Nature Doesn’t Care

 

This is a story I didn’t witness.  No, this one happened to Annie, but she told me about it in detail, and I think I did a pretty good job imagining the rest, using my knowledge of nature, and my own experiences.

The fact of the matter is, no matter how much it bothers us, nature just doesn’t care.

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Like many of you I grew up watching Disney movies and cartoons.  I still like those old ones but the newer ones seem like they’ve gotten even further than reality.  Real life doesn’t always work out so that it leaves everybody happy.

Annie recently got to witness just such an occasion.

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It was Labor Day so Annie was off from work.  I was off too, but only because it was one of my regular days off from my job.  I had to go in that night so, after filling a rut in the field road; fixing the driveway where a chunk of concrete had gotten knocked into the ditch; and digging out the drainage ditch running from our septic system, I was free to take a nap.

In other words, I was asleep when all the excitement happened.

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Annie was out mowing in the little section of pasture we call the pigpen.  We’ve never had any pigs in it but somebody did before we bought the farm, so…

Like I said, she was mowing in the pigpen when she heard something squealing.  It sounded like a small animal and that touched her life-hardened heart.  The sound was coming from the grass and brush at the base of a big oak tree which grows beside the pen.

She thought she knew what was going on before she even saw the ball of black at the base of the tree.  Stepping closer verified what she thought; a big black rat snake was coiled around some little animal and slowly squeezing the life out of it.  She figured, but more than that she hoped, the victim was a rat or mouse.  That’s one of the reasons we allow, even encourage, non-poisonous snakes to live around the farm.  She stepped closer to make sure it was a rodent.  Well, it was, but it wasn’t the right kind.

A tiny baby squirrel was clutching at the scaly body as the black coils of death slowly squeezed the breath of life out of it.

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Black rat snakes are constrictors.  The way a constrictor kills its prey is by looping its body around the smaller critter and squeezing.  Every time the little animal tries to catch a breath, it exhales first.  When the chest compresses, the serpent tightens its coils, preventing the animal from expanding the chest again and inhaling air.

In other words, death by constrictor gives the victim plenty of time to contemplate its impending demise.

With that in mind, you can understand Annie’s dismay at finding that the snake’s victim was a tiny baby squirrel.  Soft hearted person that she is she wracked her brain for a way to rescue it.  Her first thought was to get me but she knew that sleep is precious to me and, if she did awaken me, I probably wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep before I had to go to work.  Either that or she didn’t want to hear me gripe about being awakened.

Yea, there’s that.

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Mustering her courage, my wife, who is moderately afraid of snakes, started yelling at the snake, hoping to distract it.  Meanwhile, she looked for the longest stick she could so she could try to poke the reptile into releasing the baby bushytail.  Just about the time she found an appropriately sized branch, she saw our dogs approaching on a run.  They had heard her distressed yells and were coming to rescue her from her imminent peril, no matter what it was.

As soon as the canines saw that the focus of her distress was a six foot long snake, they went to work.  Now, dogs can’t tell a poisonous snake from a non-poisonous, so they fight them all the same.  The canine heroes began to dodge in and grab the snake.  Whichever pooch got hold would give the critter a shake and then let go before it could bite back.

Needless to say, the scaly critter’s mind, such as it was, quickly switched from eating to running…er, slithering.  It managed to get away from the flashing fangs and got into a brushpile.

The little squirrel was safe!

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Annie only had a fraction of a second to revel in the rescue as the dogs changed immediately from wonder-dogs to chow hounds.  A couple of them grabbed the little squirrel before Annie could get to it and converted if from bushytail to tasty-bite.

And our pack went from heroes to zeroes in an instant, at least in Annie’s view.

At a minimum, I guess it was a quicker way to go than death by constriction.  At least Annie had the satisfaction of knowing she had saved one of nature’s little ones from being squeezed to death.

Or did she?

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During the time the dogs had turned their attention to contesting possession of the tasty morsel, the hungry snake had gone back to work to procure itself a squirrel supper.  It had climbed back up the tree and into the nest where it had gotten its first unfortunate victim.

As Annie went back to work, she tried to ignore the horrified squeals of yet another baby squirrel.  By trying to save one she had condemned two.

She walked back and as she climbed aboard the rider, she said, “Well, shoot!”

Or something like that.

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Nature just doesn’t care.

 

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