The Field

"If I had a shotgun..." Snippets from Open Space, week of 6/22

The other day I sat in the boughs of a rather horizontal cottonwood, the only nearby source of shade in the middle of a rolling prairie, crunching a ripe apple. That was a good break. Later I saw a very yellow bumble bee land on a white larkspur, and the contrast between the white flowers and the yellow and black bumble bee was very cool.

The day before I found some fossil clamshells in a shale outcropping. I left them there, of course, but took a picture.

A few days earlier I was inside a bird closure area, near an osprey nest. I asked Christian, a wildlife tech and avid birder, if those people over there were allowed to fly their buzzing model planes so close to the bird closure. His expression soured and his tone betrayed the truth of his desire as he said, "If I had a shotgun, I would shoot that fucking thing down." I guess they are allowed to fly their planes that close to the raptor closure, but the people who favor the birds don't like it, not one bit.

We've been working hard, really hard, to kill all the flowering Mediterranean sage plants before they go to seed, but the wet climate this year has brought up an order of magnitude more plants than there were last year while the economy has seen to it that we have fewer staff members to deal with it. We were supposed to be done by now, but there's still hundreds of plants on our land out there, dropping their flowers and starting to dry out as they go to seed. Hopefully we'll be able to get almost all of them next week.

The most littered thing (February cleanup)

Do you want to know what the single most littered item is?  The beverage container.  Whether plastic or glass bottles, aluminum cans, or paper or styrofoam cups, the disposable beverage container is the item littered more commonly than any other, and the creek has an almost limitless amount of them half submerged in tepid water or caught in the cattails.  Plastic bags might come in second, wrapped intricately as they are around so, so many bushes and tree branches, billowing like flags in the wind.  There are an awful lot of empty cigarette packages out there, too, and single serving food wrappers, paper, newsprint and otherwise, and soggy cardboard boxes.  After that the detritus becomes more random and weird -- milk jugs, roof shingles (well, this has been a windy winter) styrofoam everything, motor oil bottles, broken toys, lost surveyor's equipment. 

It was unseasonably warm and sunny Tuesday, so I decided to finally get around to cleaning up in the field.  I was afraid at first that my effort might be unnecessary, since I had seen a sign for a neighborhood cleanup that happened recently.  But whether they cleaned up the field or not, whether they did a good job or not, it's been windy.  Progress was slow while the trash bags quickly increased in girth and weight.  I filled three bags before the light faded and I resolved to return the next day to finish covering the trails.  It was warm again on Wednesday, and I filled another three bags.  I also found a second small patch of myrtle spurge, this one on the pretty, grassy hill overlooking Mayfair Park, where I also discovered an outcropping of sandstone whose fine, wavelike texture was highlighted by the slanting sun. 

I pulled the weeds and then discovered a large, orange piece of equipment of mysterious origin and function.  It had four legs that folded out (with difficulty, as they were bent and rusted) so that a central stalk could stand alone, displaying a small circle of orange steel about six feet high.  I don't know what it was, but it looked like who ever was using it probably folded it up and laid it down, intending to fetch it later, but then couldn't find it, or only realized the truck was short one big orange thing when he got back to the office.  It's dangerous to set tools down on the prairie, even big, brightly painted ones.  I considered leaving it, but then decided it was my duty to remove it.  Let the city dispose of it, or, if it was supposed to be there, the city could return it and in doing so give some poor open space worker a task with which to consume time and justify his employment.  It was heavy.  I noticed an old snag in the middle of the field that raptors have frequently perched on in the past has fallen over recently, no doubt during one of this winter's wind storms.  I saw a hawk perching instead in one of the trees bordering the field, in someone's backyard.

Oh, as I was cleaning the creek near the road, a policeman happened to be patrolling by.  He said "Good work!" and that made me feel all warm and fuzzy.  Those with the power to intimidate me also have the power to validate me.   

A deep time ago in Colorado

His sail warmed by the sun, the dimetrodon ambles nimbly among the arborescent horsetails on the sandy bank of a clear stream flowing out of the Ancestral Rockies. He pauses to dine on the carcass of a giant millipede, looking up to the canopy of the new forest as he gulps down chunks of flesh. The scaly, hundred-foot-tall poles of the lepidodendron trees are bare but for their leafy, bifurcated heads. A giant dragonfly buzzes loudly overhead, blotting the sun for an instant.

