Harrison My Cousin & Me

And Other Animals
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9879596-7-6
Verlag: Prometheus Publications
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

My Cousin & Me is a powerful natural history memoir of two skinny boys living in the hinterlands of Haliburton. Scattered over these pages are 372 of the author's rare wildlife photographs of wolves, bears, fishers, deer, eagles, moths,moose, mice, and more. Enthralled by the glorious life around them, one of these boys comes to realize that all this beauty is the result of evolution by natural selection -- Charles Darwin's great idea. Predators and prey do a dance together in the struggle for existence. Each hones the other to perfection. It's not a good day to die -- it never is! So this eternal chase continues. In the course of this chase, as Darwin writes, 'There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness,and misery.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Harrison, Gordon

Leseproben

CHAPTER — 2 M y earliest memories are of animals: goldfinches, squirrels, minnows, frogs, and deer.... These are as clear to me as if they had appeared this morning rather than decades ago. My family lived in a rambling old building called the Boyd House on Brady Lake not far from the Red Spot—a place in the universe. Mother was the cook for a large crew of loggers, sawyers, and drivers—the only woman among fifty men, and she loved it. Our large blue and white house was situated on a rise overlooking the lake, which seems much smaller now than in earlier years. When you are a child, every day is sunny, even when it rains. So whether it rained and then the sun came out, or the sun was out and then it rained, I cannot recall. But I do know my mother called me to the window to see a doe and her fawn step out of the mist on the far shore of the glassy lake for a drink. From that moment until this, I have been as deeply “imprinted” as any of Konrad Lorenz’s geese. The white-tailed deer is the quintessence of grace and beauty, a supreme example of the results of natural selection. Both animals, doe and fawn, hurriedly drank from the lake, turned and bounded away swallowed up by the eternal green forest. I never saw them again except in my mind’s eye where they will never grow old or die. Doe, a Deer, a Female Deer! At two years of age—and every year thereafter—females get pregnant and normally have one to three fawns in April or May. For their safety, mom visits her babies just a few times each day so they may nurse. Once the fawns can run (bound), mother and child are inseparable. By fall, their camouflage spots have vanished, and their coat darkens to blend with winter’s hues and possibly absorb more sunlight. I once cradled a fawn in my arms—it was a memorable experience, such a bundle of warmth, softness, and legs. Its complete and utter helplessness produced a protective instinct in me as if it were my own child. No, I didn’t find this fawn on the forest floor but in a veterinarian’s office on a table. The occasion of it being there is a drama itself. Road-killed deer are a common occurrence in Ontario. A quick-thinking medical doctor who witnessed a pregnant doe dead or dying on the roadside preformed an emergency caesarean section to rescue her twin fawns. The doctor rushed the fawns to my vet’s clinic where one was DOA and the other still struggling for existence. Its adorability inspired everyone to do whatever he or she could that it might live. My vet even took the fawn home that evening, so she could care for it all through the night. It died from insufficiently developed lungs as I learned later. The material universe is not compassionate—it cares for neither you nor me, so we must care for each other and all living creatures. Bambi in the Gooseberries A Fawn in the Grass Fawns grow quickly! They have to. For if summer is here can winter be far behind? When winter comes, they must run from the wolves not with them, perhaps even from our carbon mote of the previous chapter. Does do not, however, abandon their fawns—the males stay with her for one year, the females for two. Fawn in Fall with Flag Up Ready to Run Madonna and Child The Kiss These seemly mild and gentle animals are not defenseless. They have deadly two-pronged hooves and multi-pronged antlers. Bucks with a large rack will stand their ground against a pack of wolves and even gore a mountain lion before tossing it in the air like a plaything. Most animals will stand and deliver if the situation requires. There is a banality of heroism among all creatures great and small, including humans. Consider the baby woodchucks pictured here: Mother Woodchuck and Her Five Little Chips While rambling through ancient fields near my grandfather’s old bam, I noticed some movement in the grass. Investigating I discovered a very young woodchuck, popularly called a “chip.” Since the nearest woodchuck den was about 300 yards (275 meters) distance, I surmised this little wanderer was leaving home permanently. Chips are weaned at six weeks and leave the birth burrow shortly afterward. Being herbivores, they are walking on their