Yesterday morning my wife and I noticed a pair of coyotes walking the path behind our house. Our yard backs up to a wetland that attracts wildlife year-round. Rabbits lurk in the hedge between our property and the tall grasses behind.
That’s what the coyotes were seeking. There was a pale, smaller coyote and a large dark, wolf-like creature who moved with such authority and stealth it gave you the creeps.
Catching rabbits isn’t easy for a single coyote, so they sometimes work in teams. When the rabbit flushes it might mean one coyote gives chase while the other runs reconnaissance. A species of bird called Harris’s hawk excels at this kind of predator and prey collaboration. The net gain is less energy exerted by the predator and a shared meal at the end.
Thus nature has its forms of cruel altruism. Human beings work the same way across a platform of social constructs from politics to religion to family fights. The entire premise of the show Survivor is learning how to leverage alliances to one’s own advantage.
I well recall races in which I worked with teammates to chase down opponents and demoralize them. Sometimes this was a natural part of the race dynamic. But often it was verbalized and calculated. Coming to the last half mile in a competitive invitational, a teammate and I spotted the last guy we needed to pass to win the meet. We made a purposeful plan to pass him on either side and close the space in front of him. That was our way of shutting the door on his hopes of keeping up with us.
He was the rabbit. We were the coyotes. It’s a classic theme played out every day of existence. Thirty years ago I read the series of books under the Rabbit title by John Updike. Those books immerse one in a world of raw endeavor, success and failure. Here are some quotes that apply to today’s blog theme of “run or be eaten.”
“If you have the guts to be yourself, other people’ll pay your price.”
― John Updike, Rabbit, Run
“…hate suits him better than forgiveness. Immersed in hate, he doesn’t have to do anything; he can be paralyzed, and the rigidity of hatred makes a kind of shelter for him.”
― John Updike, Rabbit, Run
“I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you’re first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.”
― John Updike, Rabbit, Run
That last one rings true for all of us that once excelled at running and now plod along as part of the pack. We’ve been the rabbit, and now the world preys upon that sense of loss and age and mortality. It takes a strong person to avoid feeling defeated by that realization that you aren’t as fast as you once were. In some ways, one must be stronger to stand proudly in that moment than any other you faced in life.
And keep an eye out for the coyotes.
You’ve invited to connect with other writing by Christopher Cudworth
By comparison I have the relative motivation of a koala bear crawling the limbs of a eucalyptus tree for leaves to munch. If they’re in reach, I’m all good. If they’re not, I sit there a moment with my eyes half open hoping the winds will blow enough to bring the leaves closer. At least that’s how I feel after she leaves our warm bed in the morning and I’m still there under the covers.
Or maybe it was like being in my own beaver den below the ice and freezing waters of a winter pond. Warm in my pelt of thick, soft fur, the world outside could not reach inside my huddling den.
What other places in the world could be so cozy and warm?
From the evidence of recent news reports, it appears that every penis on the planet has now officially either been photographed and either sent as a text or exposed directly to a member (pun intended) of the female human race. So it’s time for some serious discussion as to why this habit of men exposing themselves is so common.
Yesterday I visited Lettuce Lake, a nature reserve park east of Tampa, Florida. The park is situated next to the University of South Florida on the Hillsborough River. The environment is classic backwater swamp habitat. Big cypress trees with characteristic “knees” line the waterways. All other ground in the river basin is soggy if not completely immersed under deep vegetation and methane-freckled water.
I went there specifically for the birds, but there were plenty of people tromping around the boardwalk path that snakes through the woods. My feet were tired from a morning run of five miles, so I wasn’t in for a huge-ass hike anyway. I could have done a quick stint at Lettuce Lake and headed north for a much larger preserve east of Spring Hill on the way home, but something told me to stay put.
Most of the bird action was not focused above, but within feet of the walkways. Hung on the moss-covered trees were large flocks of white ibis. Their voices sound digital, clucking and chucking like a video game stuck in repeat. The requisite white egrets were there too, but I can get them at home too.
Instead, I wanted to see real Florida birds, and was not disappointed to hear the calls of Limpkins carrying through the woods. They hunt for large snails to eat in the deep muck, and can’t be seen while wading through the tall “lettuce” of water plants. So I cheated and played a limpkin call on my bird app and like magic, a limpkin head popped up from the green void looking for the source of the call.
I’d see several more before the day was through. Their olive-green plumage flecked with white streaks was perfect coloration in the deep shadows. Then I saw an individual within ten feet of the walkway plunge its head into the water and pull out a large black snail. “There,” I thought ot myself, “Is the source of life itself.”
