When Nature Turns Nasty
Gobble, Gobble by Laurie Byro
For Sharon
“Our wild turkey was back as well as the bear,” I tell Sharon on one of our late-night telephone talks – she in Arizona, me in New Jersey.
“The turkey would be harmless, but I wouldn’t want a bear in my backyard,” she says.
Sharon has obviously never met a wild turkey. It’s time to force her to go cold turkey on her fantasies about the beautiful bird that brings families together on Thanksgiving.
“Turkeys have wicked hooks on their feet, dangerous, nasty hooks to attack with,” I say.
Then I tell her about my wild turkey escapade, and I am not referring to the alcoholic beverage.
“One girl turkey chased me around the back yard twice until I ran up a ladder. She was fast, I was waddling not her, she was in her summer bikini bod and very pissed off with me, righteous. She was eating birdseed that spilled from the feeders, lucky for me, the ladder Mike was using to fill the feeders was left out. I would have been a goner.
“Sharon, picture this: It took 20 minutes of me screaming for help for Mike to come out and shoo her away. It started raining, me on a ladder."
THIS wild turkey sobers her up.
"That’s scary," she says. “My grandmother used to say always carry an umbrella for protection against the weather or the wicked. You should have asked Mike to bring you an umbrella.”
“Your grandmother was right,” I say and read her an article from the internet advising to never turn your back on aggressive turkeys or run away from them as turkeys will view you as submissive. Instead, make yourself look larger by raising your hands above your head, holding open your jacket, opening and closing an umbrella, or making loud noises by shouting or using an air horn.
“I should have HAD an umbrella!” I say and with that we say good night and hang up.
Blow Snake by Marilyn Zelke Windau
There in the road was a blow snake.
A vulture pecked at it as supper.
He hadn't seen a blow snake for years
only heard it in his dreams,
heard the hiss!
Age 10 at that time, he had shuddered and stopped.
His dad had too.
They were walking the railroad tracks at Pembine.
The snake had been deer hoof-halved.
Life light still in its eyes, it reared,
spit its warning.
They threw stones to deaden its pain.
He slept that night in the cabin, top bunk,
tried to silence the sound in his head.
Finally, he got up, grabbed the flashlight,
went out to the outhouse.
As he opened the door,
he heard "HISS!"
Immediately he closed the door for safety
and found a dry oak leaf
scrape-stuck to its bottom.
Parable of the Skunk by Sarah Russell
An eye-watering, acrid smell
told us a skunk was under the porch.
The dog offered to kill it for us
or at least nudge it, but we declined
and called the varmint guy
who assured the tearful kids
the skunk would have a new home far away
and set a wire trap with stuff skunks like –
marshmallows and cat food.
Next morning, sure enough,
there was the skunk, munching marshmallows,
not even knowing he was caught.
The varmint guy came back, armed
with a large white sheet, a vial of ether
and safety goggles "just in case."
He told us to stand back.
We did.
He held the sheet arms-wide in front
(so the skunk sees only blankness, he explained)
and inched slowly toward the trap.
(You don't hurry blankness.)
The skunk still munched, enjoying the marshmallows.
Finally, the sheet dropped over the cage,
the ether slipped underneath,
the munching stopped, and the kids
approved a sweetly sleeping skunk.
Then skunk, cage, sheet, 2 half-eaten
marshmallows and a cat food can went in the truck,
and off they drove to wherever needs more skunks.
The dog sniffed the crime scene.
And it struck me how we humans go along
munching our marshmallows and cat food
while blankness closes in,
and then one day we wake up
to no marshmallows and an awful headache,
wondering what the hell happened.
You leave the group on the Cascade trail by Joe Cottonwood
to take a dump in a grove of cedar
where you startle a sleeping bear
who lifts head with a pop.
Suddenly bear is a boulder on legs
you cannot possibly outrun.
In desperation rising from a squat
you point one finger at the oncoming monster
and yell NO! Bad bear! Stop! Sit!