His claws dig words in the bank as he waddles off among the green roots of the scale trees, and his mountains will erode to sand and a sea will cover the place and dry up and more mountains will rise and fall and then rise again before his distant descendents start thinking about geology.
And his words are,

“My bones are your rocks and my forest your fuel,
but my earth you shall never have.”

I asked for a better deal and I got one!

I'd like to tell the world that I did something uncharacteristically bold today, something I've never done before.  I bargained on the price of an item in a store and got a better than advertised deal.  I went to the mall looking for a few presents, among them a multitool for my brother (don't tell him) and on the way to Eddie Bauer I stopped in Restoration Hardware, which has tables of neat looking little gadgets very similar to those at EB.  I continued to EB and found the multitool I was looking for and was about to check out when the salesperson asked if I'd noticed their buy-one-gadget-get-one-gadget-half-off sale. 

I said I'd check it out.  There were a few things I considered maybe getting in addition to the multitool, perhaps as a gift for someone else, among them a little multitool in the shape of a key that can be carried on a key ring, but it was $16.50 at EB.  I decided to check the gadgets at RH again.  There I found the same key-shaped multitool, same brand, marked at $12.00, and RH's gadget sale was 30% off all gadgets, so it was really only $8.00.  That still seemed like a bit much for this simple little tool, and I still wanted the original multitool at EB.  So I returned to EB, explained RH's price on the key tool, and made them the following proposition: If I would buy the multitool there, would they give me RH's price on the key multitool, making it $12.00, and, as the lesser of the two gadgets I was buying, apply their sale to RH's price, allowing me to purchase the key tool for $6.00?  The woman behind the counter handed the problem over to the other salesperson, and I explained the proposition again to him.  He looked at the items for about two seconds and then said, "Sure." 

For the utili-key, marked at $16.50, I paid $6.00, a discount of 64% and for no other reason than that I asked for it. 

I guess it goes to show that it's a buyer's market this year -- everything in the stores is on sale, and they're so desperate to move merchandise that if you ask for a better price you just might get it.  The guy agreed to the discount so quickly that afterward I thought I should have gone lower.  But the real story is that I asked at all.  In between discovering the price and sale difference and actually asking about it I spent a good hour and a half... maybe two... wandering the mall aimlessly, running over the hypothetical scenario in my mind, planning out everything I might say and how they might respond and what I might say in return, and even how I would tell people about it afterward.  But I didn't expect to do it, not really.  At any given point, the most likely outcome was just buying the single multitool and leaving.  After all, I didn't really need the utili-key and wasn't really sure what I'd do with it, and I don't advocate buying for the sake of buying.  If I spent no money I'd be getting a better deal than if I spent six dollars on something I didn't really need.  But it became a personal challenge in my mind, to see if I could do it.  And in spite of my general anxiety about interacting with humans any more than absolutely necessary, I did, and got rewarded for it, and that feels pretty good.  I should definitely be brave enough to ask about things like that in the future.

The increasingly romantic tale of Somali pirates

Real pirates, of course, weren’t free-spirited, swashbuckling rogues with hearts of gold.  They didn’t swing onto your man-o-war, grin irrepressibly as they humiliated the stuffy Admiral in a sword fight, and sweep his oppressed daughter off her feet all while making off with the gold, gunpowder and spices.  No, they killed you and then took your things.  Oppressed daughter?  Raped, and then probably killed too.  Modern pirates are also like that, except even scarier because now instead of dueling pistols and rapiers they have assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. 

 

It was through that lens that I first heard about the now rampant piracy occurring in the lawless waters of the Gulf of Aden off the coasts of the “country” of Somalia.  Somalia, failed state that it is, provides a safe harbor for criminals, and U.S. and U.N. navies claim they can’t be everywhere at once.  So pirates raid at will, boarding ships, taking hostages and stealing cargo.  They’ve become increasingly bold, even hijacking a supertanker laden with oil.  It’s terrorism at sea, making the world a slightly darker and scarier place.

