Haiku on Grandson's Owie

This photo of my grandson with a bandaid on his cut head inspired both a painting (which you can see here) and a haiku.

Life’s Hard Lessons

Grandson has cut head

Two-year-old eyes brim, betrayed,

We adults, helpless

A Memorial for the Planet

When I was young and we worried about nuclear annihilation while habitat destruction was a good thing and global warming was unheard of, I used to joke that only things that begin with the letter C would survive in the future: cockroaches, crows, coyotes, and crabgrass. To my deep sorrow, I have lived to see my prediction beginning to come true, though not because of nuclear war. 

Artist Maya Lin, creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Civil Rights Memorial, is now working on a memorial for the planet. It is a memorial that exists in many forms and many places, but the one I have experienced is on the web at www.whatismissing.net. As with any memorial, her project commemorates those who have died, in this case, entire species of plants and animals. When I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, my heart was filled with grief, and the What Is Missing Memorial has the same effect.

We are in the midst of the largest number of extinctions since the loss of the dinosaurs. One in five mammals, one in three amphibians, one in eight birds, and one in three freshwater fish are currently facing extinction. Human alteration of the planet is the major cause. For example, one and a half acres of rainforest are being destroyed every SECOND by human beings for timber, farm land, and other resources, often by the transnational corporations. They could be completely consumed by 2050. These facts are horrifying and a cause for great sorrow, even despair.

As part of the What Is Missing project, individuals are invited to submit their memories of the losses they have seen. I started to think about what I could submit, and it turned into a very long list. This issue requires an essay.

Born in 1944, I grew up in postwar Los Angeles, in tracts of postwar housing in Rosemead and Whittier. There was still plenty of undeveloped land, and in our back yards we could easily find frogs large and small, horned lizards (“horny toads” we called them), swallow tailed butterflies, monarch butterflies, white and yellow and silver butterflies of all types, crickets, Jerusalem crickets, green caterpillars and black caterpillars, grasshoppers and katydid nymphs, stink bugs, red and black beetles, lady bugs, black widows and many other kinds of spiders, pill bugs, and many kinds of birds. I know about these creatures because at one time or another I captured them and studied them. However, as a child, I did not pay attention to plants or moths or very small creatures, but I am assuming they have gone missing, too. And as a child, I did not know the species of birds,  but I do remember flocks of Cedar Waxwings in those days. There were no starlings or pigeons. 

More than sixty years later, most of these creatures are no longer found in back yards. I occasionally see one of them while hiking in “natural” areas, but even there they are quite rare. They are mostly missing. The population of the Los Angeles area has more than tripled in those years, and housing and development have covered most of the land. Clearly, human-caused habitat loss is the main reason for the disappearance of the animals I remember.

About five years ago, I went to stay in Idyllwild for a painting workshop. The people there said that the prior winter and the current summer had been incredibly dry. The lush Idyllwild with multitudes of birds and bugs that I remember from 30 years ago was brown and dusty and eerily quiet. Because of the drought, there were virtually no insects -- no creaking crickets or buzzing flies or bees, not even any ants. No insects meant no birds. The dead silence at night was disturbing.

In the last 15 years in Seal Beach, I have seen a rather sudden loss of animals and biodiversity. When I first moved here, where we are just a couple of blocks from a National Wildlife Refuge, there were many hawks, turkey vultures, skunks, and coyotes in the neighborhood. There was an occasional opossum and raccoon. On the drive east on Westminster Boulevard through the Naval Weapons Station, we often saw four to ten hawks sitting on the telephone posts. We drove by fairly quickly, but I think they were almost all Red Tailed Hawks. We had a pair of baby skunks in our backyard for a few days and another time one got trapped in our garage. Our neighbor ran out of her house one day, screaming about a huge rat, because a young possum had gotten into her kitchen. A raccoon ate all the goldfish in our pond one night. The awful smell of a run-over skunk was not infrequent.

There were lots of butterflies and many Mourning Cloaks. One time there were literally hundreds of Mourning Cloak caterpillars climbing out of the neighbor’s tree and crawling up walls and bushes to form cocoons. A large flock of starlings had a feast and ate the majority, but still some butterflies did emerge later. However, I haven’t seen a Mourning Cloak anywhere in Seal Beach since. 

There were spiders, especially these unusual red and green spiders that showed up every fall and made long webs everywhere each night. There were many crickets, some of which got into the house and kept us awake. There were frogs, especially on “The Hill,” where you could hear all their croaking and chirping and peeping on a summer evening. 

About seven or eight years ago, the numbers of all of these creatures suddenly took a nosedive. They were just gone. I asked the manager of the wildlife refuge what happened to all of the hawks, and he said they had just migrated and would be back. They never came back. As a result, we are currently experiencing a population explosion of ground squirrels. There’s still evidence of an occasional coyote, but obviously not enough to stem the ground squirrels.

