wildlife

This afternoon, having nothing better to do, I hied me over to Blandford Nature Center wherein I discovered much nature.

Up until about a year ago one of the main attractions at the Center was a rescued fox. About a year ago the fox passed on, and a new tenant has recently moved in:

This bobcat is about four years old and was raised as a pet until it became too much for its family (and neighbors) to handle. It is quite fearless around humans and so, out in the wild, would not be able to fend for itself, and would probably have had to survive on a diet of garbage and small yappy dogs.

I do have to say, though; he is an absolutely beautiful animal.

Since the bobcat was not interested in what I was doing, I wandered around and looked at the other rescued animals. I immediately discovered something else new:

The turkey vultures are expecting. That thing to the lower right of the bird is one of their two eggs. Which just goes to show, everyone is beautiful to someone. Especially in the spring.

Onward and inward. Every inch of the park was teeming with life.

Some of the photos just seemed to compose themselves:

On the way back out of the park one of the attendants was preparing to feed the cat. Like any other cat, he sat at the door and waited impatiently. Once the door was open, he hissed at the attendant and swatted her in the leg.

Note that this is NOT a small animal. He didn’t use his claws, however, and for his rudeness the attendant squirted him with a water bottle. Now, I have seen this tactic used on house cats with a great deal of success; but a 40 pound bobcat? Who’d’a thunk? Next time I am on safari in Africa and a lion charges me, I am going to squirt it in the face with a water bottle. It should keep me perfectly safe!

I watched the cat eat for a minute, then discovered why it was angry at the center employees:

Jeez, what a slap in the face.

On the way out of the park I was surprised by one more Piece of Nature™:

I guess this one hadn’t learned the “crawl quietly through dead leaves” trick yet.

The sides of the river below the dam are mostly lined with ice, except where turbulence keeps the water too angry to freeze. In some places the ice stands out more than ten feet from the bank (or wall, where development encroaches too closely). And in the midst of some of these sheets of ice are areas of open water. Some are caused by oddities in the bed of the river. Some by being insulated by heavy snowfall. Some are broken open by enterprising-yet-bored programmers. And some are caused by chemical-laden runoff from the nearby parking lots.

It was in one of the latter type that Scott and I found a carp. Nothing unusual in and of itself; the river is silty and slimy and therefore ideal for carp. But the ice surrounding the pool in question extends to the bed of the river, so the carp could not have swum here, and if it had been here before, we would certainly have noticed.

Then we noticed an odd track along the wall next to the river, as if something had been...dragged. No footprints, however; just the drag marks, extending from fifty feet or more down-river. And little clumps of snow which could have been kicked down from the walkway ten feet over our heads. Having been raised on the Hardy Boys, we immediately solved the mystery: someone, fishing from the walkway, had hooked the carp and, being unable to reel the carp up through twenty feet or more of open air, had brought the thing to land and walked it up to where the river bank was accessable from above. Then this brave sportsman had un-hooked the carp and thrown it in this pool.

Could have been worse, I suppose. He could have left it on the ice to form another carp-cicle for Scott and I to throw at one another.

For a few minutes, we contemplated this carp:

"What do you think"

"Dunno. Looks like a great place to be a carp."

"Yeah, but it might freeze. Water isn't deep enough to cover it."

"Won't freeze. The salt in the run-off will stop it."

"Probably kill it too."

"Takes a lot to kill a carp."

"Yeah, but that road salt's some nasty shit."

"Yup."

"Yup."

So we decided to rescue the thing. I got the honors and Scott got the camera.

First I poked the carp with my finger. It didn't do anything. Probably worn out from being dragged through the snow, and most certainly stoned out of its head from the parking-lot effluvium. Reassured, I very gently grabbed it around the middle, avoiding the dorsal spines, and lifted it out of the water. At that moment Scott's foot broke through the ice and startled the carp, which immediately panicked (to the extent that a carp can panic) and flipped out of my hand and raced back and forth in the meter-square pool which was its toxic little world.

Perhaps it was having flash-backs.

After it calmed down I got it in a better grip, lifted it, and [And here I want to throw in an interjection: I do not recommend ever handling a carp bare-handed. Fish keep themselves aquadynamic, insulated and vermin-free by producing slime which coats them, and carp produce more than most fish. Coupled with the fact that a carp is basically an aquatic rat or seagull, and that the Grand River is not the freshest body of water in the Northern hemisphere, and I had a handful of "ecch yuck bleargh gack phew O God my hands!" -jw] carried it the ten feet to open water and gently set it down.

Apparently it had forgotten that it had ever lived anywhere else, so it wasn't until my own foot broke through some ice that it panicked and swam away.

I would like to think that I have burned off some bad karma, and that I will not now return in some future incarnation as a carp which gets dragged through the snow, pickled by road salt, and rudely manhandled before I am returned to my hearth and home.

So that, O my readers, is the story behind todays photo in the River Project.