apr 18
I walked for a bit in the park this morning, to look for birds and to enjoy a t-shirt-warm stroll. In between the intoxications of blooming forsythia and magnolia, and of the course the tiny greenings of so many trees, there were a fair number of migrant birds, and so, I can finally report, I am converted. It is great to birdwatch in Central Park.
So much warm happiness was tempered, however, on my way out of the Ramble (an area meandering and wooded, for those not familiar with the park). A duck was standing in the middle of one of the paths, and I was surprised when it made no efforts to move off as I walked closer. Actually, I was surprised it was standing there at all. When I got within a foot or so I began to suspect it might be sick or starving. It was a Mallard, and of the wild(er) type, meaning not one of the dumpier domestics. We walked up to each other, I knelt down, and we regarded each other eye to eye. Befuddled, I went over to the nearest park bench and sat, wondering what on earth I could possibly do. The bird cast about with a rheumy eye, and then, ever slowly and deliberately, walked over to me, looked up at me, then slunk under me and curled up beneath my legs.
I sat on that bench for fifteen minutes, the duck in the shade at my feet, with tears streaming down my face. I have never felt so helpless. People walked by in the usual clueless manner, an occasional sidelong glance - another heartbreak, another lost soul in the park, another of countless sad city stories, they must have been thinking. Don’t mind me, I was thinking, I’m just sitting here. Just me and my DYING DUCK.
This is it, it is official. Even sans wild gray hair and excessive mumbling, I am now a card carrying crazy bird lady of Central Park. I don’t even need to bring loaves of bread or twenty-pound sacks of seed, I don’t need a creepy swarm of pigeons to warm these sorry and lonely bones. I’ll just go for a morning stroll like a million other people here and the birds can come expire in my lap.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Birds, Central Park, Drawings, NYC |
. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 18th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Catherine,
Oh man, brutal & beyond heart breaking! Bless you & and that precious duck, he/she was so lucky to have you & to have that connection. Dare I ask the ending, the departure? Any ideas on why he/she was sick & starving? Oh Bless you.
Alina
April 18th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
I shed a few tears of my own when reading this post. At the same time part of me was wondering what aspect of animal behavior led the creature to seemingly seek out a human in its last moments. Was it something about our daughter that drew it to her? We all know she’s a dog whisperer and has great rail karma among her other talents, but is there something more?
And then there’s the ultimate Dad question, Cath - did the duck finish expiring before you left?
Mom, who had just finished photoshopping a mallard
April 19th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Catherine:
I guess I am not clear: did the duck actually die while you were there or did you just leave it in a sickened state? OK
April 19th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I am no different from you, and every loss of wildlife, however expected, is felt at least a little bit if it happens “on my watch” and it’s not because of a predator/prey situation. One of the advantages of living where I do, is that when we come across injured and sick wildlife, we bring it to Tufts U. Wildlife Clinic in Grafton (burb of Worcester). This is part of Tufts nationally famous Veterinary School (when my cats or REALLY sick, I bring them here: it’s like going to Mass General). It’s (the Wildlife Animal Clinic) run by the legendary Dr. Mark Pokras. It costs nothing to drop an injured wild animal off (they depend on donations, and get plenty) and they do their damnedest to save the bird, whether House Sparrow or Bald Eagle. One of my long-time birding students has worked with Mark for decades and it’s all very humane and at the same time allows students to learn lots about wildlife biology too. Once, while en route to Quabbin (well west of Worcester) we came across a drake HOODED MERG just lying in the road. It was in shock, with a badly torn wing, but we scooped it up and I held it in my lap while we headed to Tufts, well east of Worcester. That bird has just an amazing golden eye! On a class trip to Westport, we caught an injured GREAT BLACK BACKED GULL after much effort, took it to Tufts, and we later were able to release it after months in the hospital.
The sad truth is that Urban wildlife have it tough: their diet really sucks; they can run into all sorts of human made problems (including skyscrapers) and can be victims of the scores of dogs and cats running around where they nest and live. And like everything else alive, there is the finite lifespan reality.
The one exception appears to be my snake, a Rosy Boa from CA, named SNAKE. Snake is 35 years old. I have not kept a reptile since I bought her decades ago (I used to keep scores of herps, now I am against the herp trade). She just keeeps on tickin’. She is officially geriatric, and when I brought her to the vets two years back, they confessed a complete ignorance of geriatric disorders of snakes, and she is (they believe) one of the oldest, if not THE oldest, living Rosy Boa on record. In winter now, she goes off live mice and I have to feed her what can only be described as “instant mouse mix” for carnivores via syringes down the gullet, which she actually seems to enjoy. She just ate her first mouse of this year and seems fine, if a bit constipated. Which brings me to the fact that I am now thinking she might outlive me. Which (1) seems terribly unfair and (2) I have to worry about who to leave her to in my will. But truth to tell, if and when Snake passes on, you bet I’ll cry. Who would have thought you could bond with a reptile?
Mark L.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
End of the story: I found the number for the Central Park wildlife rangers and called, but of course did not reach anyone, and so left a message. Then I left the duck there and went to look for anyone official-looking, but only found the park police. I reported the duck to them, they were polite and said they would phone in to the rangers. The duck was still alive when I left it, which of course made me feel worse..
The funny thing is, I have found injured/dead/dying wildlife elsewhere, and it felt a lot more in keeping with the “nature” of things, but here in Central Park it was somehow so much more heartbreaking - loose dogs, people taunting the wildlife or worse, the fact that this animal may have subsisted its whole life on human handouts - all of this fermented into a feeling of immense responsibility. And then coupled with 1. no one really cared, and 2. I had no known resources such as I might have had while living in New England, where I would know exactly who to call and what to do. Imagine smuggling in a potentially sick, struggling wild animal into a doorman building?
