Tangled Bank: Writings from Orion

Tit for Tat

99 Tit forTat Amtrak Cascades train #510, northbound for a holiday getaway, Seattle to Vancouver, B.C. Morning alpenglow pink on the entire eastern rampart of the Olympics. Puget Sound plashing trackside, and just yards from the freshly washed windows,harlequin ducks.How beautiful the drakes,all rust and gunbarrel blue, clean striped and sickled with black and white. How utterly indifferent they were to our wowed attention. Even the rushing locomotive, similarly striped in cream, brown, and teal green, caused them no distraction from their winter morning’s forage.We looked at the harlequins, but they didn’t look back. The following day,we rounded Beaver Lake in wild-in-the-city Stanley Park. A wet snow was falling, and wildlife thronged the path—spotted towhees, varied thrushes, and both the black and the grizzled forms of the introduced eastern gray squirrels.Most of the creatures,well conditioned to begging by walkers free with foodstuffs,were importuning us.Then a pack of little birds appeared in the salmonberry beside the path. I first thought bushtits, but their buzzy deeee-dee-dee and the habitat, more coniferous than deciduous, gave them away as chestnut-backed chickadees, the most colorful of North American titmice.Their mobile mantles of fluff glowed the same rich russet that graced the harlequins. But unlike the ducks, these birds were anything but aloof; they clearly sought our attentions.We had nothing for them,and anyway,feeding wild animals is seldom a favor in the long run.Helping snowbirds and stay-behinds through a killing cold snap is one thing, but helping to habituate trailside dependence is another. Nonetheless, I saw the opportunity that presented itself, removed my glove,and raised my left hand.In a feather’s flutter,a C-B C-dee flapped to my finger and remained for a second or two;then another did the same.At one point three of the tits flirted with three different fingers at once.I knew it wasn’t fair. I was exploiting their hopes of a free lunch to get a cheap thrill. But I did it shamelessly, for some time, and was deeply charmed. I TheTangled Bank:Writings from Orion 100 think I will always be able to see those black onyx eyelets in the ebony cap, to feel the prickly tingle of the teensy talons on my fingertips. Pure magic. What do you suppose the chickadees got out of this encounter? Sheer frustration at unmet gratification of a learned behavior, I’ll bet; nothing more. And yet, we all want more than that from our natural encounters. People seek reciprocity wherever they can get it, and many places they cannot.I have noticed that many ardent nature lovers take it as an article of faith that their beneficence bounces back: sort of the pantheist’s version of “Jesus Loves Me.”Then when they have a bad day with mosquitoes, they feel spurned.When we hug a tree, does the tree hug back? Or is our love of nature unrequited? We all wish for two-way traffic on the highway of life, but does it really work that way? Bison biologist Dale Lott considers this desire to be“part of our romantic illusion about other animals,”and he doubts that they “reciprocate our tender regard or much of anything else.” But does it matter, as long as we imagine that nature cares about us? Bennett Cerf, the great humorist and founder of Random House, liked to tell a hoary joke about a wizened old bachelor who decided he should have some company at home, so he attended an auction for a parrot.The bidding started low, but each time he bid, someone raised him until the price grew much higher than he’d ever intended to pay. When he got home,he commanded the parrot to speak.Silence.Again he called for some company; again, silence. Finally, the man erupted:“Blast! I paid a thousand dollars for a parrot who can’t talk?” Can’t talk? squawked the parrot perfectly.Who do you think bid you up to a thousand bucks? Of course,the question of whether a parrot has anything to say or is merely parroting its trainer is an old one, and in modem times the latter interpretation has prevailed.But lately,some ethologists have wondered whether the answer is quite that simple. Few people expect colloquy with a goldfish,but we all believe beyond a doubt that we experience emotional exchange with...