Threads from the Web of Life: Stories in Natural History

Housekeeping

5 Housekeeping THE owl was wasting her energy, following a circular course through the forest. She was neither flying off to the hunting grounds nor returning to feed her young—all she was doing was avoiding them. She was far enough away that she could not see the standing snag, the tree that held her nest, silhouetted against the night. Her three owlets stared at the vacant entrance hole above them, never considering that they might have been abandoned . But she could no longer ignore the fact that this nest was a danger, that her clutch was at risk, and no amount of feeding them would solve the problem. She had been orbiting like this for an hour, and still no solution had occurred to bend her path to a constructive direction. An itch at her breast grew to demand attention, so she flared to a perch and lit beside her flight lane. The constant breeze of her headway ceased abruptly, filling her ears with silence. She swiveled her glance around, yellow eyes bright, to see the matrix of tree limbs ahead receding before her, giving the illusion that she was falling backward. Her mind had been automatically compensating for her continual progress through the treescape, and now her brain was slow to adjust to the pause. On the wavering perch high above the forest the owl preened and scratched at the pests that infested her. One by one she rousted the persistent ticks and mites. They scrambled to avoid her crushing bite, clawing with all eight legs through disarranged plumage, but she prevailed, combing the tiny torments off to fall away into the night, each clutching at the air in vain, reaching for the lost warmth of feathers. In the wooden cave high within their pine snag the owl’s clumsy young were trying to preen themselves as well, after the example of their mother. But the face flies they chased off did not move far. And the evicted ticks and mites they combed away 0 Threads from the Web of Life came to rest in the debris of the nest among the pairs of little owl feet. Within minutes the parasites were back, crawling over their downy hosts again to continue sapping energy, slowing the growth of the owlets. Her efforts to raise these chicks might win the mother owl nothing more than her own demise from the growing infestation. The owl stared into the blackness below her. Pure blackness was calming, but she knew this was not pure blackness, so she fell into her reflexive scan for detail. Soon a patch of gray appeared . As her eyes continued to dilate, the patch resolved into a pattern of leaves and branches. The texture of a meadow filled itself in behind the boughs. Her hearing now aided her scan, showing her a faint, rhythmic cadence—the sound of a jackrabbit chewing. Yes, now she spied him in the deep grass, betrayed by the movement of the tips of his ears in time with each bite. Directly below she saw a receding margin of shadow that was the head of a transfixed toad, slowly sliding backward into the undergrowth. A snake, still invisible to her in the weeds, had ambushed the amphibian, whose failing grip would not delay the serpent’s inevitable embrace. And there her gaze dissolved, wandering into the distance. For the moment she fell unaware of the tapestry of dark vignettes around her—her vision growing occupied with another scene— an image forming behind her keen, unfocused eyes. A solution to her problem was emerging. She stared into space, one pupil now larger than the other. Then her alertness returned, and she sprang and was off across the wood flying with purpose once again, leaving her bare branch trembling. THE owl descended from the unobstructed flight lanes to flit along just above ground, dodging obstacles left and right, instead of flying over them. Crossing the grassy meadow margin she ignored the chirping invitation of the crickets she needed to feed her young. In the corner of her eye a shrew flinched at her passing, but she resisted that too. She was scanning the texture of the earth itself, inspecting the intricacies of the leaf litter while keeping only her ears focused to the side. At this height she must take care not to blunder too close to the lair of a fox or marten. Finally she perceived a shininess on the surface of a twig, [3.138...