by jim holt
My daughter’s friend screamed when she opened the front door last night. What now?
The shoe-sized lizard clinging to the stucco by the door? a startled rabbit? a cat chasing a squirrel from the pansies to the driveway? the bobcat and his brooding shadow? the seven-foot constrictor-looking indigenous coachwhip (whom we love because it preys on indigenous rattlesnakes)? a rat? a mouse?
What is it?
Her frightened fingertips-to-lips response was merely a point. I looked behind the jasmine billowing over the stone wall that runs from the door.
Where?
There. Still pointing.
I looked harder, and there it was, a skinny white face looking straight at me. It’s an opposum, I said. As i turned away it darted down the runway of stone partition wall to the jungle – that preserved leafy tract of brush designated by the county as wilderness.
We live on street of houses, the backyards of which all abut the wilderness tract. There’s a rail fence separating the two worlds, suburbia on this side and the jungle. Each house is separated by a stone wall, each of which becomes a convenient thoroughfare for: road runners, coyotes (i now know exactly where the creators of the iconic cartoon sat and wrote – right here, where i’m sitting now), squirells, quails (which i’m watching now), rats, racoons and now opposums – or at least, one opposum.
I’ve never seen an armadillo in my life, not even at a zoo, but if i see one here i wouldn’t be surprised.
Almost every morning i see the rabbits in my yard, still able to find that slack bit of chicken wire i neglected to tighten against the rail fence. I see them scoot back and forth to the jungle brush only seconds before the mornight stroll of coyote and/or bobcat. The birds, of course, exploit both worlds equally and also with balanced portions of prey and predator. Hawks hover, jays dart, or my favorite, the owl with the wingspan of a man or a woman laying down or standing as it swoops from roof to water tower.
If the housing market has dropped off, the trend hasn’t reached our neighborhood. Our air is always circulating with the dust kicked up by some audible grater or house-big soil tiller. And, when the big yellow machine digs or flattens or grates, it pushes all those animals to the only safe haven left – my backyard.
As my daughter’s friend relaxed with the news that opposums don’t bite (which could be a lie, i’m sure they have teeth) I said goodbye and closed the door thinking: Thank God she didn’t open the backdoor.
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