I used to run the Hike and Bike Trail along Town Lake in Austin, until a gentleman stopped me one day to suggest that my lack of coordination was doing nothing to market the New Balance shoes upon my feet. Since then I’ve restricted myself to the trails around the Preserve. This morning I’m attempting once again to gracefully cut between two boulders (Owww! Just run it out, Monica! Blood draws out your athletic animal.), bound over trickling streams and slice by the undergrowth (Go around the spiky bush, not through it!), chanting to myself that I’m out here for the challenge. The truth is I’m a stumbling, bumbling mess of female flesh waiting for destiny to catch up with my ankles: a hard roll and a quick snap. The backwoods are one of the few places within Austin where I am assured no one will see the effort it takes for me to move two legs …simultaneously…in cadence. Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about the coyotes mistaking me for an injured, easy meal since the noise of my effort sends them scattering long before my approach.
Since all of my concentration goes to the placement of my feet I end up dodging the environment instead of becoming one with it. I ran this trail for three years before I realized it cut along a steep rock wall. Sure it was covered by vegetation but THREE YEARS to realize I’ve been busting calories in a canyon?
The heat and humidity of Central Texas has given life an extended opportunity to evolve; perhaps just a little too much. I’ve seen tarantulas stationed on the elementary school doors, and avoided a centipede that’s reputed to need an emergency room visit to remove. I’ve found a cockroach living off the congealed droplets of my Nyquil, scorpions falling out of the air vents onto my bed, baby geckos dehydrating in my kitchen pots, possum nosing around my bird feeders, huge spiders who can stitch a zigzag better than Martha Stewart (arachnidian code for “I pack a bite”!) and huge prehistoric bugs that scream at one another from the trees before they fall onto their backs in a death throw… or a possible molting dance… hard to tell.
Even the road kill looks different around here. I have yet to see an armadillo alive, but they make a leathery, surprisingly clean, mass on the highways. And the local news keeps flashing pictures of a mysterious wild hairless dog getting hit on the back roads. By most accounts the Chupacabra is alive and well and living it big in Texas.
Two friends of mine are preparing for their first road trip into Wyoming; my home turf. He unabashedly admits he can not tell the difference between the large herbivores. So I explain it to him in a language as old as Latin: guy talk. “The best way to tell them apart is by their roadside behavior. Think of antelope as the Porsche Cayenne of the plains; they’re out in the open terrain and don’t mind you knowing it. The quality of their engineering makes them smart enough to understand it’s best to cross an Interstate between vehicles while being fast enough to accomplish it. Elk are the Land Cruisers of the West, sturdy enough to conquer just about any territory yet wise enough to flaunt themselves only where there’s strict gun control: Yellowstone, Jackson Hole and Estes Park. A moose…well a moose is a Dodge Ram with a horse trailer attached on the back; so large and cumbersome you’re not sure why they didn’t go out of business millennia ago. They’ll cross a highway but only if there’s water on the other side. That leaves the mule deer; a dirt bike that was never meant for pavement. They’re skittish, unreliable, and will jump a car racing toward them at 80 mph, only to end up as a horrendous mess across the front windshield.”
My friends mention they’re doing a prairie dog town tour on their way north. Did I know the biggest colony ever recorded was in Texas? It was the size of West Virginia and packed 400 million rodents. Now I’ve heard of winery tours, National Park tours, and Route 66 but this was a new one. “Oh yes,” I reply, “those disease infested pests westerners have been trying to PUT on the endangered list. The only thing that excites Wyomingites less are rattlesnakes, crows and wolves who don’t understand Park boundaries.” Leave it to the New Yorkers to appreciate what a rodent can do to the prairie.
I stagger out of the forest into my neighborhood. The morning fog has turned the colors of suburbia muddy grey. Pellets of gathered mist run down the loose strands of my ponytail. There is a smell on the air of worms. The streets are crawling with the ones who have tried to save themselves from drowning, only to be caught helpless in the drying gutters. I save a few. It’s a habit I took up when I was five and has felt too inconsequential to break. I only bother with those who look strong enough to survive the launch I give them back onto a lawn. I reach my house with enough ambition for one more worm, nearly tearing it in two because one end is stuck to the ground and will not come off. I look closer and find a flat suction cup circle of flesh clinging possessively to the driveway. So they’ve got single-handed earthworms around here. Instinct takes over and I let go. Maybe it’s a roaming terrestrial tape worm or dry land leech. Whatever it may be, it’s found an environmental niche sucking at decorative concrete.
The environment benefits from the nomadic lifestyle of mankind. It needs fresh eyes to notice what passes to the natives as a common pest; someone who’s fascinated that a cockroach can thrive on cold medicine swirling in 10% alcohol.
**Originally published in The Wyoming Tribune-Eagle in Dec. 09
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by Christina
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