Dating a Rare Creature, such as the Sawfish, or Me

Today I won a shark trivia contest over Twitter. The prompt was, “Name a shark species that is directly threatened by climate change.” I made a case for the bull shark, which depends on coastal estuaries, rivers, mangroves, freshwater wetlands to nurse their young. Rivers and coastal wetlands are disappearing, in part due to sea level rise and other impacts of climate change. I won the trivia contest with my answer. It got me thinking about other endangered species…and their impediments to survival. For example, there is this article about the gray wolf ‘Single white male wolf seeks companionship. Must love the outdoors.” (For article, click here.)

If I were an endangered species, I might be the rare sawfish. Why? Oh, indulge me. The sawfish live in saltwater and freshwater habitats–freely swimming from one to the next and back again. Its versatility is part of what makes it so unique, and I do love to swim in both freshwater and saltwater. The shark-like smalltooth sawfish (Pristis pectinata), for example, which can go into freshwater, as well as shallow waters of bays and estuaries in the southeastern U.S. and Caribbean, is technically a ray. (For more about this, see my past Strange Wetlands blog about Sharks in Wetlands.) Listed as an endangered species, the smalltooth sawfish has become extirpated because of changes to coastal environments—namely losses of wetlands, such as the Everglades. While I’m not from the Everglades, I was conceived in Florida…so who’s to say that I don’t have that in common with young sawfish nursed by their parents in the freshwater swamps of the Everglades? I did grow up on the coast of Maine, swimming in shallow coastal estuaries of the Sheepscot River, in similar habitats as preferred by sawfish. I have a prominent nose (it’s genetic) & strong sense of smell as shared by sharks & rays, and I don’t have the best eyesight, same as for the sawfish, who likes muddy waters. (In high school, one of my favorite perfumes was called “Ocean,” and friends thought it smelled like low tide mudflats.) Sawfish and I both like to eat crustaceans, especially lobster!

Little is known about the courtship behaviors of sawfish except that they seem to couple up once every two years. (This is somewhat true of me, too.) Despite their unusual appearance, they don’t attack people; sawfish put up a fight once hooked (by a fisherman) and this is probably true of me, too, to some degree. Take this with a drop of saltwater. Allow me to cut to the chase: I’m no sawfish but I do feel like a rare creature most of the time, swimming around, looking for a mate, someone who shares my versatile interests in different environments from the sea to the lakes & rivers, someone who’s capable of swimming upstream, against the current, against the odds, to find me. Single female rare lake-dwelling ocean-dipping sawfish seeks companionship. Must love to swim.

To Carrie the Pyro, with love from Leah the Hydro

“People like us are coming out,”                                          
She said, “the veil is thinner.”    
                                                                               
Okay, the geomancer is sweet,
Fondling the crystals in her pocket,
but in my head, I kept thinking:
“What’s a hydromancer like me
doing in a place like this—Leapin’
Lizards? No one here knows what
the heck I’m talking about, the
shopkeeper just isn’t interested
Because I don’t charge for my services,
Unless we count sandwiches
(I have been known to read for marbled rye,
a titled cup of coffee, swirls of cream, I see
someone’s darkest fortune, or private dream,
A Nalgene works, too, that’s how I scry.)

I know we’ve got a bad reputation
Since Ancient Greece made us
the “hit men,” hydromaniacs for hire:
an enemy’s ship in uncharted waters
Need a kraken? Whirlpool? King tide?
We man the floodgates, adept monitors
But we’re a reclusive lot, loner morays
We don’t advertise like aeromancers
Spinning their shiny weathervanes.
We don’t start wildfires, or throw sparks,
But we help you, pyromancers, when
The firefighters among you need rain.

It doesn’t take a seer to read the ripples
Lately – hurricanes, storms surging, seas
Rising, ice sheets melting, tsunamis raging,
Floodproof experiments failing and
Rivers loaded with sediments spilling
Into a dead zone overburdened
By generations of algae, as loose canyons
Ribbons, streams thread barren
Throats left thirsty. I’ll take heat
For this:  Calling all hydromancers—
We’ve got responsibilities.

Once upon a Vernal Pool

Once upon a midnight clearing
April rains had ceased to fall
A lonely loon far off called dearly
Wood frogs, from a vernal pool,
Carefully crawled.

Most had spawned, left the pool
Heading northeast to uplands
Except for Wren, the little fool,
A wood frog who lived for wetlands.