For an instant you wonder
if this is the last moment
you’ll ever see that finger
but the bear has stopped,
front claws planted on a log.
Still the frown more terrifying
than the face of your father
after the paint-can incident
before he walloped you
so hard he broke your nose
which was 20 years ago
but seems relevant to this situation
as a matter of unfortunate behavior,
of no escape.
An eternity of seconds, eye to eye
across a width of one trunk of tree
smelling breath of berry and rancid fish.
Then a grunt. Of dismissal. Or disgust.
And bear turns, departs in a crashing
of underbrush. As you rejoin the group
they say they heard you talking.
To a dog.? Coyote? Wolf?
“Ghost of my father,” you say,
and for the rest of the hike
they pretend you aren’t there.
Natural Order by Alarie Tennille
The kitchen happens to be
in the way. Each May the ants
make their peony pilgrimage,
follow their doctrine of pheromones
up cabinets, over counters, down.
Dotted lines of monks pepper
the floor. On and on they come
in a scene from Cecil B. Demille,
proceeding as directed.
Never mind the brief frenzy
at the cat food bowl. In a miracle
of efficiency, they’re soon gone.
So I wonder why, for the past
three nights, a single ant has
tickled my arm as I sit in
the next room. Are there always
a few lost, unworthy of reaching
paradise—the weak, the doubting,
the unrepentant? Or perhaps the same
ant keeps returning, praying
I will again blow him aloft,
longing for the rapture of flight.
First published in Whirlybird Anthology of Kansas City Writers
The Beetle by Arlene Gay Levine
While cleaning the cellar steps, I unearth a black beetle
hidden among leaves, feathers, and withered rose petals:
fall's gentle gifts collecting, a whisper of winter.
I don’t enjoy insects but my better self says, “Oh, please…”
so I try to be polite; maybe this ugly fellow likes me no better.
Gently, I use the spiky tines of my straw broom as a blockade.
“Turn back!” they suggest but this bulbous bulb of unconsciousness
plods on, directly in the path of my rapidly moving weapon.
It keeps advancing toward the sweeping, infuriating me with what I perceive to be foolhardiness rather than persistence.
“Why not retreat toward the hole you came from?’ I silently implore
this intrusive creature, much the way I have thought about my new
neighbors: unreasonably noisy, boundary-invading, diffident
people despoiling every semblance of beauty, of order
in what I now refer to as my “former” home.
In a carefully controlled manner, I explain how stomping
on uncarpeted steps when our townhomes share the wall
or unattended grass that morphs into a weedy mass, or for that matter,
this rotten plank of wood they shoved unceremoniously under my fence
(who can even imagine why?) is not normal behavior here.
No use talking though they do speak English.
The deaf could hear their screaming through the walls. They only smile,
shake their heads and go inside, as if to show they do not understand,
as if to say my feelings have amused them.
I take a deep breath, exhale slowly, pull myself back to the task at hand.
The leaves, the cellar, the beetle. Oh, yes. The beetle.
But because I have forgotten him, ignored his presence,
he has decided to retreat. Imagine that! All my defensive
posturing and aggression could not accomplish what an unintentional
act of acceptance has wrought. Beetles can be teachers too.
Javelina photo by Dulcee Lima on Unsplash
Bigger doesn’t Mean Meaner by Sharon Waller Knutson
In a frantic frenzy, a doe dances
in front of the kitchen window
as temperatures hit 110 degrees,
brown eyes pleading for help,
tongue hanging out of a dry mouth.
I look past her to see a javelina
rolling in the dirt to cool off
while another peccary drinks
at the pond. A stranger might wonder
why a deer that weighs 140 pounds
would be afraid of a 35-pound pig.
Couldn’t she just hit him in the head
with a hoof if he interfered with her
getting a drink like she does other deer?
I recall the gash on the leg of the twenty
something man who sits next to us
at a Kenny Chesney concert in Tucson
when we first move to Arizona
three decades ago. A javelina attacked
him in his own yard. “The tusk sliced
through my skin like a razor blade,” he says.