What happened? Despite official denials, I suspect there was some poisoning going on in the naval weapons station. I think it is likely that there were efforts to eliminate the skunks and other nuisance animals and that hawks ate the poisoned animals. However, also about that time, the Hellman property was developed.  Over 50 mansions were built on Seal Beach Boulevard, across the street from the entrance to the Naval Weapons Station, effectively cutting off the Los Cerritos Wetlands (a very degraded wetland) from the wildlife refuge. It could be a coincidence that the numbers of animals fell suddenly about the same time as this development, but it could also be that this disruption of the habitat was the “tipping point” that led to the collapse of wildlife numbers.

In just a few short years, the vast majority of wildlife in our Seal Beach neighborhood has gone missing. I find this very depressing. When I read articles on the environment, I begin to despair. Maya Lin hopes that her What Is Missing project will increase people’s awareness of the issue and show them ways that will slow the habitat destruction and species extinctions. In the summer 2012 issue of Living Bird, Maya Lin is quoted as saying, “We need to stay really optimistic. Because the alternative is, what, we give up? I’m not going to tell my kids that I didn’t try really hard. Because the woods that I grew up with were so magical. And I want to try to get some of that back.” 

A great many animals have disappeared in my lifetime on this planet, and I have witnessed this loss in my own neighborhoods. But there is still plenty of crabgrass and cockroaches. Crow numbers are currently high, although the crows almost went missing during the West Nile epidemic. Coyotes also seem to be plentiful in some parts of the country. My joke has come back to haunt me.

My Boyfriend (?) Dennis

When I was 17 at Arcadia High School, I had a crush on a tall, skinny boy named Dennis Lojeski, who was a year older than I was. We both worked for the Arcadia Department of Recreation at the same park after school and during the summer. In addition, Dennis played the bass and sang; he was in a band; and he was an extra in a couple of Elvis movies. That made him cool, despite his thick glasses.

Dennis used to tease me a lot, and I just couldn’t tell whether he liked me. We had to put on a big party for all the city departments. I was in charge of making hamburger patties out of a huge mound of red, slimy, slightly smelly ground beef. There was 50 pounds there, and I had to shape it into 200 patties. When I finally finished, I swore I would become a vegetarian. So I was somewhat irritable when Dennis later teased me some more at the party, enough that I actually threw my glass of soda in his face. Not nice, I know.

We were both counselors at the week long summer camp the Rec Department had in Idyllwild. He brought his guitar and he brought an old one that he let me use, and he taught me to play it. We were told to stay in the cabin at night while our little charges slept, but apparently I was the only one clueless enough to actually do that, so I missed all the late night parties among the counselors.

Dennis never actually asked me out on a date. I got invited along to events that included him. I was friends with the girl singer in his band and went along when the band played at dances, and once we went as a group to the Hollywood Bowl to see Peter, Paul, and Mary, who were the opening act for Sammy Davis, Jr. I asked him to my Senior Prom. He did ask me to his parents house for dinner once, along with other kids. Again, I was too clueless to realize I was being interrogated by his parents and grandparents. He continued to tease me and kid around, so he was fun to be with, but it just felt friendly. He never said he liked me, he never asked me to go steady, and he never even tried to kiss me. In fact, I dated other boys during this time. Since he was class president and very sociable, it did not occur to me that he was shy. However I looked at it, my relationship with Dennis did not seem to be a romance, according to all I’d been led to believe.

Imagine my surprise when one evening he proposed!!! He had completed a year at LA State with plans to become a dentist. I was all set to leave to attend UCLA, where I would finally be FREE, a very exciting prospect indeed. We must have actually had a date, because we came back to my parents’ apartment quite late. He said he had something to ask me, pulled out a ring box, and asked if I would marry him. He started to describe how we would go through college together as fiances, then I’d get a job while he went to dental school, and such. I was utterly shocked!!!

I certainly did not want to get engaged and tied down just when I was about to escape my parents and have adventures at UCLA. (It was the 60s and I did have lots of adventures.) I was too young anyway! I had to interrupt Dennis and tell him that I was too young and did not want to make such a big commitment just as I was starting college. It took him a while to realize he was being turned down, and then he started to cry and suddenly left. 

After he slammed the door, my mother rushed out of a back room, saying, “How could you turn him down like that?” She had been listening in, and I was shocked again to realize that she had been in favor of it! No, I intended to go to UCLA unencumbered. A wise decision, actually. Now that it’s too late to ask Mom, I wonder if Dennis had contacted my parents in advance to “ask for my hand.” I wonder if Dad had also been in favor of it, too. Did they honestly think I was mature enough to make a decision like that?

