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Show THE ZEPHYR/ APRIL-MAY 2005 foreigners who wait helplessly for gifts (democracy, freedom), or Americans, a chosen people, the givers of gifts. Also, glory be, there is that high prize we are duty bound to struggle for, the ultimate brass ring, the society of ownership. The shrew came back the next night, found me once again snoozing in my chair, but this time my right hand rested on the knee summit and Blarina bit my little finger. I reacted quickly enough to avoid full penetration, or my skin was a little too tough for Blarina’s tiny teeth. Blarina, shaken to the floor, continued its hunt as though nothing much had happened. It travelled to the near bookcase, disappeared, emerged at a cabin wall for a thorough examination and on to the computer/TV mess of cables and stands, vanished behind another bookcase, appeared again at the door’s threshold where it exited the cabin ina tiny disjunction between door and jamb. Isay travelled, because walking, trotting, running, pacing don’t fit the real motion of this animal who floats on the floor surfaces, small feet and ankles invisible beneath its sleek black pelage, very like a queen in some of the old movies who moves on rollers hidden beneath her skirts. Shrew pelage is similar to that of moles, short hairs grown densely This particular shrew is black. Alison had seen it previously. She said that when lamplight strikes just right there is a sudden silver flash across its back, as though the black pelage is belted by a wide shimmer of silver. I hadn’t made much sense of her description, but on those nights of acquaintance with the shrew I saw, two or three times, the sudden flash, and it was like a belt of silver. Blarina returned two nights later. I’m standing near the stove. A black shape crosses the LOSING SOLITUDE Do shrews and other animals live their lives along lines of ownership, of property? Maybe property for them consists of whatever is useful, now: beetle grub, squiggly earthworm, millipede, a dead creature...Life as immediacy. And savoring? And then, as always, the next move. A now world. By Martin Murie SHREW’S WORLD : When the president told us that we were building an “ownership society,” I thought of the shrew. On three successive visits to the cabin the shrew defiantly violated my personal space. Defiance? Could it be that the shrew didn’t even know about ownership? Hmmm. You be the judge. osae in the armchair next to the wood stove, a sudden presence on the corduroyed surface of my left leg, not a deer mouse. I’m familiar with deer mice, the feel of their quick nervous steps. This body on mine had a different cadence. Now it was on my right leg that was cocked up against my left so that my knee made a kind of peak and that’s where the shrew paused, just as | opened my eyes. Blarina brevicauda, short-tailed shrew, one of twenty nine North American species, one of which is the smallest of all mammals. It raised its pointy snout to test the air around the knee summit, realizing that this was the highest point, a place to reconnoiter, make a decision. I moved slightly, surprised but also amused. The shrew was pantomiming a human climber’s reconnaissance. That’s usually the first thing a climber does. You raise your head from close attention to surfaces, you lift your snout to survey the grand scene. Blarina scrambled into a turn and headed back down the corduroy rows to my shoe where it stopped and began to investigate. A mouse would never have done such a thing, would have scampered away without pause. But a mouse is basically an herbivore, shrews are predators. Blarina was on a hunt, sniffing at the carapaces of a warm-blooded creature. Never mind this creature’s size, it might be prey. Finding no easy access through my overdesigned shoes it travelled to the bookcase, “as if it owned the whole place,” I reported to Alison,. and there we were again, the ownership idea. Do shrews, and other animals live their lives along lines of ownership, of property? Maybe property for them consists of whatever is useful, now: beetle grub, squiggly earthworm, millipede, a dead creature. Or an odor trail, resting place, sleep harbor, anything of use, to be returned to later, or not. Life as immediacy. And savoring? And then, always, the next move. A now world. We can imagine a shrew’s universe as a survival place, its purpose is promotion of the shrew’s living to see and smell and feel another day. Rocks and fallen trees, swamp vegetation and its various odors, grasslands and its various