Rivenrock Gardens Cactus Blog

On Wild Animals
and those who may roam among themTao Teh Ching
Chapter 50
Being born, we come into life, one day we must enter into death.
Out of ten people, three celebrate and are filled with life,
Three hasten their demise through excess,
And three pass through life without realizing it,
Why is this? They try too hard to protect and preserve this life; thereby they hasten its demise.
But it is said that one in ten knows how to preserve his life by emptying himself to the world and the Way.
Such a one can go into the wilds unmolested by wild beasts;
the tigers claws and rhinoceros horns will find no place to catch him.
And he may enter battle unarmored; sharp points will find no place to pierce him.
Why is this? Because there is no place for death in him. 

    We’ve had many animals on our porch. They often come up in the middle of the night hoping to find some cat food. On occasion we’ve had some vicious dangerous animals, and other times it is the cute, and always it is interesting and a delight to see these wild animals close up. We’ve had bears on our porch and on the roof. We’ve had a mountain lion near the front door and kill deer in our back yard. We’ve got foxes that come nightly, and deer that nibble the jasmine plant growing on the edge of the porch. The other night Vickie had a tarantula come up to wander around the porch. She said it was among the largest she’s ever seen. The other day she saw a small baby tarantula on the road.

    We’ve had a bear paw at the front window, Opossums in the cat bowls leering at us with those otherworldly teeth, and occasionally, much to our chagrin we get skunks coming by.

    Well, last night Whitie, our Chihuahua dog went berserk in the house while we were sleeping, Vickie heard him and thought he needed to get outside to go to the bathroom. She opened the door and Whitie ran out to do battle with the insurgent skunk. He got sprayed in his open yapping mouth for his trouble. Immediately the front of the house was enveloped with the acrid gagging stench of fresh skunk spray, and we had a smelly whining dog running between Victoria’s legs and into the house where he ran to the bedroom and tried to get under the covers with me who was until this moment in delightful delirious sleep dreaming no doubt of sunny fields and a warm sky. I was so rudely brought out of my slumber by this whining skunked-out dog trying to burrow under the sheets, I woke and grabbed him and handed him to Vickie asking her to lock him into the living room so I could sleep.

    She set him into the living room and closed the bedroom door, he whined at the door for hours while I fitfully slept dreaming of stinky swamps and dead animals. Finally I woke and tiring of his scratching at the door let him in holding him and with trepidation smelling over him a bit. The skunk smell was gone and he smelled pretty clean, as did the house (or was I just used to it? I used to kinda like the smell of tear gas in the Army, maybe something is wrong with me?). So we let him back into the bedroom keeping him on top of the sheets and not letting him under with us.

Stay to the Middle Path, but how people love to leave the road and wander the sidepaths

Chapter 53If I possess even the smallest bits of wisdom,
I would walk the great way,
and my only fear would be in straying from this great road.
The great way is wide and the going is easy,
but how people seem to prefer the side paths.
When the offices of government,
the palaces and temples are richly adorned, and lavishly outfitted…
when the ministers are concerned chiefly with pomp and display;
the fields will be dusty and overgrown with rank weeds,
and the granaries of the land will be bare.
The gentry wear elaborate richly embroidered clothes,
eat and drink in excess with their sharp swords at their sides,
these are surely the robber barons.
This is not in keeping with the Way.

    Many of our neighbors have had their dogs sprayed by skunks, it is common, as is the occasional biting of a dog by a Rattlesnake. There is a dog trainer who comes by in the spring. Local Agricultural Supply stores set up his clinics. He will take your dog for an hour or so to train it to fear Rattlesnakes and stay away from snakes. He places a shock collar around the dog’s neck, and lets him loose in a small field. He has a rattlesnake replica placed in the field. As the dog nears it the replica shakes his fake rattle, if the dog approaches the snake he receives a shock form the collar and associates it with the snake. When he has learned a bit to stay away from the snake a real rattler is placed in the field. This snake has a small muzzle to prevent him from striking (what a job being the snake muzzle-loader Huh?). If the dog appears curious about this snake and looks at it he receives another shock from the collar.

    Now the trainer lets loose a couple of common local snakes such as king snakes and gopher snakes that are helpful snakes that you don’t want dogs killing. If he approaches these beneficial snakes he also gets another shock. In this way the trainer makes the dog stay way from both hazardous and also beneficial snakes alike. It is gratifying to know that the majority of farmers and ranchers do differentiate between hazardous and beneficial species, and most landowners do want to keep the local fauna and flora intact. If they must remove some to make a living, they usually only remove as much as is necessary. And simple economics regulate how much can be removed; if it brings no profit it is not worthwhile removing native species.

    There must be a balance in all things for life to move at a good clip without stalling or overamping. Look for the middle ground, and keep off the side paths.