“I was working in the pasture, on a cold December day
I was building garden boxes, and raking up some hay
when I looked up overhead, with nothing on my mind
I saw a dozen eagles/ suspended in the sky.
“I’m glad I live where eagles fly
I like to hear coyotes cry,
I don’t miss big city life,
in the Ozark mountain hills, where eagles fly.”
This song came to me our first winter here: how wonderful to look up and see 12 or 20 bald eagles overhead. Unlike the movies, bald eagles have a very quiet call. (Hollywood uses hawks’ shrieks for eagles, and wolves’ howling for coyotes.)
I never considered myself a birdwatcher. I love ‘em, and I remember staggering home from Tipitina’s at 3 a.m. and duetting with mockingbirds (the American nightingale) outside my balcony in New Orleans.
But here in the Ozarks, and probably much of the US, we can observe tiny creatures like hummingbirds, a mélange of songbirds, large birds like pileated woodpeckers and great blue herons, and raptors like hawks, owls, eagles, and the ubiquitous buzzards.
I filled an outside seed feeder yesterday. Across the road I hear our neighbor Eddie hollering at his cow dog – he is a professional rodeo guy whose rodeo hobby is supported by industrial Tyson chicken houses, and he runs cattle as well.
The next gravel road over is our neighbor James who manages the deer herd, catches fish, grows and preserves his own produce, and is the most self-sufficient person I’ve ever met. James built his own storm shelter and keeps his canned ‘maters and pickles in there.
As loyal Arkansawyers, we try to keep Tyson and Walmart in bidnis, but our relationship with animals is different than our neighbors have. Eddie told me once that everyone has a job. The chickens and cattle are slaughterhouse bound. I know he has affection for his horses, but he sells them and buys new ones to train for his purposes. Likewise, when his cow dog Bullitt got old he bred him for a new generation. We know where the chickens go.
Eddie does not allow hunting on his land. James chases deer through the woods, but shoots for only two purposes: in season, deer for food, or in any season to kill varmints.
Arkansas Red buys hot dogs to feed the foxes in his Eureka neighborhood. I had a student who told me he didn’t shoot roadrunners because they eat snakes. A few Christmases ago, we saw two coyotes bounding through deep snow. We hear them often, but they don’t come close by because we don’t have prey and we do keep dogs.
My wife lays down on the floor with our current dog. (She hasn’t groveled on the floor with me for many years.) We take showers with grand-daddy longlegs. We live with spiders, wasps, snakes. Outside we watch deer, fox, rabbits, turkeys, raptors, songbirds.
The Bible says: Live fruitful and multiply, and have dominion over the earth.
When we watch the birds flying around, visiting out feeders, we feel that we fulfill that dictum. I was jealous that my wife saw turkeys in the meadow while I was not home.
This recent snowstorm reinforces our wonderment in nature. The snow in the woods is truly magical, especially for me, who grew up in south Louisiana, where snow is a rarity. Snow on the branches is the inspiration for snow-flocked trees, but birds flying though them is a greater fulfillment for us, the humans who get to watch them.
We are part of nature, like it or not. In the country, we are so fortunate to watch the cottontails and deer tails, the myriad birds. Some neighbors see this as the place to hold dominion, and others exist within. In Manhattan, the concrete and skyscrapers are the dominion. I am so glad am here.
Christmas we may celebrate at home, without our children, now grown. If it is snowy, all the better – we can show them how beautiful it is here, via the internet, even that we don’t have all the fambly here together.
Enjoy what we have – it is all ephemeral.