Planet Earth: My Backyard

Last night, my friends and I went to the Hollywood Bowl, featuring clips from the series "Planet Earth" against the sounds of George Fenton's Live theme music. For me such amazing nature tales are evidence of the existence of God. My mind kept repeating a portion of a biblical line, in those portions of the documentaries in which one animal chased and killed another, "And the Lion shall lie down with the Lamb", this of course, at the end of time, in Paradise. For those of us who make it there. . . .well THAT's another entry.

I realized that what played out on the screen plays out in my urban backyard every day. I woke up to one this morning. Mother Jay squawking frantically. I got up and went outside. A crow. Of course, a crow. From about April on, it is the season of baby birds and crows love to cop the unhatched eggs as well as the helpless newborns in the nests that surround us. There is one in the foliage between my apartment building and the one next to me. No doubt mama bird was keeping the crow at bay, and as in one of the features last night, not entirely successfully. My arrival was the thing that scared him off. Me and mama bird, protectors of her little ones.

Over the years I have come to know there is little to be done. Some new birds will survive. Many will not. It makes me cry, watching a screen or seeing it in real time.

There are also the squirrels. They walk across the electric wires fairly high above the two story buildings. I saw one fall once onto the top of my garage roof. I could only hope he wasn't hurt. But I had no ladder to look. And I was on the way to work.

The possums come out at night to eat the cat food. I like to watch their long noses in the cat dish. But that's as close as I am going to get. Once I got a good close up camera shot of a baby possum on top of our little outside gazebo like thing.

A favorite is the hummingbird. I never saw one until I moved to California. My backyard is full of them. I know their sound now. Wings whirling and an odd chirp unlike any other bird back here. One once actually stopped on a branch above where I was lying on a bench and watched me, watch him. A long time. We seemed to enjoy each other equally.

And then, of course, there is Elwood. A cat. The cat. Orange tabby, all bowed legs these days, somewhere around 17 years of age he is. He used to live inside, but decided it was too lonely there, with my neighbor. So he went outside, where all this is going on. The jay thinks he's a danger to her young, but Elwood is too old be chasing birds. And he's afraid of her dive bombing anyway. He just wants his food, his water, and a pet, from time to time, extra on the weekends when I am around. My little piece of the planet earth.