Evolution

Evolution

by Margaret Ross

 

 

 

The corpses weigh nothing, nearly nothing, even your breath is breeze enough to scatter them

We steamed them in tupperware with a damp sponge then we tweezed the stiff wings open

The wing colors would brush off if you touched them

3,000 butterflies raised and gassed and shipped to Evolution, the store in New York rented by an artist hired to design a restaurant

He wanted to paper the walls with butterflies

Each came folded in its own translucent envelope

We tweezed them open, pinned them into rows on styrofoam flats we stacked in towers in the narrow hallway leading to the bathroom

Evolution called itself a natural history store

It sold preserved birds, lizards, scorpions in lucite, bobcat with the eyes dug out and glass ones fitted, head turned

Also more affordable bits like teeth and peacock feathers, by the register a dish of raccoon penis bones

This was on Spring

The sidewalks swarmed with bare-armed people there to see the city

You could buy your own name in calligraphy or written on a grain of rice by someone at a folding table

Souvenir portraits of taxis and the Brooklyn Bridge lined up on blankets laid over the pavement

The artist we were pinning for had gotten famous being first to put a dead shark in a gallery

For several million dollars each he sold what he described as happy pictures which were rainbow dots assistants painted on white canvases

I remember actually thinking his art confronted death, that’s how young I was

We were paid per butterfly

The way we sat, I saw the backs of the other pinners’ heads more than their faces

One’s braids the color of wine, one’s puffy headphones, feather cut and slim neck rising from a scissored collar, that one bought a raccoon penis bone on lunch break

Mostly we didn’t speak 

Another life glimpsed in a detail mentioned, leaving or arriving 

She lived with a carpenter who fixed her lunches

Come fall I’d be in college

I smelled the corpses on my fingers when I took my smoke break leaning against a warm brick wall facing the smooth white headless mannequins in thousand-dollar shift dresses

The deli next door advertised organic toast and raisins on the vine

Mornings, I tried to learn from eyeliner and shimmer on faces near mine on the train

Warm fogged imprint on a metal pole where someone’s grip evaporated

Everyone looking down when someone walked through asking for help

At Evolution, talk radio played all day

A cool voice giving hourly updates on the bombing of another city which it called the conflict

The pinner in headphones sometimes hummed or started a breathy lyric 

“Selfish girl—”

I watched my tweezers guide the poisonous exquisite
blue of morpho wings

Their legs like jointed eyelashes

False eyes on the grayling wingtips
to protect the true face

The monarch’s wings like fire pouring through a lattice

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(Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 22, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.)

Monarch sanctuary in Mexico

                        

Alert to readers:  Expect AnimalBeat II posts to resume next month after exploration of alternative blog platforms.  (Till then, stay safe and VOTE on Nov. 3!)

2 approaches to living with wild animals

Hey, thanks, Gov. Murphy: 286 dead bears in the first of two hunts this year. Just think how many more bears December’s hunt may net. The grand total will probably make it hard to ever stop bear hunts in New Jersey, even though you’ve said this year’s will be the last. 

 Then again, while running for office, you also said you’d end bear hunts – but that proved impossible to do, either promptly or completely. So here we are as your re-election campaign gets underway, still wondering what your word is worth. And also wondering how many of those 286 dead bears were innocent, vulnerable cubs. How many were moms, needed by cubs? And how many bears were lured into range because they were baited – attracted by easy food left out just for them?

Killing cubs and baiting bears are unsportsmanlike, inhumane practices permitted in very few other places; leave it to NJ to permit both of them. But when we have bear hunts here, we pull out all the stops. So for instance, numerous out-of-staters were allowed to travel here for the trophy hunt -- in the midst of a worldwide pandemic – jeopardizing NJ residents with a killer virus on top of the perils inherent in archery and muzzle loading rifles.

 

Way to go, Gov. Murphy! A well-meaning letter writer from Connecticut urged in Monday's Times of Trenton “New Jersey opponents should make their voices heard and demand that bear hunting end in their state.” She’s obviously unaware of years of such protests, with marches, demonstrations, billboards, letters and phone calls (etc., etc.), with establishment of a statewide coalition against the hunt and with proposed rule changes that would remove bear hunts from the state’s bear management plan. What does it take?