“It took 16 stitches to sew it back together.”
When we first build our house
in the middle of a wildlife habitat,
we see several tiny faces at dusk
pressed against the window squinting
like seniors with failing eyesight.
“Javelina,” my husband says.
“They’re almost blind.”
Twenty-six years later our son carries
a gun when he goes out for a smoke
after dark in case of a javelina attack.
A herd of sixteen javelina stop
to stare at his six foot three body
He keeps eyes on them, hand on holster.
Lake Flies by Wilda Morris
I stroll the shore, am beset
by a swarm of lake flies.
Black flecks pile onto my tan slacks,
hurl themselves into the dark colors
of my shirt.
Wings brush my cheeks, my hair.
I zigzag away from the water,
I try to swat the flies away
but the swarm stays with me
like accumulating grief.
Under Siege by Judith Waller Carroll
The squirrels have ceased gnawing on the siding
to chase each other up the pine, around the mimosa,
under the ornamental grass. They stop
in mid-motion, as if they are playing freeze tag,
when I walk out to check the mail.
A spotted fawn with a mouthful of hosta leaves
retreats to the driveway, but the chipmunk
doesn’t even look up from his post
by the storage room door, now secured
against him with a strip of chicken wire.
The hornets are back in the breezeway.
There’s a web above our bedroom window
with a brown recluse spider in the center.
It feels like a tick has hitched a ride on my hip.
A pale yellow oak leaf veined in magenta
coasts down from the sky
as if Mother Nature has sent a letter
offering a temporary truce.
Murder by Rose Mary Boehm
The snake was colorless but regal
when she lifted her head on that blue tarpaulin.
She had taken possession of the pool.
The dogs stayed well back,
growling.
Reptilian brain. The most ancient
of our brains. Below the neocortex,
it relates to the left and the right
hemispheres, sitting atop the spinal column
and enabled our survival for millions of years.
There was beauty in her stillness.
And yet I pondered death.
One sunny morning she was about
to slither across
the kitchen threshold.
I still feel
the snake’s compact muscle’s resistance
under the hard-edged spade
I brought down on her.
Again.
Again.
Again.
first published in Red Tree Review
My Takeaway from a Hornet by Elaine Sorrentino
One, maybe two extra minutes
to tuck in a cool sheet, light blanket
before scooping lunch money
off the kitchen counter
and skipping off to school
might have circumvented the sting.
Looking back, I wonder─
while I was munching my lunch,
hurrying through history, running
at recess, was my ferocious friend
plotting his undercover ambush,
anticipating the moment
he’d invade my fleshy thigh
with his painful histamine?
Did I breach his new hiding place,
surprise him into instinctive maneuvers?
That swollen, throbbing leg cemented
a change to my ten-year-old morning ritual;
aware of the consequences, I never take
for granted the gift of a well-made bed.
I should send that hornet a thank you note.
First published by Silver Birch Press
FEAR by Lori Levy
It begins with the ordinary: girl watching
a cat. No monsters or ghosts, no crash of thunder.
Just the girl, six and curious, lying crosswise
on a bed, head over the edge
to get a closer view of a Siamese. She is
staring her trust into its eyes when, suddenly,
the cat lunges, glaring and growling, and it’s over
for the girl, who, from that point on—though nothing has happened,
no blood, no scar—can’t look at a cat
without seeing a tiger ready to pounce,
scratch, gouge out her eyes. She grows up,
becomes a woman who quakes in the presence of felines;
who begs her friends, if they want her to visit,
to lock their beasts in an upstairs bedroom.
Later she marries, has children, and lives in Jerusalem
where a bag, unclaimed, could be a bomb
and, worse, cats are known to leap out of dumpsters.
She stands far back and heaves her load, praying
for the peaceful thump of trash hitting trash.
No one escapes it. One runs from snakes, another
from mice. Airplanes, heights, speaking in public.
We tremble and pale. Cancer, bees, the Middle East.