food. My Grandfather’s Bam Being Eaten by the Forest The chip immediately sensed my presence and turned to face this terrifying challenge. Because the field was large and his den distant, he had little choice but to stand and deliver. To increase his size, he instinctively stood on his hind legs, scratching the air with his front claws all the while uttering an aggressive whistle. I marveled at his courage: he was Odysseus to my Polyphemus—man to cyclops. I wish he could talk or write that he might regale his children with tales of how one sunny afternoon a young silverback chip drove off a one-eyed giant. But nature’s bravery is an everyday event, unheralded and quickly forgotten. What is true for the lowly woodchuck is also hue for the graceful deer. Every winter I put out “deer food”—a nutritional mixture of oats, cracked com, and molasses. In three or more feet of snow, this food source is welcome and often needed, especially by the fawns and the older bucks and does. In the presence of such abundance, however, in an otherwise grindingly harsh environ-ment, fights often erupt among deer. Analogously, humans often squabble over a rich parent’s will. Jane Goodall observed similar behavior among chimpanzees in the presence of a large banana cache. In winter, deer gather in groups on a much-reduced range called a deer yard. And it’s these groups of a dozen or more that regularly came to my feeding center. When two or more does arrived with their fawns, the mothers frequently rose up on their hind legs to box with each other (see photograph). They do this to allow their fawns— their genes—to feed first. Clearly, selection pressure encourages aggression at bonanza sites. Those in the past, the distant past, who stood up and fought for their fawns to feed first were more likely to leave healthy progeny. Aggression increases the survival of the aggressor’s genes. Remarkably, I have never observed anyone injured. However it could happen. Certainly, hooves hurt! You go for it Mom! Herd at Feeding Area Handsome and Dangerous Antlers are grown and lost annually, unlike homs, which are grown once and last permanently. Bucks use their antlers to impress does and other bucks. Fights between bucks are uncommon; usually each sizes up the other and the less well endowed wisely retreats. Nonetheless, when two are evenly matched a fight will ensue and everything goes. The winner gets his choice of the ladies and his genes survive. Again, aggression increases the survival of genes—at least with deer. One-Antlered Buck An old cliché states that beauty is all in the eye of the beholder—that’s partly true but not the whole truth. Beauty is something else, something objective we can measure. The one-antlered buck is not as attractive as his former self (pictured above the caption “Handsome and Dangerous”) His lack of symmetry hints at a certain diminished virility, as does the cane of an old man. In some societies youth and virility are synonymous with beauty. When your left side is identical to your right side (bilateral symmetry), people judge you to be beautiful and healthy. Many mothers realize their infants prefer looking at symmetric rather than asymmetric patterns. Or perhaps it’s a form of imprinting; after all, the loving face that babies first focus on has bilateral symmetry, providing a reference for security and survival. In a broad sense, physical symmetry is related to health and beauty—at least as applied to the bodies of mammals. Show me an animal with a large asymmetry, and I’ll show you a sick animal. Much of the cosmetic industry and the work of plastic surgeons attempt to retain or restore bilateral symmetry. On the other hand, small exceptions can be intriguing—witness the mole above the upper left lip of supermodel Cindy Crawford. Bucks shed their antlers in the new year and clearly at different times. Search for them after the snow melts and before the green growth of spring, a time I call the brown season. Their ivory-like sheen contrasts with the tanned forest floor, allowing these gems to shine like a beacon. Be aware that you’re not the only one looking for sheds. Mice, porcupines, and ermine* chew on the tines; even foxes, wolves, and bears gnaw on the main beams, which are full of calcium, phosphorus, and mineral salts. Once I discovered a colony of yellow slugs on the tines of a massive antler. Ermine On Antlers White-tailed deer are wondrously evolved to deal with the harshness of the north woods. And since this book celebrates the results of evolution rather than its processes, let’s see how. The largest deer live furthest north; the smallest, in Florida (the Key deer) and furthest south. Why should this be? The answer is simple, even elegant, and it works for other animals: bears, birds, and beavers. As your size (volume) increases, your skin (area) increases at a slower rate, and it’s your total skin area that cools you. That’s why a large cup of coffee cools more slowly than a small cup—it has more coffee for less increase in paper. Mice, squirrels, snakes, and numerous other creatures also huddle for warmth; humans do as well. In a cold bed, we draw up our legs into a...