The other side of this coin was illustrated on Saturday, as the Wildlife Conservation Network (wildnet.com) wound up its 2-day virtual expo. As was the case on Oct. 10, the program consisted of scientists and other experts, including local people committed to the animals featured, reporting to participants and donors about the progress of their work. Once again, I “attended” as many sessions as possible: Yellowstone wolves; elephants, Grevy’s zebras, pangolins. Each session ran for about an hour, with Q&A periods afterwards. 

Yellowstone Wolf

 

In all cases, those involved in the presentation spoke from wherever in the world they’re stationed, often with subtitles, and yes, the technology made all that look easy. As one African leader described his work with elephants, they moved around in a savanna area behind him. Wearing beautiful beaded collars, village women explained their unique contributions to animal welfare. A young man who began as an intern told us how he gained knowledge and greater responsibility; post pandemic, he will leave for Ph.D studies. 

 

Grevy's Zebra

I consistently heard and witnessed how Westerners made team-members and partners of the people living in areas with threatened animal species. “More conservation that’s Africa-led, for Africans,” was how one speaker put it. 

Ideally, progress comes through changing hearts and minds, rather than law enforcement. That’s why, as his motivations and needs were considered, one pangolin poacher became a pangolin protector. Local people often join animal-guard corps in forests and sanctuaries, or work with automated tracking systems for animal movement all over the continent. 

Why should we care about all this, one speaker asked, then answered: “because the future is going to become coexistence.” Eating wildlife, including pangolins, is thought to be behind Covid-19, and commercial wildlife trafficking must end! That conclusion leads to a New Yorker article about pangolins that will sadden you while informing you about the origins of the coronavirus via wild animal consumption. Its print title, “The Sobbing Pangolin,” sets the tone much better than the online title.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/31/did-pangolins-start-the-coronavirus-pandemic

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Bear hunt status (not good) & wildlife expo (notable)

                                                              Kehoe pic

Bear hunts just won’t go away in NJ.  

If only Governor Murphy had done what candidate Murphy promised to do – end the bear hunts, period; if only DEP’s Division of Fish & Wildlife were not dominated by hunters; if only decision-making bodies (thinking of you, NJ Fish and Game Council) included a fair cross-section of citizens, instead of hunters and their sympathizers; if only bear-proofing recommendations were enforced . . . our black bears might enjoy the unthreatened lives year after year that they deserve.   

But no.  Despite Herculean efforts by myriad individuals and organizations to end NJ bear hunts, the first week of the scheduled hunt started today.  It is, as described in an op-ed by Senators Lesniak and Torricelli, an “unpopular, baited trophy hunt during the worldwide pandemic.”  What worse a time than now?  https://www.insidernj.com/governor-murphy-ban-2020-bear-hunt/ 

Gov. Murphy’s surprising tweet last Monday announced that the 2020 bear hunt will be the LAST.  That’s terrific, but . . . this year’s hunt (this week and another in December) is needless, risky and overall ill-advised.  Why, given all the precautions against the pandemic, should NJ permit a hunt go forward? 

Curious minds want to know: could the current bear hunt be intended to appease hunters, while the “no more hunts after that” declaration be designed to win animal advocates’ support, again, in Murphy’s re-election campaign next year?   

Anyway, the bow hunt segment of the hunt started today, so nothing has changed for 2020.  The Bear Group (a program of APLNJ) and the League of Humane Voters (LOHV) of New Jersey urge activists to keep up with developments on Facebook.  

All animals, all weekend!

It was way more than “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”  It was rhinos, wild cats and okapis, along with painted dogs, Andean cats and lions – and so many more.  “It” was the first day of the (virtual) Wildlife Conservation Network Expo, all day Saturday.

Okapi

Previewed in my last post, the Expo featured video stories from conservationists in the field and wildlife champions around the world.  Throughout the videos I watched, both mutual respect among the scientists and local people involved and great regard for the animals being protected were readily apparent. And of course, I saw animals in their natural habitats while learning more about all of them.

Just ask me about the painted dogs of Zimbabwe or the rhinos of South Africa and Indonesia.  I saw wild cats I didn’t know existed (nor, till recently, did many of their discoverers) and sharks, and watched an okapi simply melt into the dense foliage of his habitat.  