And my teen-age son,
who’s six foot one and nearly invincible,
who snowboards, surfs, and rises early
to be first in line for bungee jumping,
calls me—the one who freezes near a cat—to
Come kill the spider! he’s spotted in the tub.
I carry the creature away in a tissue, suppressing
a smile at the daddy-longlegs.
Previously published in Taproot Literary Journal.
July Afternoon Attack by Joan Leotta
Life in a house built
in the middle of
what was once
a drained swamp is good—
until it is not.
As if they were waiting
like racehorses for the start bell,
a veritable herd, mass, cloud, wave,
of brown ants swarmed down
from an invisible space between
kitchen wall and ceiling
spreading over the wall.
Regiments broke off before
hitting the floor in orderly
rows toward pantry, glass cupboard,
then our kitchen island where I
stunned hapless human
in process of unpacking
groceries creamed in horror.
My husband came running with
our paltry single can of insecticide spray
which I used to hold them at bay
liberating the rolodex from our back counter.
Reinforcements in the form of
Our pest service soon arrived.
Our tech, who knew my fear of six-legged
creatures, sprayed, swept up, and spread
gel that survivors would carry to the nest.
“Good thing you were home when
they swarmed in, “he told me. “I’ve been
to places where folks were away and
ants came in to escape the heat and well
the entire floor was a churning mass of them
when they returned.”
Vigilance became my byword
Knowing that the cool of our AC
enticed them—well I could not blame them
for that but their attack compelled me,
no matter what the heat to daily
walk around the house
mumbling—"outside is yours, inside is ours”
as often as I could for the rest of the
days we lived there.
Even now, a thousand miles from there,
when July temps rise, a cold
chill of remembered fear
raises hackles on my neck.
I’m never without a can of ant spray.
Night of the Snake by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca
Tandem poem to Nissim Ezekiel’s poem ‘Night of the Scorpion’
Written In memory of my beloved father
And for my son, Siddharth (Sid), so he would know what transpired that night.
It was not Lawrence’s snake
Waiting patiently for me at the water trough
But a different snake camouflaged
On the stone wall outside our home
In the gently rolling hills
Across the gleaming lake
The night dark with the pouring rain
Fear was a knot in my heart.
He seemed to have a right to be there
To be at home
His name on the nameplate,
I address him as ‘he’, unable to distinguish
A male snake from a female one.
The innocent child asleep in my arms
Knew nothing of the danger
Posed to him by the creature
Resting like a still-life painting
Etched in curves of slithery colors
An artist’s rendering of beauty and evil
Simultaneously.
It did not move or
Rear its head to
Hiss or spit poisonous venom
At the sleeping child,
Wet from his soaking clothes.
My other companion
Began to dance madly
A Rumpelstiltskin of fear,
While frantic to appease the curled one
Begged her to remain still
And simply to utter a silent prayer
To whatever God she believed in.
Unaware, the child’s father
Watched a movie with the school children
In the hall above,
Unsuspecting of the drama unfolding below.
Turning the key in the lock
The house door silently opened
Granting safe entry to mother and child,
My companion having fled to safer terrain
Leaving the snake at repose, immovable.
No neighbors to help or witness the spectacle
No peasants to chant their incantations
To pray the snake would return
to its snake home.
Creeping outside once more
With beating heart and stealthy pace,
to narrate the tale to the child’s father
The sleeping child, now dry,
Oblivious to the imminent danger
From the curled serpent on the stone wall
He had gone from whence he came
Into the dark recesses of his own mind,
Curled on someone else’s door perhaps,
Or waiting silently for an unsuspecting prey-moment
No creature or human understanding could comprehend.
Thank goodness for Divine intervention
That granted protection to our precious child.
We wrapped the bundle tighter,
Afraid it might still be watching us,
From somewhere.
Love for my country does not diminish
despite its scorpions, snakes
and other creepy crawlies!
Note: Tandem poetry is a genre I have created for poetry I write alongside my father’s Poetry. The subjects may be similar since they are inspired by him, but the content of the poems are mine.
