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Come back to this page each day to read another entry from Frederick R. Gehlbach's almanac of suburban natural and unnatural history, "Messages from the Wild," which chronicles the world of a forested ravine in central Texas.
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Behind the huge old Shumard oak that Nancy and I have climbed on the preserve's west ridge, an orange harvest moon beckons. It is time for our annual tribute to the greatest that expire first and the least that will inherit the Earth. We howl in behalf of wild dogs, first as red wolves howled here a century ago. And we do so in mourning, because red wolves are gone forever from the wild except as faraway, subsidized re-introductions from zoos. Then we yip and howl for coyotes who run through the ravine but can't stay, because the area is too small. Finally, we rejoice by barking for the resident gray fox. Our howling tree is a hundred feet from a house whose owner said -- kidded, we hope -- that she would shoot any such varmints. |
Frederick R. Gehlbach is Professor Emeritus of Biology and Environmental Studies at Baylor University. His ecological studies have taken him from New Zealand to Slovakia and, in the Americas, from Alaska and Newfoundland to Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. His research interests include the life-history strategies of small owls, small burrowing snakes and urban wildlife ecology.
From MESSAGES FROM THE WILD: AN ALMANAC OF SUBURBAN NATURAL AND UNNATURAL HISTORY by Frederick R. Gehlbach, Copyright © 2002. Courtesy of the University of Texas Press.
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