Joanna here, bringing you tales of Wenchly encounters with wild things. We Wenches had been chatting by email about chickens and copperheads, as one does.
Mary Jo, first up, brings us her stories from further to the the Wild Side:
I love animals and grew up on a farm, but I have no tales of devil red hens, mega-roosters, or sinuous copperheads. There have been plenty of cats and dogs in my life, and my woodsy suburban neighborhood has lots of squirrels and chipmunks and deer and foxes and bunnies. (I hope those last two don't meet up often!)
But for real drama, I'll have to turn to Botswana. Two years ago, we did a safari there after I spoke at a conference in Johannesburg, and it was great. We traveled several vast nature preserves in open sided safari trucks. The wildlife there is not tame, but many of the animals have become accustomed to the trucks and pretty much ignore their human visitors as long as we behave. So a leopard ambled by a few feet away and lionesses lounged in the dirt roads, supremely confident.
But my most dramatic encounter was our last night in one of the three safari camps we stayed in. This particular camp housed guests in glamorous tents. (Hence, "glamping.") The camps were completely dark when we returned to our quarters after dinner, and we were told to always have a guide escort us back. On that last night, I was walking ahead of the Mayhem Consultant and our guide, only a single flashlight to guide our path through the African night.
As I neared our tent, I heard something rustling in the underbrush. It didn’t sound large but it could have been a hyena or some other critter I didn't want to startle. I returned to our guide and said there's something up there, it didn't sound like a big beast like an elephant, but he might want to check it out. He did and came back and said calmly, "It's an elephant."
Sure enough, standing smack dab in front of the entrance to our tent, maybe four feet from the canvas, an elephant was chomping on some greenery. I thought we'd retreat to the headquarters until the elephant moved on, but our guide just said that we could get in through the end entrance of the tent. Oooh-kay, if he thought it was safe…
I unzipped the end door entry and we went inside. (I peeked out the front entrance and saw the vast curved back of the elephant silhouetted against the stars, and felt the presence of that great bulk just a few feet away.)
For the next half hour or so we could hear the elephant brushing around the canvas sides as it continued to foraged. I wasn't frightened but I was wary. The Mayhem Consultant wanted his shower so he took it. ("brush, brush, brush, a crunch of a branch, brush, brush, brush…) I didn't want to be caught starkers if the elephant absented-mindedly took down part of our tent, but that didn't happen. Eventually the elephant wandered off and all was calm.
But I didn't forget that encounter with a Wild Thing!
But getting back to the chickens:
Susan here:
Interesting encounters with wild things ... well, we had a giant chicken in the family. My husband's twin nieces, when they were little, got an adorable baby chick for Easter that they wanted to keep. Their family lived out in the country and had four dogs and a bunch of other critters, so what was a rooster. They couldn't break the girls' hearts. That cute little fuzzy yellow thing grew into an enormous white rooster that the girls' teenage uncles named Lucifer. He was raised in the household with the dogs, and he truly believed he was one of the pack. He did whatever the dogs did -- ate from a dog dish, sat under the table hoping for dinner scraps, slept on a doggie bed, ran around outside with his furry friends, even chased cars -- if the dogs took off after a car, Lucifer would scurry along too, screeching "er-er-er-er-ooooo!" -- the surprised expressions of the passengers was an even funnier sight than the giant white rooster hurtling toward them. He had his own quirky lifestyle, and lived many happy years.
I had a lucky encounter with a wild bird while researching falconry for Laird of the Wind, which features a truculent goshawk that challenges everything the falconer hero knows about hawks. I met a local guy who trained hawks and had a particularly feisty goshawk in his mews much like the bird in my story. It was a veritable gift from the research angels to watch this beautiful, powerful, stubborn bird bating on the wrist, flailing about, refusing to cooperate, while his owner explained why the bird behaved that way--he had been trained, had escaped and reverted to the wild, was recaptured and being retrained. I happened to be writing that very same situation in the story -- so that lovely, ornery bird went straight into the book (here's a photo of that recalcitrant fellow).
Pat also weighs in on the Winged Fraternity:
Pat here:
Wild Things and I tend to get along, similar personalities I suspect. We respect each other’s privacy and stay out of the way. My only encounter of the terrifying kind was when I was about six or seven and had raised a baby sparrow that had fallen out of its nest. (And no, we couldn’t put it back in. The tree was way taller than the house!) I’d padded a nest with sweet grasses, fed it with an eye dropper, mushed up worms, all the great things a six-year-old might do. When the sparrow got old enough to fly, I took the box outside and put it up where other animals couldn’t reach it. It learned to fly into that tall old hickory tree, but then it would fly right back down to the box or land beside me. That’s when I learned cats are not bird friendly. The old tom someone had dumped off the side of the highway was quicker than the sparrow, and that was the last time we ever had a cat. Sorry cat lovers, I love birds more.
So other than dive-bombing crows that steal ice cream off a toddler’s cone, I just admire the foxes, deer, coyote, and other critters that cross my path and let them do their own things.