One speaker dwelled on involving area people where the painted dogs live and sensitizing kids to these animals: “If you don’t know something, you don’t care about it.”

Another pointed out that “Conservation is really a social science: we work with people to better their lives, and they in turn help reduce threats to animals.”

Painted Dog

I couldn’t see all the videos I wanted to (elephants!), but they’ve been saved for viewing as convenient (along with earlier years’ reports).  And the Expo continues next Saturday, beginning around 10:30 am. (You could probably still register; name your own fee.)

Cat maintenance

Last Friday I attended a virtual Princeton Adult School class on “The Cat's Meow: Home Maintenance for the Cat Owner.”  Besides seeing numerous cats bathed (something I’d dread doing), I picked up some tips on grooming, including (1) with all combs, make sure the teeth are ground down (cats have very sensitive skin); (2) de-matting rakes, mat breakers and scissors are not recommended for cat coats; (3) “Every cat should feel like a show cat” (to which I’d add: “but shouldn’t have to be a show cat”)!   

                                                                                                   Catster pic

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Animal feeds, wildlife expo & a ‘burning (blog) question’

Giraffe

“Cut Stress By Watching Animals,” read the headline in today’s NYTimes “Home” section.  Well sure, in last week’s post, I mentioned binge-watching animal stories on The Dodo as my projected way of escaping all the dark-cloud issues pressing down on us.  

And now, what do you know: this NYTimes article concurs: “A new study has found that watching footage of cute animals can reduce your anxiety, blood pressure and heart rate.” 

Aside from the fact that there are always “new studies” of some kind and aside from the descriptor “cute” that I think is condescending toward the animals, I agree.  

I subscribe to the daily Dodo, which arrives automatically, but I could also send myself links to the 8 animal feeds mentioned in the Times (link below). Then I could simply open that one email and click to watch giant pandas in China, gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo, sea creatures featured by the Monterey Bay Aquarium or hippos, giraffes and others at the San Diego Zoo.   

And kittens and cats too, of course!  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/03/at-home/best-animal-feeds.html

Wild Animal Expo

I’ve often written about elephants here, mentioning Save the Elephants as my support organization of choice, and its Elephant Crisis Fund as the US-based way to donate through the Wildlife Conservation Network, in San Francisco (wildnet.org).

That estimable organization is sponsoring a “Virtual Wildlife Conservation Expo 2020” on two Saturdays – Oct. 10 and Oct. 17, 8 am-2 pm (PDT) -- coming up very soon.  The expo will feature conservationists in the field, wildlife champions from around the world, presentations from all WCN’s conservation partners and updates from each of WCN’s wildlife funds.

Q&A sessions and a talk with Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE are also on the agenda, as are two screenings on Wednesday, Oct. 14 of Birth of the Pride, a documentary story of an incredible pride of lions, by Dereck and Beverly Joubert.  

Jellyfish                Jeffrey Hamilton pic

Just imagine learning more about wild animals like painted dogs in Zimbabwe, Malaysia’s dolphins, the wolves of Yellowstone, Uganda’s mountain gorillas, pangolins in Asia, elephants on the African plains, lions on the African savannas, polar bears and grizzly bears and three other bear species on multiple continents. . . and more. 

A full speaker schedule is at WCNEXPO.ORG, which is also the place to register for the Expo.  Since the event begins next Saturday, it’s advisable to register by Wednesday, Oct. 7, when the process will be simpler.  

(The ticket price is $100, but registrants can pay “whatever price works best for you” or join free of charge.  With questions about registering or participating in Expo, contact planners at 415-202-6380 or virtualexpo@wildnet.org.)

Blogger’s 'burning question'

Readers of these blog posts may have noticed inconsistencies in appearance here lately, something that has frustrated me because I’ve been working with format changes I can’t change or control, at least so far.  

I’ve sought help from someone much better at dealing with such things than I’ll ever be, but naturally that can’t continue indefinitely. 

Therefore, this question: Can anyone recommend another, better, simpler blog platform (if that’s even the right word!) than the one I’m now struggling with?  I believe there must be better places to blog than this one so my time and focus can return to the animals I want to continue writing about.

I hope hear from you.  Thanks!

                                  Lucy Gutierrez, NYT illustration

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