Harlequin and El Raton

I was out in the back yard today cleaning up the detritus of Boyfriend's wine pressing last night when Harlequin the Cat came trotting up with something in her mouth. Something BIG.

I finished moving a piece of the wine press into our shed, then came back out to see if it was what I thought.

Indeed. It was a rat!

I was a little worried, because normally when Harlequin brings me a kill, it's not all the way dead - she likes to play with it for a while. Read more...
But I was relieved when I saw her drop it to the ground and it just lay there, clearly dead. She'd had the good sense to make sure this one didn't get away.

So instead of watching over her to make sure Rodent Madness wasn't released into the garden (as I usually do), I lavished congratulations on her as she arched her back, pressed against my leg and purred ecstatically, the limp rat by her side.

This was a big deal. Normally Harlequin targets baby birds, and this year, lots of young mice from the Back 40 of our yard, which we've allowed to go wild to leave a little habitat for small critters. But a rat is HUGE, and it must have taken some cunning to get him.

I was very proud of her, and it was hard to tear myself away to get back to work. As I hosed fermented grape stuff off the shiny red press, I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she celebrated, hurling the rat into the air, pouncing on it as it came down, swiping it with her fearsome claws and bringing it to her tuxedo-front bosom to nuzzle it.

Damn, cats are weird. But hey, we all celebrate a successful hunt in our own way.

At one point, Harlequin stretched out on her side and laid her elegant head on the grass, the picture of bliss. The rat was in much the same position in front of her - stretched out and ... well, what could've been mistaken as blissful if I didn't know better. It was as if they were spooning.

So what's she gonna do now? I wondered. With mice, she usually eats them in a couple of bites, gnawing on the head first, then finishing the body in another bite or two.

But this rat was like an elk to you or me. It was a lot of meat.

Right about when my work was done, Harlequin finally started gnawing on the rat in a serious way - signaling she was done playing and ready to eat - so I went over to watch her work.

WARNING: If you wouldn't want to watch something like this yourself, you might not want to keep reading. I just find this stuff endlessly fascinating. I would have as a kid, and now that I am in the habit of killing and eating animals, I find myself very curious about how my brethren in the animal world do it.

So I sat in front of Harlequin and watched. Funny thing about Harlequin and her indoor sister, Giblet: They LOVE IT when we watch them eat. They like for us to sit over them. In fact, if I walk away before Giblet has finished, she will meow at me until I follow her back to her food.

Harlequin had started with the tail, gnawing off about two-thirds of it before I got there, then moved to the right front leg, then the right rear. Nang nang nang - she would gnaw until every necessary bone was broken.

If I weren't a hunter, I might've been horribly grossed out, but instead I was fascinated with her choice. I'd've thought she'd've gone straight for the belly where all the soft, good stuff was.

After she gnawed off both hind legs, she finally broke into the belly and I watched as she pulled out intestines. Rather than take a big bite, she tugged at the end of the small intestine, chewing down the strand, then pulling out more, and chewing down again. Reminded me of that spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp, except this was a different kind of love here.

At one point, I heard something to my left. It was a squirrel on the fenceline, ambling toward our silver maple. When I looked at him, he froze, realizing that his nemesis was in the yard.

He turned to look at us intently. Are a squirrel's eyes good enough to see what she was doing at 30 yards?

Harlequin was clearly too busy to trifle with an irritant like that squirrel, but that guy tiptoed all the way back down the fenceline to safety. He wanted nothing to do with this.

Harlequin looked up momentarily, as if to say, Yeah, I saw you, pal. Not interested. Then, diligently, she continued eating. After the intestines, she gnawed up the backbone until she got to the liver. After the liver, there was the diaphragm to punch through. After that, lungs...

But she was getting tired. This was a lot of work! She looked like Boyfriend after he's broken down an elk - exhausted. And full, too.

She took one more lick and dropped to the ground in the shade of a wheelbarrow, ready for a long nap and a grumbling tummy full of bones, fur and meat. I stroked her back and she purred, more languidly now. I pitied her a little because she hadn't made it to the heart. I love heart!