I decided to walk even more slowly, and so things turned up that I might otherwise have missed. There was a modest-sized alligator lolling on a dirt hummock. Its dark skin was lumped with spikes and knobs. It looked so quiet it was hard to image such a creature could move quickly. We all like to think we’re faster than other animals in nature, but it isn’t true. Not for the average human being anyway. While visiting this time around, I golfed with my brother-in-law and we recalled the news story in which a father wading in a pond with his child in Central Florida was horrified to see a large gator take his child out from his grasp.
So it’s a bit of a desperate balance we seek to achieve by setting up parks such as Lettuce Lake. Lifted above the muck and water by the boardwalk, there are not many dangers to encounter. The cool reminder of this safety was a water moccasin coiled on a hummock just below the trail. It had the prototypical diamond-shaped head of a poisonous snake. Those venom sacks take up space in the head. So do the fangs.
As the evening sun sank lower the birds settled into a heavy feeding pattern. I saw a white phase Little Blue Heron and then a giant white Wood stork with its naked, bare head. These birds are still threatened by diminished habitat in Florida. They need plenty of accessible food and the human population down here is hungry for land as well. While elderly come here to retire, the birds only hope of survival is this spit of land sticking down into the Gulf of Mexico.
The Gulf of Mexico. That’s what they call it. You can stand on the 9th-floor balcony of the Opal Sands hotel in Clearwater and squint all you want. Mexico will not become visible no matter how you try.
There is even Salt Life gear that takes its name from our ocean affinities. But most people seem to prefer walking around in as little as they can. Even the fat guys with the big guts and deep tans wear their Salt Life shorts and hats proudly. This is not the land of apology. No Sir. People wear their fat with pride here on the Florida Coast. It’s almost a personal trademark like having a tattoo, sporting really large breasts or a bulge in the shorts. Millions of people each grabbing for the straw of individuality.
We’re staying in an elegantly constructed retirement community in Spring Hill, Florida. As my brother-in-law explained, it’s nice as retirement communities go, but not the most luxurious. He explained: “There’s one north of here that’s one of the wealthiest in the world,” he told me.
The noise he made swimming resembled the struggles of a waterbird I once saw whose leg was snagged in the mouth of a giant snapping turtle. The bird was flapping one wing trying to pull away and escape. It was the most pitiful sight. However I did not know at first that the snapping turtle had the bird by the leg. I though it might be trapped in some errant fishing line or other manmade horror. So I waded out to the bird and reached down to follow its leg underwater in hopes of freeing it. But when I reached down to feel the face of large snapping turtle, I recoiled in fear, and backed away. “Sorry, dude,” I said, and waded back out of the water.
Climbing into a Boeing 737 Southwest Airlines jet in Chicago, I settled into the window seat next to my wife. Our flights to Florida and back were quite affordable, and we had family business to attend.
When we landed in Nashville, we climbed out of the airplane and dined at a restaurant in the airport called Gibson’s. It is named after the famous line of guitars, which makes sense in such a music town. I’ve played songs on Gibson guitars, but I cannot make the claim that I am actually a guitarist. I can strum chords but can’t make it cry and sing. So I’m not really a musician.
Even though I spent considerable time on a farm as a kid, I was never really a farmer. I visited my uncle’s farm and did some chores when I was there. But that’s not the same as living on a farm year-round, or milking cows at 5:30 in the morning. But I did develop an appreciation for the work that goes into farming.
So many farmers rent their land or equipment now it’s all mortgaged and leveraged to the max. Everyone in the farming business paying bankers at some point, and delivering crops to the maw of the markets.
Walking through Midway Airport on the way to Florida this morning, I noticed a sign that said “Service dogs allowed on leashes. All other animals must be in carriers.”
There was a time when the “end of the season” was emphatic by nature. As a cross country runner through high school and college, the season would end when the success ran out. That could be the district meet or sectionals, depending how well we ran.
One felt relief in some respects that the competitive demands were over for a moment. Getting ready for meets twelve weeks in a row does a share of wear and tear on the mind and body.
In fact it was the start of a whole new season. We love and hate the process, don’t we? We love the rush of late season competition but welcome the relief when our big race is done. We love the idea of starting a new season but hate how much it hurts when we really start to push it again.
“Sno Fun Run. The time I hurdled that orange cone like an idiot. Remember how much that hurt?”
So now I know. My mouth is finally closed after the amusing shock of learning what it really was. That’s the way I react to such things. With an open mouth and then a cold dose of realization.
It was an even less forgiving story when Bernie Madoff made off millions of dollars and left the people victimized by his scams horribly deceived. Or did they deceive themselves into believing in someone who appeared to have all the answers? It was all too good to be true.