Little Wren, so full of cheer,
Chirped into the late May nights
When all of her friends disappeared,
She hopped to it, setting her sights

On a stream she crossed in floods
That Big Night. Fast water trailed
Down through the thick woods
And Wren climbed aboard a stick
With trembling leaves, she sailed.

Now little Wren knew one thing:
Wood frogs aren’t supposed to stop
On their way to fields and forests
But no one was around to sing
So Wren flopped upon
a bed of moss.

What do wood frogs dream?
Blades of grass, muddy stripes
Jungles for jumping teams,
(She won the booby prize)
A buffet of lazy blackflies
Wren liked to fantasize.

Morning dew drifted breezily
Setting up the fairy clotheslines
Wren knocked over accidentally
Stretching web-to-web, listening
for a familiar sign.

A small yellow butterfly flit by
Sleepy Wren followed, delighted
Because butterflies often fly
In meadows and fens,
Where the water sprites
Bless little frogs like Wren.

She slid through the muck
Quite athletic, she’d grown
Agile and nimble…then stuck
Some heavy branch thrown
In a spring storm. What luck.

It took some wriggling, and
Wren got free. But no yellow
Wings fluttered. “Wait for me!”
Her plea caught in her throat
(It happens to frogs, too.)

The sad little Wren, determined
To find that fen, a lovely haven
Convinced, she was, her friends
Would all be there, or at least one
Yellow butterfly.

So off she went, picking up speed
A burst of energy propelled her
Or was it that sticky urge to feed
(She was hungry) that compelled her?
Wren rallied and took the lead.

Sun rays poured through the trees
Drying out the drenched path
Warmer, Wren kept to wet leaves
Hiding in the cool undergrowth.

While resting there, she heard
A snap, crackle—then a peep!
Could another frog have stirred
Nearby, if he slumbered so asleep?

Sure enough, she spotted this:
A chubby wood frog who grinned.
She crouched, a curtsy-kindness,
Introduced herself. He, in turn,
Half-belched, half-said his
name was Walden.

The two wood frogs traded tales
Which vernal pools, and where,
How each got lost, how she sailed,
Walden had a phil-o-soph-ical
Approach. Wren just stared.
Their connection, ecological.
He was fond of fens, as well.

                                       -LCS  5/5/2011

Shit, My Dog Says, a Translation

Are you awake in there? Are you alive?
I just had the weirdest dream I was back
In Arkansas, scared. Then I opened my eyes

The cat’s butt in front of my nose, flick-flick
Flicking his tail, it makes me bite-sniff-sniff.
He pretends it doesn’t bother him, he likes it
Until you tell me to stop. Oh, yeah, snap-hiss
Why am I always the one in trouble?

No, I don’t really want that treat. Why are you
Taking pills that aren’t mixed in with cheese?
Did you know there’s a fox out there? There is.
I’m gonna-git-‘em and slash’im, may I please?
When I hop like this you laugh. You’re easy.

Cat: you had it coming. She’s gone, she left!
To her office, that special place with the carpet,
Where I do yoga and behave like a lady. I do.
I’ve got dibs on the guest bed, so what, so what
Are you gonna do about it? I like the pillows.

Shit, she’s home early she’s home
Get the door, somebody get the door,
I didn’t rearrange the pillows, Mom,
It was all him, it was that cat! I know
I’m not allowed on the guest bed. No,
Don’t look in there. I’m jumping! I’m
Snoopy! Look-at-me! Did you miss me?

Why do you keep throwing that? Oh,
You want to run after it. I see. So I’ll go
Over here in the opposite direction. Oh,
You want me to get it? It’s not an apple.
I already got the old apple you threw.
Who eats tennis balls? Okay. I’m a girl,
A good girl. I am, I’m a good girl.

Pay no attention to my poop-breath.
That’s from earlier. I’m going through
A self-loathing phase, what-the-heck
The cat made me do it. Yes, I ate poo.
Why? I’m having post-poo-snack regret.
I think that’s enough of a punishment,
Don’t you?

Swan Lake, A Nutcracker & Sleeping Beauties

Tundra swans fly over a cold lake,
Where no ballerina, no pure Odette,
Enchanted by sorcery, or nature’s mistake,
Turns outward and dives into a pirouette.

“Are you a good swan or a bad swan?”
She asks, before choosing her mate.
The answer comes, aggressive tho’ mute
Charging through the rushgrass, he invades.

His crooked wing-stance resolute, its span
To rival the dance: majestic trumpeter swan.

In a rocky mountain forest, some
Dreamy hemlock land of snow,
A nutcracker flits and floats, then rests
Without Christmas lights aglow.