The rat lay beside her, looking like a victim of a shark attack, all of his bottom half missing. I picked him up by an ear and tossed what was left of him into the shade, hoping she would finish him later, but sensing she would tithe the ants instead.

Three hours later, the ants still enjoying the fruits of her kill.

So that's the news at Lake Wobegon. Well, my version of it, anyway.


© Holly A. Heyser 2009

Harlequin, the mockingbirds and revenge

It's been a trying year for Harlequin the Backyard Cat.

First it was those stupid, fat squirrels taunting her this spring as they nibbled silver maple seeds, their succulent bodies bouncing on the tiniest of twigs, just out of Harlequin's reach.

Of course, as soon as the seeds were all gone, the squirrels disappeared too, leaving Harlequin to repair her feline dignity - which she did by making war on this year's bumper crop of mice in the unmowed "back forty" of our yard.

Then the trouble with mockingbirds began. Read more...
Normally, we have one mockingbird in our back yard. He sits atop the power pole at the bottom corner of our lot and sings his heart out.

But this summer, a mockingbird pair had built a nest somewhere in our back yard, and in classic mockingbird fashion, they set out to harass every living creature within 100 yards of their clutch.

At first, we'd notice Harlequin trotting across the yard with an angry mockingbird in tow, squawking and swooping to within a few feet of her. A wise distance for the bird to keep, as Harlequin is a notorious bird killer, known to smack hummingbirds out of the sky and swallow them in one bite.

Then, the harassment intensified. Harlequin would be sitting on our deck trying to nap - not even thinking of stupid little baby birds at the back of the property - and both mockingbirds would be orbiting her raucously. If perchance we opened the door, she would gratefully slip inside, not even bothering to fake that famous feline indifference.

Finally, it started getting really ugly. Whenever Harlequin wanted to get from her shady spot in the garden to the deck where we keep a bowl full of water for her, she had to sprint - incredibly undignified! - as the mockingbirds dive bombed her like kamikazes, pecking her shoulders all the way. If we didn't open the door for her, I'm certain she would've crashed through it. Anything to get away from these horrible birds!

We had never seen the mighty huntress so utterly cowed. She might as well have been a dog.

Of course, no cat can harbor such humiliation for long.

One day, Harlequin brought something to our doorstep.

A baby mockingbird - barely fledged. Dead.

That'll teach 'em...

And she didn't treat this like any other bird she's ever killed. Normally, Harlequin has a voracious appetite, and after a suitable amount of catlike play with her prey, she always eats what she kills.

But she didn't eat this bird.

Not that day.

Not the next.

Not the day after that.

It finally disappeared from our step one night, but in whose paws, we'll never know. Could've been a raccoon. If Harlequin had had her druthers, I think she'd have stuck that fledgling on a pole and let it mummify there, for all the mockingbirds to see forever.

The silence in our yard was eerie.

After a few days, though, one of the mockingbirds finally came back, behaving as he had before The Nest. And Harlequin resumed hunting mice in the back forty. Life had returned to normal.

Until one day last week.

We'd thrown our windows open one morning, delighted to catch a breeze before the temperature rocketed to 100 degrees that day. I heard Harlequin's classic, "I'm-coming-up-the-hill-to-see-my-humans-I-hope-they-have-some-food" meow - Mowww! Mowww! Mowww!

I looked out the window, happy to see her. But she wasn't there. I was perplexed - I'd heard her distinctly.

It happened again a few days later when I was watering plants in the yard.

Mowww! Mowww! Mowww!

I turned around, and again saw no cat.

Then I looked up at the power pole.

It was the mockingbird.

He was mocking Harlequin.

© Holly A. Heyser 2009

Harlequin and the near-death experience

We are deep into spring here in Northern California, and the silver maple in our back yard is covered with its "fruit" - those cool seeds that look like little helicopters when they fall to the ground. Squirrels love them, and Boyfriend and I can spend hours watching the little buggers climb out to the ends of the most perilously thin twigs to get a mouthful.

Of course, we aren't the only ones who love watching squirrels. Harlequin, our backyard kitty, thinks they look absolutely delish. So it was really no surprise when we looked out the window this morning and saw two squirrels munching away in the tree - and Harlequin crouched on a limb trying to figure out how to get a bite herself.

