15 February 05

Harm

I have a memory of having buried a bird alive when I was small. My guess is that I believed it was dead, and I probably only put a handful of dirt on it, but it gave me nightmares years later.

My love of birds now is, I believe, not unconnected to this memory.

Much more recently I harmed a garter snake. I was clearing with an axe the rampant growth of California bay sproutings in the cabin we were staying in during the last big El Nio year.

The axe fell on the snake.

I have never howled so much as this, never felt so much a part of snakedom. I was wretched. I have respected and liked snakes ever since—I can’t claim to love them, not the way I love birds, but I have lost my fear of them. I love what they do to a landscape, curling around it.

We called this snake Speranza. Out of harm comes understanding.

Or so I hope…

Posted by at 07:12 PM in Nature and Place | Link |
  1. Oh, it is so horrible when you accidentally kill something. I carry around this sad mental tally of the various animals I’ve killed with my car, and the memory of a poor little lizard I had as a pet and let out in the sun too long. :( Remembering them seems to be the very least I can do.

    It would be very hard to be a Jain.

    — Rana    16. February 2005, 12:37    Link
  2. I feel your pain. Being a pro gardener had that as a serious downside.

    — Chris Clarke    16. February 2005, 14:33    Link
  3. One of my other childhood confessions involved accidently rolling a push mower over a garden snake. I froze in horror and had to be collected inside by my father. I’ve always really liked snakes, even as a little girl, and the site of this one, writing in two, was devastating. I couldn’t look at the things without feeling guilty for years. (A lovely Garden of Evil emotoin there, hm?)

    — Siona    17. February 2005, 19:44    Link

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