He fights a crowned corvid’s battle
Against neither king nor mouse nor rat,
Unaware of sugar plum fairies, or tales
Besides that song of the sage blue grouse.

Sunrise secretly hunkers low: horizon
Castle’s purple shadow—pine turrets and peaks
Tower, looming like a curse. No woman,
No princess inhabit this unkempt place.

As snow falls upon the salt marsh and fens,
Freezing creek beds for speed skating
In chilly dark December, the beauties wait
Many moons, missing loons, to awake

The sleeping wetlands
Only by spring’s long-awaited kiss.  

                                    ~L. C. Stetson

                                  12/11/2010

An Unknown Caller: Teen-Moose

Three times I have spotted a young moose, an awkward calf, in my backyard.

A teen-moose, a kind deer, a curious bull, growing his first pair of antlers, horns without branches. He stands too near to know better, not ten yards from the house.

In my dreams, he is older. A bullmoose lurks large and puffing, ten feet tall, more than twice my height, he looms and nudges me gently with his horsey nose-face. I learn to stand still.

He’s unpredictable, unassuming. Not evil, as the horns might suggest but not Mr. Safe Guy either.  The dream dictionary tells me that a bullmoose represents “runaway emotions” that might trample me—in my sleep? Or once I wake?

Apparently it stands for masculine, or yang, energy, and how I’m able to survive and prosper under any circumstances (this is true) by means of steady movement forward through life…‘though sometimes I look back.

An elk, or bullmoose, refers a dreamer to the elders; but do I look to my mentors, the honeysuckle along the drive (from the elder family) or the Old Testament? Moose in dreams represent a long life and longevity; I come from a long line of long lives yet lived and while seemingly immortal, eventually died.

The dream-moose bellowed that urgent bugle-like alarm in response to my bleating, a female distress call I’m not prepared to admit I ever made. Mythology tells us that a bullmoose connotes a connection, communicates through intuition, a letter, a psychic transmission, a thought, a call. He is the unknown caller in the shadows of my woods. If my house is the heart of my home, the woods—arms and legs.

His mahogany hair is hollow and his dogged ears rotate 180° so that he can locate predators, even if they are far away. His power is the deer kind, vegetarian, sensitive to his environment and willing to defend a cow, or even someone else’s mate, depending on the situation. (Rutting season is not until September.)

Alces alces dust to dust moss to moss hoof to hoof berry to broadleaf. The young moose in my woods probably likes the lichen, the marshy plants that grow in the pond near my house. He’ll dunk his whole head underwater and browse. His family might be with him but I’ve never seen them. Over the summer, his sturdy shoulders will expand to more than five feet across and he’ll be 1000 pounds by next winter. He’s going through the moose equivalent of puberty, much like my youngest brother, whose Adam’s apple bounces up and down with the pitch changes in his kazoo-voice;  the teen-moose licks his lips, as if about to charge, but he’s only bluffing.  The shaggy bell beneath his chin is that embarrassing half-beard that boys like my brother have at that age.

Back to the moose in my dream:  his breath is humid as he sniffs my hair and I reach for the tines, velvety vessels of blood and male dominance. I move away, afraid but he lumbers toward me like a drunkard, or dancer, or lover. He’s clumsy but in control. I let him take the reins, so to speak, remain.

“A big Buick bombin’ down the road better brake for a bull moose.” My dad told me something like that more than twenty years ago, as we drove up to Quebec through northern Maine. Back then, Dad shot with bow and arrow but we never saw a buck, never a carcass, never entrails, neither venison nor trophy. Years later, when I was a teen-girl, he promised he “shot deer with a camera now.”

When I told my friend about the dreams, she sang: “It moose be loooooove!”

First trip to the ocean

Sniffing clam shells at the beach

A couple of weekends ago, I took my pointer-mix to the ocean for the first time. We went to one of my favorite beaches–Scarborough Beach, in Maine.

First trip to the seashore

 I had her on her expandable leash so she could run but not get too far away from me. At first she liked the smells and the wide expanse of sandy beach to run. She likes meeting people and making friends with other dogs. I’m always so proud of her because she’s friendly and never growls or barks at other dogs. Big clam shells dotted the scene and she sniffed every one of them. She was less excited about the waves, which seemed to startle her. She’d been to the lake with me in September, when we swam together and she wasn’t too crazy about the little waves from boat wakes that lapped the shore. At Scarborough Beach, the waves are big enough to surf. She danced around in the wet sand as I tried to get her to wade into the cold salt water. All of the dogs we met on the beach were soaked from swimming. After all, Sophie-Bea is a water-dog. But she chickened out when the water came up to her ankles. We’ll try again in the late spring.