Never has it been easier to read animals' minds.

***

Harlequin: Five feet away. Five feet away. How dare you! I have slain finches at greater distances. I have plucked hummingbirds out of thin air. I have pulled lizards from deep inside wood piles. I am going to eat you, you arrogant fuzzy bastard.

Read more...Squirrel 1 to Squirrel 2: Hey, check this out! That stupid cat thinks she can compete with us on our own tree. Ha!

Squirrel 2 to Squirrel 1: Awesome. Watch this...

Squirrel 2 jumps onto a tiny branch right over Harlequin's head, climbs out to the end and starts munching seeds, dropping the shells so that they float right past Harlequin's face on their way down to the lawn.

Harlequin crouches.

Harlequin: I am a coiled spring, you foolish rodent. I will leap and you will be dead before you finish chewing...

(To herself:) Oh shit. I am in a tree. Ten feet off the ground. This requires some careful planning.

Harlequin shifts into a more favorable leaping position.

Squirrel 2: Oh, I don't think so! (Boing.)

The squirrel leaps nimbly to another tiny branch overhead. Harlequin is now on the absolute worst limb for the pounce.

Harlequin: Mr. Squirrel, I am a CAT. I am nimble. Watch me as I simply slink down this limb and walk right up the limb that leads straight to you. See? Ha!

Squirrel 1 and 2 continue munching contentedly, clinging to the ends of tiny twigs that sway under their fat little yummy bodies.

Squirrel 1: Oh, Ms. Cat, are you still here? Funny, so am I (munch munch munch). Isn't it cool how I can walk out to the end of this twig and bouncy bouncy bounce while enjoying these delicious seeds?

If you weren't such a COW, I'd invite you up here to join me, but I do believe you'd break this twig and fall to the ground in a horrible mangled heap.

Harlequin: Oh, I do not need an invitation, my minsinformed little bucktoothed friend. I am a CAT. I eat what I want, when I want. And I am going to eat YOU.

She crouches, ready to spring. The squirrel leaps over her head to yet another seed-laden twig.

Harlequin (to herself): Drat!

I must face the truth: There is no way I can catch him. How can I possibly get out of this with dignity?

Harlequin glances toward the big clear sliding thing that the humans use to move between the house and the yard.

Harlequin: There they are! But, oh, the shame! The humiliation. Me, just feet from a delicious meal, impotent and powerless. Oh.... HELP! HELP!

Inside the house, the female speaks.

NorCal Cazadora: Man, she's gonna get hurt if she tries to pounce. I'm gonna help her out.

The female opens the door and walks onto the deck.

Harlequin: Oh look, stupid squirrels, my human wants me! Sorry, you insolent flea-ridden varmints, duty calls. I have to go. Bye-bye.

Harlequin leaps out of the tree and bounds joyfully into the open arms of the female, who scoops her up and takes her into the house.

Squirrel 1 to Squirrel 2: Oh thank God!

I was so full I didn't think I could eat another bite. Let's get the hell out of here.

Squirrel 1 leaps to a fence and starts running toward the back of the yard. Squirrel 2 is right behind him.

Inside the house, Harlequin watches anxiously.

Harlequin: Let me go! Let me go!

The female opens the door and lets Harlequin out. She bounds down the fenceline, just ten feet behind the speeding squirrels.

Harlequin to the disappearing squirrels: Boy are you lucky my human needed me. Do not EVER come back to my tree!

She turns back toward the humans.

Harlequin: Hey, I don't suppose you have any food?

© Holly A. Heyser 2009

The perfect end to an imperfect dove hunt

Boyfriend and I finally went dove hunting on Sunday. We’d been so busy on opening day last week (check out Boyfriend’s story about preparing a feast for 40-50 of Michael Riddle’s guests at Native Hunt) that we didn’t get around to hunting at all that day.

This weekend, though, we would make up for it. Only not in the way we expected.

The plan was to meet our friend Evan at his dad’s cattle ranch up in Amador County around 5 p.m. We would stake out a spring – a blessed water source in an arid land – and wait for the doves to come in for an evening drink.