April 19th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
RE: The “Nature” thing, as you put it. I have thought long and hard about this, and my feeling is this. Sure, if there is a predator/prey situation going on, leave things be. But even in a “wild” situation (though, for the life of me, I can’t imagine anyplace anymore where someone hasn’t been there before you) if you come across an injured animal, IF YOU CAN, well, help the animal/bird. Don’t unnecessarily risk your life, like helping a turtle cross a multi-lane highway (though I do this all the time, so I fully admit I am an idiot). Once at Quabbin, with a full class with me and miles from our cars, we saw an immature Bald Eagle flapping around in the water and finally painfully standing up on a stick in the middle of the water. The bird was in distress. I made the entire class double-time it back to the car, and called the MDC (now DCR) as well as State Fish and Wildlife. Long story short: folks went out in a boat and got the eagle, which had about eight pieces of shot in it. It later died at Tufts. THAT’S why we help when we can, because god knows humanity does enough purposeful damage to these same animals.
You actually did what you could, the right thing et. The problem is there was not a conscientious support system to respond to your needs. That, and the fact it was a Mallard, not a State-listed species. There is not going to be a hue and cry about the Rock Pigeon of waterfowl. AND: No, we cannot possibly bring home every injured animal we see, but we can try to help where feasible: contact the right people; place the animal out of human interference, et. But that is about it. Beyond that, the compassionate feeling for another creature, sentient or not, is just “normal”, some of the better aspects of humanness. And if we are lucky, we can turn that ache into something constructive, even it’s just a lengthy meditation on how we look at animals in our parks.
Mark L (god, I am REALLY sorry if I sound preachy there, but it is only out of a deep feeling of empathy that’s all)
April 19th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I really hope you draw a portrait in homage to this beautiful dying duck… I don’t like indulging in ‘woo-woo’, magical thinking these days, but there’s something uncanny about you having this encounter.
April 19th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Alina:
Catherine is a BIRDER and natural historian, OF COURSE she is going to come in contact with and notice injured birds. No uncanny needed, just sad.
Mark L.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Mark,
Point taken.
I just looked up ‘uncanny’ and realized that wasn’t the word I was really going for.
It is sad.
April 20th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Is there any way this encounter could also be “ironic”? Ironic SELLS. Like crystal meth at a tractor pull.
Mark L, chronic ironic sippin’ tonic
April 20th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
And polyphonic.
April 20th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Speaking of unironic and not-polyphonic, have you heard the band Beirut?
April 20th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Yes I have. But right at the mo I am FRIED, so I cannot even sort out WHAT I know, or if I even own a CD. Just returned from atlasing two blocks in the northern Berkshires with the Phenomenauts blasting to keep us awake on way home. BTW: Not as much snow as i thought. Sapsuckers, Winter Wrens, Blue-headed Vireos, and Louisiana Waterthrushes are back even here (high chilly hills) and even had a SANDHILL CRANE fly overhead. But that is getting to be nothing special: they now officilaly breed in the state. Coltsfoot out as well as Mourning Cloaks.
POLYPHONY is much over-rated. CACOPHONY too. PHONYBALOONY stock still high, MYLITTLEPONY into receivership.
Mony Mony Mark-aroni
April 20th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
(apres rest, wine, wok chicken)…
oh, Flying Club Cup…..of course. Moldavian melancholy, is that what you are veering into apres Mallard? I have always wanted to bird Hungary (great marshes and steppes)and track down the Galloping Coroners, if they are still alive. You really do have rare taste which I really appreciate. Me? up beat hardcore about space exploration!
Onwards and upwards,
Mark, Slav to the rythum
April 20th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Make that: “L’affair Mallarde”
April 21st, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Mark L,
Now in my mind upbeat hardcore about space exploration evokes Also Sprach and not much else musical (though lots of work stuff), old fuddy duddy that I am. Reminds me, however, that we’re well into 2008 already . . . and nowhere near the vision. As Canton would say, whassup?
April 21st, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Mom:
Funny you should say that. The PHENOMENAUTS is a band whose conceit, raison d’etre, is the lost dream of space exploration. From an old song of theirs called THE YEAR 2000, about how we all thought we’d be zipping around the planets by the year 2000:
“July ‘69 we spent so much time expanding our mind so that all mankind could go much further than the moon. We soon realized being polarized was not very wise and it compromised our ability to get there soon.
Come on boys, it’s going to be OK, you’re going to shout hooray! The year 2000.
Come with me, explore the galaxy, you’re going to yell yippee! The year 2000.
Blast on through to the wild blue, you’re going to yell yahoo! The year 2000.
It’s only time we wasted, we reached the lunar surface. It’s such a crime. We gave up exploration. We beat the Soviets. We just stopped trying. After unity everyone was free to stay put and be safe from tyranny that had been so prevalent before, then technology exponentially and dramatically increased activity when we share our secrets to make war”
Though you have to imagine it all sung very fast with a rockabilly/punk beat. ALL of their songs, over 3 CDs, are about the lost dream of space.
“Also Sprach” reminds me too much of Nietzsche, and therein lies huge headaches, uber-mansized headaches. That and the memory that the first time I saw 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY was with a refugee from the Czech revolt who spoke NO ENGLISH.
Mark L (who once was stuck in an elevator with Werner von Braun: true story)