Not wading into that cold saltwater!

 

Lake monsters

Yesterday I took my gundog for a walk around the pond. The power had been out for an hour or so, but it was a gorgeous morning–sunshine, mild temps, no wind. A beautiful November day. As we crossed a causeway to an island in the middle of the pond, Sophie-Bea looked across the water with curious longing. A flock of ducks dipped their wings into the pond as they skimmed the surface, flying over, hundreds of yards away. I don’t take my dog hunting so I forget that she’s a bird-dog–a pointer mix and a hunter at heart. She stood rigid and pointed her snout in the direction of the ducks. She’s a happy dog though. She might have been a gundog school drop-out, being small for the breed (only 25 pounds) and wimpy in the rain. Like most gundogs, she’s the sensitive type. At home, she has 4 acres to explore, some of it wetlands. She prances like a fox through the marshes and meadows near our home, and trots along the trails that snake around the ponds and lakes.

 Normally we delight in listening to the loons call from one end of the pond to the other. But yesterday morning’s power outtage had many people running their generators. The sound was eerie. Like groans from not one but dozens of lake monsters, the generators sent their motor-cries bouncing off either end of the pond, coming from several different directions at once. I stood ridgid and listened. I thought of my grandfather, who liked tending to the generator in winter-time. He was an engineer and in the ’30s and ’40s, a machinist with the U.S. Navy. I wish he were still alive so I could get his advice on generators and how to install one at my house. I am told by friends and neighbors in the area that we’ll lose our power 1-2 times a week all winter long, sometimes with the power out for 2-3 days at a go–and at times, for no particular reason.

The pond near my house

Upcoming “Frostbitten,” “New Moon”

I’m really excited about the upcoming release of Kelley Armstrong’s Frostbitten, part of the Otherworld series, and “New Moon,” the second movie in the “Twilight” series.

Clay Danvers and Elena Michaels are my favorite werewolf couple. They’re major characters in Kelley Armstrong’s “Women of the Otherworld” series. Bitten is a great book with a fresh take on the werewolf theme and has a female lead, Elena, and she’s the “only” female werewolf in the world. What I like about this series is that Elena is not a bounty hunter. I make a point of avoiding any sci-fi/paranormal romance novel with so-called bounty hunters – it’s so cliche: “vampire bounty hunter,” “werewolf bounty hunter.” The Women of the Otherworld series focuses more on the pack, the werewolf family. There’s still drama, slashing and suspense, but no bounty hunters.

 My friend and I are going to see “New Moon” together. Even though we’re both in our thirties, we allow ourselves the guilty pleasure of a girly night now and then…and we liked the books. It’s got some great gothic Victorian elements to it, a throw-back to Wuthering Heights, the book that Bella keeps reading over and over (not obvious at all!) I don’t know if most viewers (or readers of the series) have realized that Edward is the gothic Victorian anti-hero, not just a trendy vampire. To the folks who are concerned about young teen girls reading the books and then being confused by Edward and Bella’s relationship (I’ve read that some critics have defined Edward as a stalker or abusive boyfriend type), I think they should check out some of the classics from gothic Victorian literature…again. The same anti-heroes are present in much of classic Victorian lit, which is taught in high schools across the country. Nothing new for teen girls. For me, it’s a fun escape back to high school fantasies.

Knotted Whelk poem

Knotted Whelk 

Fishermen tie knots with the working end—
You turn my lines into rope,
Wrestle words that should not bend,
‘Til their meaning tucks under a loop.
I ask a figure eight and you rig a splice,
Heave your weighted answer, overhand
Threaded half blood, a strangled kite
Led as if by the hangman himself.

 I trust you like a pirate, a ship’s mate
Sure of his loot and seizings,
The red sky warnings—
Cast all else the snaked whipping
Upon the mast, climb to the crow’s,
Where I watch your winds shift,
Then go below to check my periscope;
I tilt the mirrors to see you clearer
Yet only perceive myself.

You make a cat’s paw of me,
Sometimes seal my ends with heat,
Thorough as a clove hitch, we hold tight;
We unwind each other, too, still anchored to the cleat.
It keeps the tension, picks the fight,
Protects the cord from fraying or rot
When one of us unravels on the spot,
Or crumbles like dried wheat.

I cannot tell
How far this tether will reach
But ours is a whole knotted whelk
On a crushed shell beach.

-Leah C. Stetson

(Previously published in Not Just Air, Issue #8)