will talk about cougar signs that you can watch out for, neat facts about cougars, and the special circumstance of encountering a cougar while on a vision quest or vision fast… (to be continued)

Cougars: what to do if you meet one on the road

There is a saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” This is concerned with our mind’s tendency to latch onto ideas and use them to fit our experience into preconceived shapes. Such as, for instance, the idea of how to become enlightened through emulating the life or practices of the Buddha. Since none of us is the Buddha, this won’t work. The only thing we can do is be with our direct experience in the moment, but even hearing…

[The writer was attacked by a cougar and is now in Burnaby General Hospital…]

Cougars: and now for the facts

As I mentioned earlier, when I first moved to Monkey Valley I did some research to find out about cougars, consulting my handy Mammals of British Columbia. But recently I came across a great pamphlet put out by the BC Ministry of Environment, Land and Parks and the BC Ministry of Forests, called Safety Guide to Cougars. This has information that finally put my fears to rest, once and for all. (That is, in combination with my own direct experience of the paucity of cougar encounters, detailed earlier in this thread.)

The pamphlet begins, “British Columbians are fortunate to share their province with cougars, one of the most mysterious and elusive of all creatures. The cougar’s secretive habits and astounding predatory abilities—a cougar is capable of killing a 600 lb moose—have resulted in a wealth of misconceptions and irrational fears.”

According to this government publication, in the past 100 years, only five people have been killed by cougars in BC. To put this in perspective, at least three people are killed by bees in Canada every year! The tiny bee is much more of a threat than the wild, magnificent cougar. Of those five who were killed, four deaths occurred on Vancouver Island.

There have also been 29 non-fatal cougar attacks in BC in the past 100 years, with 20 of them occurring on Vancouver Island. And the vast majority of cougar attacks were on children under 16 years of age.

While I might be suspicious of some things the government tells the populace, in this case I believe they would err on the side of caution. These facts are intended to reassure, and I find that they do. I am not running on Vancouver Island. I am not a child. The chances of having an encounter with a cougar are miniscule, and the chances of being attacked even lower. Given that I’ve already seen one from my car, that may be the only encounter I have with a cougar in my entire lifetime.

This has set my mind at ease. I hope hearing my story has soothed your fears as well, dear reader and potential visitor to Monkey Valley. In the next posting I will tell you some more facts about how to handle a cougar encounter if you ever have one… (to be continued)