 

But what’s this?  It turns out that many of the pirates were only local fishermen or desperate youths a few years ago, driven to piracy by the horrible conditions of their homeland and competition with foreign fishing operations.  Referenced here and here, the environmental degradation caused by the foreigners, who have apparently polluted the waters and killed off the fish, has rendered them unable to survive by fishing.  So now piracy is the best game in town, the only industry that’s hiring and pays well.  And Somalia is such a shambles that the pirates are actually boosting the local economy.  When the pirates come ashore, they spend their ill-gotten money in local villages.  The poor people in those places are taking the pirates’ money and using it to buy the necessities of life, send their kids to school, and generally have a little more hope for the future.  Pirates as folk heroes, anyone? 

 

The latest chapter is news of an Indian navel vessel, the INS Tabar, sinking a pirate mother ship.  The 400 foot warship ordered the pirate ship to stop and be searched.  The pirate ship refused to surrender, even though it must have been obvious that their vessel, (I’d guess a converted fishing boat) and hand held weapons were no match for the armored warship’s missile launchers and six-barreled, 30 mm machine guns.  An unknown number of pirates went down to a watery grave in the fight.  And why?  One of their small raiding boats managed to escape while the mother ship was being cut to pieces.  Was it bravery and self-sacrifice for their mates that drove them to this hopeless fight?  Would their unyielding spirits simply not let them surrender?  At any rate it seems that if confrontations like this continue more pirates will be sporting eye patches and improvised artificial limbs in the future.  

 

It gets better.  The pirates have been treating their hostages well, even hiring caterers to serve Western meals while they wait for the ransom money to come in.  Do they also play chess with them and engage in battles of wit?  It seems you might survive your encounter with Somali pirates after all, escaping the adventure with everything but your stolen heart (unless you’re a man, in which case you’ll be given the option of either becoming a pirate yourself or walking the plank.)

 

Seriously, though, PIRATES?  For real?  That’s messed up.

October cleanup: Found notes 1

I cleaned up today for the first time in a while.  It wasn't too bad -- two bags worth, plus some Russian olives.  I know now that it's fairly useless for me to cut Russian olives without putting herbicide on the stumps -- there's regrowth everywhere from stuff I've cut in the past.  But maybe it's better than nothing.  Regrowth is fairly easy to weed, and if I keep them from getting huge then maybe they'll be easier to kill if a city crew with the proper tools ever comes along.  The tamarisk also resprouted over the summer into an impressive little bush, which I also cut down. 

I saw a prairie dog today, confirming that there's still a few stragglers left.  I don't know if the city's done with them yet, though.  There's been some activity in the field lately, planting little cottonwoods near the creek (very nice) and cleaning up some of the chunks of old asphalt and concrete that have been littering the former prairie dog colony for many years (much appreciated).  I just wonder, did they see killing the prairie dogs as part of some sort of beautification project?  I hope they leave the few survivors alone.  It was nice to hear one barking at me after it had seemed so quiet down there.

Also, given its proximity to an elementary school and a high school, it isn't unusual for me to find the occasional note in the field when I'm cleaning up. They get passed in class and then, somehow, they end up scattered along the trail or in the grass. Here's one from today.

Media: half of a blue "post it" note.

First side, in very light pencil, somewhat feminine lettering:
If If Luke asks
you out what
would you say?

Second side, in bold pencil:
He has to ask

I like this. The anonymous responder knows what she's about -- if Luke wants to know what she'd say, well then, he'll just have to grow a pair and ask her himself. You go, anonymous responder girl (or boy, I don't know.)

Aftermath of the prairie dog kill

A few weeks later, the field still looks pretty much the same from my house. Out the window, you wouldn't know that the prairie dogs are gone. The weeds in the former colony are still short and the prairie dog mounds still prominent. Based on other ghost colonies I've seen, the mounds can last for at least a few years. Closer up, there have been a few subtle vegetation changes since the prairie dogs were killed. There's a small patch of snow on the mountain blooming, and another of curly cup gumweed, both of which I think are native and I don't remember seeing them there before. I suppose it's small comfort that the new lack of herbivores might allow more native plants to thrive, but I know that the more likely scenario is that the weeds will thrive instead, as they already do elsewhere in the field. It's foolishness and an empty promise to say that the city is going to do more weed management here and restore it to native plants. It won't happen. There's just too many weeds, and too many vectors for new weeds, and really, this little neighborhood open space shouldn't be the city's biggest priority for weed management anyway. I'm still bitter that they did this, that they slipped it in under the radar, and that they gave such flimsy reasoning for it. It's disenfranchising to say the least. At first, there were bodies. Last weekend was rainy, and the mud preserved some of the aftermath -- lots of canine prints and some digging around the mounds; some domestic dogs probably, but probably also some transient coyotes or foxes attracted by the smell and come to scavenge the dead. But there's also a paltry number of excavated holes, with fresh noseprints packing down the mud. It appears there was a scattered handful of survivors. Whitney and I actually heard one shortly after the poisoning, but I haven't seen or heard any since. They're either lying low, or they've already been picked off by predators, or succumbed to the poison after all. Even if a few still live, there's winter ahead. The chances of the colony recovering are essentially nil.