odors, horned owls and feral cats ... all demanding acute awareness. A universe made of other presences, each with its own particular power, each as much “at home” as any other. No one of them is master of all. Living as total immersion in awareness, not one of perpetual entitlement. A complicated place. Any attitude of total mastery is simply too simple, totally unrealistic, impossible. A mastery attitude, ownership, would notbe conducive to a shrew’s living long enough to see another sunrise, or sundown. Speculation like that is what made me think of the shrew when I heard George W’s proclamation of an ownership society: the vivid difference. The president is promoting a world where the role of others ... rocks, trees, rivers, oceans, animals, us ... is to be passively dominated by oil drill rigs, bulldozers, humvees, weapons of mass destruction, and management techniques. In this promotion, humans are either ORDER SIGNED Red Tree Mouse 3 5 floor, stops at my shoes. Once again a thorough examination, the shrew’s relentlessly inquisitive nose leading its body to here to there, everywhere. Quick little bites of motion. From the imperial height of my eyes I can’t see its tiny eyes shielded by fur. I’m marveling at Blarina’s temerity, until it slinks across shoe lacings and proceeds to my pants and now its snout is exploring the cuff of my pants and my socks and now it’s inside, climbing. Enough. I reached down and shook Blarina out. In a half-second flash it’s on its back, tiny feet exposed and ready, its open mouth is at my hand. I withdraw and Blarina retreats, begins another investigative travel along the floor margins and into darkness behind legs of furniture. This animal is a predator, searching for prey, dead or alive. It can’t afford to waste time getting upset and looking fora place to hide and quiver. Risks must be taken, opportunities can’t be refused. Wolves and weasels have similar life styles. 1 remember a trapper’s tale about a weasel climbing his pants to his belt and beyond, seeking a good bite hold. When I first heard that story it seemed a bit over the top; now I think it could very well be true. Back in the time of the “first” gulf war, Alison and I were part of a festive gathering, conversations ebbing and flowing, much laughter, lots of fun. I remember a fragment of overheard conversation about private property; maybe I recall it because I was saying to myself, “Here we go again. Wyoming, California, Oregon, Ohio, doesn’t matter where, that same sentence: ‘Nobody’s going to tell me what to do on my own land.” Later in the day that speaker and another young man put on their boots and coats and picked up guns and oe rabbit hunting. One of them, stepping through the doorway, said, “Maybe we’’ll shoot an Iraqi.” Are these remarks connected? I think so, but only by way of a nearly unanimous and unexamined sense, among us Americans, of American entitlement. As a nation we collectively believe we are entitled to do whatever the hell we want to; we stand tall and are not about to back off from anybody else. But here’s the catch: inside our borders that attitude translates mirrorwise: individual ownership, a right enshrined in law and other nations, have pushed entitlements to the limit, and beyond. : TI f the thoughts the sk forced into my mind. However, I take full responsibility. COPIES DIRECT FROM MARTIN MURIE: LOSING SOLITUDE: cowtown....$14.95 custom, authenticated by documents, protected by courts. A right that sanctions opposition to any other citizen, in defense of individual holdings. A right securely bound into the framework ‘of our thinking, it leads to this: “Nobody’s going to tell me what to do on my own land.” Our nation has always been an ownership society. George Washington speculated in Ohio lands and invested in a trans-Appalachian canal that would bring people and’ commerce to those lands. But George Bach and his people, both at home and in the face of A contemporary Western. Developers invade WINDSWEPT: Birdwatchers 6 a biker from Montana tangle with _ corporation extremists in Medicine Bow, Wyoming....$14.95 BURT’ S WAY: Environmentalists labeled ‘terrorists, keep a’ chuggin’ on the Quebec/New Y ork border...$12 RED TREE MOUSE CHRONICLES: Forest animals on assignment; What is the future of the forests? They turn activist.....$6.00 SERIOUSLY INSISTENT: 80 pages of activist critique...$7.00 Plus Postage---§2.20 for the first book, $1.00 for the second. PAGE8 Send your order to: MARTIN MURIE 470 CR 12 North Bangor, NY 12966 Oyen Aera sagehen@westelcom.com |