Wild Carolina

Over the last few months I’ve come face to face with more wildlife than I had in all my life, unless you count pigeons and rats.

A few weeks ago we went to Asheville for the weekend. One evening while heading back to our friend’s cabin, we found a turtle in the middle of the road. Scott spun the car around, picked it up and set it back down on the grassy shoulder. On another evening, a wild turkey crossed the road as if visiting a neighbor. We visited the North Carolina Arboretum – an impressive 434-acre forest/garden where I encountered two cherry red cardinals, a cluster of lavender butterflies, and heard the jack hammering of woodpeckers. I heard the sounds of squirrels and other forest dwellers snapping twigs and crushing dry leaves on the forest floor, but they kept themselves out of sight. I suspect they were keeping a close watch on me behind the tree trunks.

At the Carolina Raptor Center, located in the forests of the Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, we met rehabilitated owls, hawks, vultures and falcons – even an American bald eagle – that had been injured or orphaned in the wild. Many have broken wings or other injuries and cannot survive on their own, and are living out their lives along the Center’s 3/4 mile nature trail. The language barrier was no match for Scott's attempt to communicate with the birds: “Hello,” “Hello there,” “Whachadoin?” “What’s up?” Alas the conversation remained one-sided.

Not that our encounters with wildlife were confined to the woods. Earlier in the spring, birds sang so loudly that people could hear them on the other end of my phone line. One stormy night when no human dared to venture out, they were chirping happily well into the middle of the night. We thought it had to be a recording especially since they could only be heard but not seen. Someone oughta teach them better manners.

And just a week ago, we spotted a strange dog snooping around a dumpster outside our building. It had the coloring of a golden retriever with its tail raised straight up. When it turned sideways, we both gasped. It was a cat. An enormous cat – much bigger than the feral cats we’re used to seeing prowling around our parking lot. Scott thought it might be a bobcat. I was convinced that it was a love child between a cat and a dog.

Then there was the chipmunk that scampered up a tree on Morehead, the pointy-eared rabbit in Freedom Park that stood motionless and hopped away only when I was two steps away, and the otter that sat along the banks of Sugar Creek leisurely picking its fur.

All this along our 5-mile jogging loop – and those were only the ones seen alive.

Also along the loop were those that were less fortunate when discovered: five newborn mice strewn outside of the Greek Orthodox Church; two chicks that looked to have fallen from their nests - and a black bird that might have been their mother lay flattened on a driveway nearby; a plump orange-bellied robin that almost looked alive except it was lying down sideways (we later found another one met with the same fate in our parking lot); and the worst – a possum-sized pile of flesh swarming with flies that lay in the middle of the sidewalk on East Blvd. I screamed as we sidestepped the carcass and ran as fast as I could to distance myself from the stench, hoping that none of the scattered flies landed on me. Thankfully, a few days later when we returned to the scene, the grisly pile was gone. I thought the black bird was too until I found a severed skeleton claw, and realized that it was just dried up, dismembered and blended in with the dirt.

Either there is an animal serial killer on the loose and I'm hot on the trail of the crime scene, or I am a curse for creatures on the loop.

I’ve become paranoid every time I take a run. Come to think of it, that’s a good excuse for not going. But then, I would’ve missed the giant magnolia blossoms that I saw the other day and their graceful, calming scent that fragranced the whole area.

I guess I’ll just have to keep my eyes peeled for anything that crosses my path, dead or alive. At this very moment, a robin is perched on the fence directly in front of my window, pruning itself in the sun.