Galliformes
When we first moved in here, no animals would come.
I hung two bird feeders in the first few days. I wanted the bird sounds and their comforting presence. I hoped for a rabbit and a roadrunner, too.
But no one would come.
The wind eventually shook all of the seed out of both feeders I filled and the birds and desert rats and chipmunks wouldn’t even come for it there, on the ground, where it was easy. Not even under the cover of night.
Everything from December on feels a little like that.
The first time the animals did come was when I asked him to leave for a while.
I was comatose somewhere in the house when they showed up outside. I heard the familiar grumble wails of a bevy of quails. I hadn’t left anything out for them, but there they were, just outside.
When he came back home a week later I told him, excited, how the quails had come and that I had bought food for them and that they had kept coming. He was smiling, kind, seemed to understand what it meant to me.
But they didn’t return while he was here. Not once. They stayed away completely. They knew what I knew and couldn’t act on.
When he left for good one early afternoon a few weeks later, they came back in the evening.
That was that.
They come every day now.
A few days ago my landlady let me know that feeding them — not just the quails now, but the rabbits and coyotes and others who have started to come — isn’t good for the ecosystem. When you move out, she explained, they’ll have grown used to you as a source and then, suddenly, they won’t have you anymore. It can mess up their mating habits and impact them for generations.
I was heartbroken, hearing it.
I know they’re cute to see that close, but it’s not actually good for them.
She offered me a giant welded bird feeder that her grandpa built for her grandma and told me that feeding the birds would be OK, but I needed to do it from up off the ground.
Most of my mornings since March have started with opening my front door and spreading seed on the ground. Next, I fill the water bowls. I checked the ground for snakes. I stretch barefoot, thank the animals and the land, and I go inside and see if anything I’ve forgotten to eat in the fridge is good for the rabbits; if it is, I take it outside so they can get to it before the sun does. I make my coffee. I listen to them arrive.
I had no idea how to tell my landlady that it wasn’t about them being cute.
It was about someone being there every day.
Every time I wanted to disappear completely, they came.
It’s a lot to put on the animals — my survival — but that is what they offered. A reason.
But I also do not want to harm any living creatures. And I have come to understand that the depth to which I feel that means I do not want to harm myself, either.
With every animal I fed (and also the four I held and buried), the more I understood I did not deserve harm. From myself or from others.
I learned that this year.
And I give the animals most of the credit.
Life is moving. I like my job. I have gone on a few nice dates with someone deeply kind. I put my hand on my heart a lot. I’m reading more. I’m beginning to study alchemy. It’s football season and that brings me easy joy.
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