Boyfriend and I knew it was a bad sign when we didn’t see a single dove on our way to Amador. Even worse, when we got out of our trucks, Evan discovered a problem with his gun: He couldn’t load it.

“I’ll just hang out,” he said resignedly, cursing the gunsmith who had apparently made a problem worse, not better.

Hmm, not a good start. We took our positions around the spring and waited.

And waited and waited. The action was exactly as we expected: nil. Unless you count blackbirds and killdeer, of which there were plenty. And, oh yeah, cattle.

I’d been sitting for a while with my back pressed against a thorny blackberry bush (I know – fun!) when I noticed a couple cows heading down a trail toward Boyfriend.

It was like a very, very slow-motion standoff. Boyfriend stared off into the distance looking for doves. The cows stared at him. I stared at the cows. None of us moved.

WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT A DOVE THAT JUST FLEW BY?

Oh for the love of Pete. It had flown practically right over me. I noticed it as it just zipped out of my range. It dropped down for a landing in the grass near Evan’s hangout.

BOOM!

Guess he fixed the gun.

And good thing, because that was literally the only dove that flew near us for the whole evening.

I’m starting my third season as a hunter and I’ve never brought home a dove. I think I hit one last year, but I never did find it, so I can’t be sure. I was really hoping to bring one home this night, but it didn’t look like that would be in the cards.

Far be it from Evan, though, not to show us a good time. We changed locations, moving to a spot on the ranch with a barn and corral. No doves there, but there were plenty of cottontails and barn pigeons, and if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that Boyfriend and I can and will eat anything.

So, we had at it, and by the time we were done, we had two cottontails (my first rabbit!), two pigeons and Evan’s dove.

Now here comes my favorite part. When you’ve got all those critters in your ice chest, that means you’ve got some work to do when you get home.

We started with the rabbits in the house. When they were done, I put the birds in a plastic bag and took them out on the back porch to do some plucking, and that’s when my friend Harlequin, the beautiful neighborhood huntress, showed up.

You may remember Harlequin from this spring, when we watched as she nearly caught an unsuspecting sparrow before our very eyes. Since then, we’ve watched her hunt voraciously: voles, sparrows even a hummingbird that she ate whole.

So, yeah, she loves birds. And I love watching her hunt them, because it gives me that little feeling of kinship that I’ve shared with other predators since I started hunting.

Harlequin immediately knew something was up. She started purring and rubbing up against me ecstatically. I set the bag down on the porch for a fraction of a second, and before you know it, she’d reached in, grabbed the dove and trotted off across the lawn with it.

“Hey!” I yelled at her.

She was not concerned with me anymore.

I chased after her. Pounced. Missed. Pounced. Missed. Pounced.

Got her! I extracted the dove from her jaws, feeling like I was training a lab puppy for duck season.

I went back to plucking, but she was just going nuts. She wanted some.

“OK, OK,” I said, tossing her a pigeon wing.

She batted it around for a bit and came back to the growing bag of feathers. She wanted more. Something of quality.

How could I refuse her? I grabbed the scissors, cut off a pigeon’s head and tossed it to her. Hell, I wouldn’t be needing it.

Harlequin grabbed it, dragged it to the lawn and happily settled in.

Peace at last!

So there we sat under the yellow glare of the porch light, enjoying the silent camaraderie that hunters share. The only sounds you could hear were me plucking, and Harlequin gnawing vigorously on the bird skull.

So what if I didn’t get a dove. It was a perfect end to a perfectly fun day.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008

Harlequin's Lust

or...
Our Own Backyard Wild Kingdom

Becoming a huntress has changed how I see everything - right down to the scenes that play out just outside our kitchen window.

Boyfriend and I were hanging out in the house after work today when he noticed there was a cat tucked neatly under the wheelbarrow in our back yard. Before we converted our newest kittie, Giblet, to an indoor cat, it used to be one of her favorite places to hide too.