From Andrea:
Wild critters? Having had country houses for a long time, I’ve seen all kinds of them, from the chipmunk who ate my very expensive New Zealand shearling gloves (Really—it couldn’t have gone for the plain vanilla woolen ones next to the sheepskin?) . . . to the bat who led me on a merry dance through the house, using a broom to guide its sonar to the open door . . . to the baby possum, who needed to be captured in a soft, fuzzy blanket and then carefully carried outside. And then there was the coyote (the first and only I ever saw on my property) who strolled past the dining room —the wall facing out on the meadow was mostly glass—during a large family dinner. It stopped about 5 ft. away from the window to ogle the platter of grilled salmon I had just carried in, then
shrugged and kept going.
But I think my favorite story is raccoon vs. six adults and one child for guest privileges at a friend’s country weekend cottage. The raccoon was rather loath to leave (picture 6 adults running madly as a furry critter chased them out the front door.) Given that a 6 yr old was part of our group, it was decided that a wild animal skulking around wasn’t wise, so we decided to . . . evict it.A long story. One of our party had seen a TV show about lassoing wild animals . . . the rest of us reacted with sneering skepticism, but somehow we went along with the crazy idea and managed to herd the raccoon into an empty swimming pool. Our intrepid big game expert had one of us back the car up to the pool’s edge and open the trunk, then shimmied out on the diving board with a rope and broom fashioned into a makeshift fishing pole. I’m not sure who was more astonished—us or the raccoon, when sure enough, he gently looped the lasso around the animal’s middle and lifted it up. Eyes wide in wonder, the raccoon didn’t twitch a muscle as he floated through the air and was placed in the trunk. Down slammed the lid, whereupon we drove it about 5 miles away to a forest area . . . then panicked about how we were going to get rope off it. But raccoons are very clever with their hands. When we gingerly opened the trunk, it popped out having already untied itself, and ran off—not without a huffy look for having ruined its weekend getaway! (The 6 yr old talked about the exciting raccoon caper for years afterward!)
Nicola with a rare, shy animal:
I live in the country and enjoy nothing more than being outdoors, and over the years I’ve had wonderful encounters with wildlife of many different kinds: Deer that pop out of the woods at Ashdown to check us out on our early morning walks and baby badgers and stoat families playing on the drive in front of the house. As my OH is very into birds and wildlife he’s the go-to person in the neighbourhood when a bird falls down a chimney and gets trapped inside the house or when a mouse needs to be relocated. As mice are homing creatures we learned early on that they need to be taken a long way away or they’ll just re-appear triumphantly the next day!
I’ve also been lucky enough to travel and see amazing animals in places like Namibia – big cats that have had a very hungry look in their eyes, and at the other end of the world, polar bear cubs in the Arctic. I’ve even walked with wolves and had my face licked by a wolf cub.
My favourite encounter however, was in Scotland a couple of years ago. We’d been told that the cottage we were staying in was visited regularly by a pine marten foraging for food and that he had very specific dietary requirements: nuts, jam and raw eggs. We were very excited because although we’d had a couple of glimpses of pine martens in Scotland in the past they are such elusive creatures that it’s very rare to see them. We set out a feast to tempt the little creature and waited. And waited. And waited… Eventually I got up to make a cup of tea and when I came back two minutes later the jam and peanut butter was still there but the egg had disappeared and there was no sign of the pine marten. It was a bit like the moment in Jurassic Park when the goat disappears, only much nicer. Eventually however, our hours of patience paid off and the pine marten graciously consented to stick around and eat the remainder of the food we left it – although it much preferred peanut butter to plain nuts!
Anne brings us ... Animals Rescue Melbourne:
What happened is, I was sitting in my big comfy chair, writing, pretty much immersed in Paris in 1730. I looked up and saw a big black bear leaned up against the sliding glass door.
I thought “ACCCK”
In case you were wondering what people think when a bear is at the door. This is a useful thing to know.
The bear peered into the house and rattled the sliding door in a semi-threatening sorta way. If it had not been a little chilly and the glass door closed, I would have confronted the bear more intimately so let us all take a moment to thank the weather.
I have spent many a night sleeping soundly, secure in the knowledge that my trusty hound Mandy will let me know if anyone invades the house. After all, she barks at every squirrel jumping from tree to tree and announces the arrival of the UPS man with hysterical menace.
About a half minute into what I will call ‘The Bear Incident’, my faithful dog was still sleeping, curled up on the rug, three feet from where a moderately large, (OK, pretty damn big,) bear was thumping on the glass. Obviously I have been living in a fool’s paradise when it comes to the alert dog part of my life.
Basically I am low-hanging fruit for bears.
“Urlp,” I said, eloquently.
Mandy woke up, took one look at the bear, and ran for the front door,
which I had left open
to let the breeze in.
I had forgotten about that.
The bear took off.
Mandy took off.
I ran out and leaned over the porch railing, yelling, “Mandy! Come!” into the unrevealing underbrush.
Bark! bark! bark! headed down the hill.
But no screams of mortally injured dog.
Ten minutes of barking.
Silence.
Mandy returned, unhurt, prancing, looking very proud of herself.
I gave her the leftover from my Mexican takeout as a reward.
If I were writing this as fiction, Mandy would be the pro-active female protagonist and I would be the ineffectual sidekick.