It's amazing how fast the decomposition has happened. Just a few weeks ago, fresh bodies. Now, the mounds are already littered with bleached bones. I gathered a few that were near the trail and made a shallow grave for them atop one of the more prominent mounds. I think the best I can hope for the few survivors is that they'll be able to live out their days in a natural way, and that the city won't come back to finish the job. This colony's dead.

Still moping over dead rodents

It's a little over a week since it happened, and I've been feeling pretty morose ever since.  It's not just the prairie dogs, it's also my birthday, and I'm not excited about getting older.  Whitney gave me a wonderful birthday yesterday and today, but still it was hard to be happy; it feels like there's so many things wrong.  Maybe it's past -- she really did a terrific job of cheering me up today, yet I still need to get it out.  I keep wanting to email the city again, and even daydream about marching up to the city council to speak my peace, but if I'm honest with myself I know I won't do that.  I'm long on thoughts and feelings but short on action.  Emails seem to be about the extent of my activism when it comes to things that require more than just private action. 

I think if I did say something at this point it would be more about the way that the city went about killing the prairie dogs rather than the fact that they did, since there's nothing that can be changed about that.  What really makes me feel tired and old is the way they just slipped it in under the radar.  I came home from work, and it was already too late.  Forget creating a dialog on the subject, there wasn't even notice given, to me or anyone else of what they had planned.  Of course I think that management decisions should be based more on science than mere opinion -- and their habitat assessment concluded that there shouldn't be prairie dogs in this area -- but the way they did this seems designed to side-step the controversy that prairie dogs are prone too.  A lot of people would have agreed with the action, but there would also have been dissenters like me.  The point is that we should have been allowed to say something, even if it didn't change the final outcome.  I think I would feel better right now if I had at least said something on their behalf.  Yet without a prompt from the city the only way I could have would have been through my own initiative.  I've thought about it many times before, but never said anything, either because the danger didn't seem immediate or because I was too lazy or intimidated by authority.  Maybe I would have found the courage if I knew the prairie dogs were to be poisoned in a month or a week.  I don't know, and never will. 

The fact that they didn't tell me shows that they don't consider a volunteer who's been doing backbreaking work on a property for six years to be a resource worth getting in touch with when they're planning a major management activity on that property; they fact that they didn't tell anyone seems to say that they don't care much what the community thinks either, and the sudden finality with which it happened is enough to make one feel helpless against the anonymous forces of powers that be, who make decisions and carry them out regardless of little people like me.  It's disenfranchising and depressing, to say nothing of the act of killing all the prairie dogs itself. 

I'm going to try again tomorrow to organize my thoughts in an email to the parks services manager, who last time responded with a defensive and condescending form letter about how Westminster is a leader in open space, with two sentences tacked on the end about Countryside Creek.  "I realize these explanations may not satisfy your desire to protect prairie dogs at all cost," he said in identical emails to Whitney and myself, assuming us to be extremists.  Who said anything about protecting prairie dogs at all costs?  I just wanted to get a word in about the wildlife in the open space that I consider to be part of my home.  The volunteer coordinator was very respectful to me and sincerely apologized for my sorrow -- she's cool and I expected she would -- but the rest of the city government doesn't get it, and doesn't seem to care enough to try.

The city killed my prairie dogs today

My prairie dogs are all dead.  When I got home from work, Whitney said she'd noticed on her walk that almost all of the holes were plugged up with dirt, and there was a dead prairie dog lying on the ground.  Then I heard from my dad what I've always feared – there was a city truck and signs this morning that said "Westminster prairie dog management: Stay on path."