I ran to the window to see who our visitor was and quickly realized it was Giblet's sister, a great huntress we dubbed Harlequin because of the cool pattern on her face - she's a jet black cat with a white diamond nose, a white mustache and chin and white tuxedo front. We hadn't seen Harlequin much over the winter, so I was happy to see her there.

And she was happy to be there. For her, the wheelbarrow is strategically placed in the center of a triangle formed by a sugar pea trellis, the barrel composter and the corner of our shed. And that triangle happens to be the key hunting ground of a pair of phoebes nesting in the eaves of the shed.

The phoebes are an important part of our little backyard ecosystem - they eat the insects that might otherwise harm Boyfriend's fabulous garden. And they crap a lot, so we get free natural fertilizer from them.

Watching them is fun too, because they do crazy aerobatics to snatch insects out of midair.

They're normally very alert birds, particularly when they have young nearby. I've sat and watched one squawk like she was laying an ostrich egg at the mere presence of a scrub jay. But today, one of the phoebe parents was blithely flying around from trellis to composter to eaves, snapping up insects, feeding her chick and flying back to her post without ever noticing the dark danger that lurked beneath the wheelbarrow. In fact, several times, that bird landed right on the wheelbarrow handle, so close to that cat that it took my breath away.


By this time I was sitting on the kitchen counter, snapping what photos I could through the kitchen window (which, I noticed, could probably use cleaning more often). Boyfriend stood behind me apprehensively. We love the neighborhood cats, but we love the phoebes too.

Our bond with them began last summer, when we watched the phoebes tend to chicks in these very same eaves. One day, before the babes had left the nest, the mercury climbed to 108 degrees, and after that we didn't hear anymore chick noises. We were heartbroken.
A day later, I visited Boyfriend while he was tending the garden, and there on the ground not 6 feet in front of me was a ruffled little baby phoebe, all beak and no wings. "He's alive!" I shouted. We named him Louie and did what we could to get him up high where the cats might not notice him so quickly. We checked on him frequently - as did his parents - and in a few days he took his first flight. We beamed.

So, yeah, we love the phoebes, and we didn't really want to see Harlequin get this little guy today, even though we'd been equally proud to watch her grow up last summer and take out big squawky scrub jays all by herself.

As the phoebe flitted around this evening, we watched Harlequin's eyes follow the bird. I know how you feel, I know how you feel! I thought. How many times over the past two winters had I watched and waited patiently as ducks had circled, and circled and circled, never coming close enough to my blind for me to take a shot?

The phoebe landed again on a wheelbarrow handle. Up and away ... and then back to the handle again. This bird was begging to be catfood.
Fortunately for the phoebe, though, a sparrow dropped in right about then, right on the grass just feet in front of Harlequin. Would this be the huntress' chance? The bird was so close, easily in Harlequin's reach.



And now I could root for the cat. The phoebes are our friends, part of the permanent cast of our backyard, characters whose antics never bore us. But the sparrow? No bond whatsoever. Godspeed, Harlequin!

Harlequin was ready, her body pressed low into the grass, her eyes fixed intensely on the sparrow.
But it was not to be. The bird took off before Harlequin could launch.

Click to enlarge.

The drama over, Boyfriend headed out the back door to move a water hose. Harlequin, who's not nearly as friendly as she was last summer, bolted from her hiding place, slinking off through the garden toward the nearest hole in the fence.

The phoebe was safe. The sparrow was safe. The huntress had failed.

It was an interesting little microdrama, partly because I'm acutely aware of how hunting has changed my perceptions of the natural world around me. What once was invisible to me now commands my attention.

But even more interesting to me is how it's caused me to bond with animals in ways that seem contradictory. How can you be a killer of animals and a fond admirer of them - their defender, even - at the same time? How can I love my cats so much, and still be willing to slaughter their mammal and fowl kindred?

I was at a loss to explain this. Until a few days ago, that is. A book had arrived in the mail, "Woman the Hunter" by Mary Zeiss Stange, and just a couple chapters in, there it was: a lightning bolt.
But that will have to be the subject of another post. It's getting late, and my kitten is waiting expectantly for me to hit the sack so she can curl up against my chest, her paws stretched across my arms, purring ever so slightly whenever I shift.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008