The quail weren't the commotion, though. They'd spooked the squirrel, who has been lately busy burying ponderosa seeds, and he chirp-chirp-chirped at them, very loud. I know this is a warning chirp because he yells at me that way, sometimes, when I burst into the backyard. The Stellar's jay yelled, too. Mine! Mine! Mine!
I spooked them all when I tried to make a movie for you — once the squirrel and jay stopped yelling, the quail made such a nice, soothing sound — but maybe eight quail are still out there, side-by-side with a young flicker, pecking at the dirt.
*
In Ursula LeGuin's Always Coming Home, which is a kind of science fiction/fantasy/anthropology hybrid, the creatures of the world live in different "houses." I think this is a Native American concept. Some animals live in the same house as humans – sheep and cows and dogs, for example – and some live nearby, which if I remember right is the second house: quail, deer and other hunted animals. Then the more elusive animals, like cougar or eagles, are considered to live separately from those in the first two houses.
When I walk out my door to startle quail, squirrels, jays, robins, deer or the marmot who's taken up residence under a rock in the front yard, I always think about that distinction; I think that I'd draw the line in a different place; because when I walk out my door, I imagine myself entering their house — or, at least, our house.
3 comments:
I love that book!
I have a category of my own. Pestiferous second house animals that move too close - chipmunks in the septic system tile bed, for example, the groundhog that tried to undermine the kitchen porch post. My house ends at the edge of the tended lawn (well, the field where we cut the grass, actually.) We co-exist in this zone - I have given up trying to grow hostas because the deer destroy them. But if there is too much digging going on, out comes the live trap and the perp gets transported.
I too have a warning-chirp squirrel who did not like Wendy's dog staying with us.
Huh. Interesting idea, different houses. Another book to add to my "must obtain to read" list, which is the same list as the "must find the cheapest price for in Used Bookstores or Amazon".
Hm. Maybe I need to rethink my book-buying system.
I don't know that book, but I've loved many of Ursula LeGuin's other books. I've totally lapsed in my fiction reading since starting grad school, or I probably would have tracked it down.
Now I want to reread The Dispossessed. It's one of my favorite books, but I haven't read it in over 10 years. (Because that's how long I've been in grad school...)
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