It poured rain today, probably the biggest rain we've had this year.  It would have been so nice, but once I learned that, it just seemed like an obstacle to me going down and investigating for myself.  When it finally let up a little after sunset Whitney and I went down.  Maybe it was just the rain flushing out the wetland, but it smelled like death.  The creek was actually a full fledged creek for once, running over the path and blocking our way, so we went around the long way.  The sight of the colony was painful.  A brown puddle marked every hole that had been filled in, and there was the dead prairie dog, stiff and drenched, eyes shut, paws raised. 

 

They did it, and I can't believe it’s too late.  They killed the prairie dogs. I've seen this coming for years, and often put off my now moot plan to head off this eventuality by making some kind of compromise with the city.  What happened?  Did a neighbor complain about them?  Was it the noise of their barking, the occasional burrow too near the trail, unfounded fears of the plague, or just a general belief that rodents of all sorts should be exterminated? 

 

I feel slighted that no one told me about this.  I grew up in a house on the hillside overlooking the field.  When I was a kid, it was my wild frontier, my country.  Later, I decided I should try to take care of it; I adopted it.  I'm all too aware of the trash littering the field and the weeds cluttering it, but it remains my place.  I know every bump in the terrain and the location of every Russian olive tree.  I know where the cattail marsh ends and becomes a dry creek bed, and I knew these prairie dogs.  I know where the west most hole is, the south most and the east most hole.  I know where you could put a barrier to keep the prairie dogs from expanding further and where you wouldn't need to because natural barriers stop them.  I could diagram the expansion of the colony over the last several years.  Probably no one involved in making this decision has ever heard of me.  No one said, “Hey, we've got a volunteer who’s been working on that property almost every month for the last six years – maybe we could get some input from that guy.”  Was this decision made by someone who’s never even been here before?

 

A pair of foxes denned on the hillside for three years.  Every spring their litter would come out around sunset to romp and play, and many people in the neighborhood enjoyed watching them.  The mouth of that den was littered with prairie dog bones, and the colony was where the adults could most often be seen, hunting.  Two years ago there was a coyote den in the field, very near the colony, and there’s a dead tree in the middle of the field where hawks perch.  From there, they can be seen swooping down low over the prairie dog colony, looking for lunch.  I don't expect I'll see as many of those animals, now that the prairie dogs are gone.  You know what else?  The area of the colony, as the rest of the field, is completely covered by weeds.  But at the colony the weeds are all kept very short as the prairie dogs mow them down.  They do a better job of keeping the weeds down than a city weed crew could do, and I should know since I'm on one.  The prairie dogs themselves had lives, too.

 

I'm sad that the prairie dogs are dead, and disappointed in myself for failing them.  I'm sad that it’s suddenly too late, that I can't even get a word in about their fate.  That eerie silence in the field tonight – and from now on – is the sound of dead prairie dogs.

July cleanup

So I cleaned up today -- it seemed pretty bad.  I filled two bags with trash, and I also cut back some re-sprouting Russian olives I cut last year and cut a few new ones as well.  I also identified a single tall tamarisk/salt cedar plant near the road, alone in a patch of dirt that is sometimes wet -- the perfect habitat for these things.  I cut it down, too.  I only wish I had some transline... or some telar... or some rodeo... or garlon would do.  It's pretty sad that you have to poison the stumps in order to really kill them off.  Otherwise, the tamarisks and Russian olives just keep coming back.  Still, I think cutting what I can is better than nothing.  Also, I can't believe I just said I wish I were doing chemical application... after trudging through miles of mostly dried creek bed last week in big, uncomfortable rubber boots, plastic pants, long sleeves, and rubber gloves -- in 95 degree heat, no less -- I'm not a big fan of herbicides.  But I have to admit their necessity in this age of rampant invasive species introduced all over the place from more vectors than I care to think about.  It was a nice day, not as cool as I hoped, but not too hot to work.  There were a lot of beer bottles and such, probably left over from revelry around the 4th.  It was mostly depressing in that way, except for one woman walking her dog who thanked me for picking up and said she often thinks of doing the same.  I think that, given the number of people who walk there, if everyone would just pick up one piece of trash during their walks, the field would be scoured clean in no time.