Anyway, Dennis soon recovered from his broken heart and began dating Janet, who became his wife in a couple of years. Dennis did indeed become a dentist, and he continued to live in Arcadia. He was a city councilman and became mayor of Arcadia for some years. My mother constantly cut out articles about him from the local newspaper and sent them to me. When I saw later photos of Dennis, I was astounded to see that he had gotten fat. He had been so skinny, it was hard to believe he could change that much.

This story has a sad ending. I saw Dennis at a high school reunion that included that classes of 1960 to 1965, and a few weeks later, at the very young age of 53, he died of a brain aneurism while driving his son home from a baseball game. I am sorry for the loss to his family and community, and I am sorry that I never got to know him.

The Pope Visits LA

It was September 1987, and the pope was coming to Los Angeles! Apparently, this visit was some sort of first, and there were all sorts of plans for it, reported repeatedly on the news for days. Pope John Paul II was going to ride around and be in a parade in his so-called “Popemobile.” 

My daughter Emily was born on the same day that this pope had been shot six years earlier, May 13, 1981. I remember laying in utter exhaustion in my private hospital room and watching endless news reports about the attempted assassination of the pope with all the speculation as to why. I couldn’t understand it.

Anyway, my two daughters and I were having a lazy morning around the house, when a news report broke into whatever mindless TV show that was on to announce that the pope had landed at LAX and would be heading out in the Popemobile. On a whim, I asked the girls if they’d like to go see the pope. I figured that by the time we got the the airport, the pope would have passed us heading the other way. The girls seemed puzzled as to why I should suggest this, but they said, “Why not?” We hopped in the car, went down the coast highway to the 10 freeway and south on the 405 towards the airport. 

After about three miles, the traffic came to a stand still. They must have closed the freeway for security reasons, or else other people had the same idea I did. We all turned off our engines, got out of our cars, and stood around staring at the amazing, almost apocalyptic sight of absolutely NO traffic on the northbound 405. After a while some motorcycle policemen roared by, then more officers in formation, then dark secret service cars, more cops, and finally a big white limousine with the pope in it! You could actually see him sitting in there in a white outfit and a white cap. Then more dark cars, more cops in formation, and single motorcyclists followed. It was the best parade ever!

I think the only thing that impressed the girls was us getting out of our car in the middle of a freeway.

Our Pet Mockingbirds

In the mid 1950s, my sister and I found two baby mockingbirds in our back yard. We were distressed that they had “fallen out of their nest,” and we immediately set about taking good care of them. We carried them everywhere, let them sit on our shoulders, put them in a warm box all lined with rags, and caught insects for them.We loved them and hugged them, and they got quite tame. We had them for three or four days, and then they learned to fly and left. We cried, but whenever I saw a mockingbird in the back yard, I was sure my old pet remembered me and was visiting. I am very fond of mockingbirds to this day.

I’m sure this experience contributed to my love of nature and my current hobby of birdwatching. Now that I have studied birds, I know that the young mockingbirds had NOT fallen out of their nest, but had fledged. Many newly fledged birds spend a day or two on the ground fluttering around, before they get the hang of flying. Their parents are there to protect and feed them. I did not notice, but most likely the parents of our pet mockingbirds were quite frantic when my sister and I began playing with their fledglings. They probably fed them and took care of them when we were not around. At any rate, they survived and flew off.

A more recent experience with a fledgling was with a crow. About a year ago, I was at my daughter’s house when she noticed that a crow was trapped in the bamboo plants around her patio. I went out and caught it and slowly untangled it. Its parents were in the tree over our heads, squawking furiously and wiping their beaks on the tree branches, a sign of aggression in some birds. I released the fledgling, and it immediately fluttered off to get trapped in the bamboo again. So I caught and untangled it again, but I decided to try to hold it a while to get it and its parents to calm down. It suddenly went stiff in my hands! It looked like a dead crow in full rigor mortis. I very much doubted that I could have hurt it at all, although my daughter was vigorously accusing me of killing it. I set it down, all stiff, on the patio bench, far from the bamboo, and went in the house to keep an eye out for any neighborhood cats coming into the patio. 

After about 10 minutes, the young crow “came to,” hopped down off the bench,  followed its parents across the street (far away from US) and hid in some bushes there. It sure looked like they were giving the youngster a real scolding for consorting with humans.

Joey

When I was young, I had an aqua-blue parakeet named Joey for about 7 years. He was a great pet! He became a very tame and cheerful bird, and we let him fly all around the house. He would sit on my shoulder while I did homework or the dishes, chirping and singing the whole time. He learned to “talk” and while chirping and singing would intersperse phrases that he had heard me repeat and repeat, such as “Pretty bird, pretty boy, pretty pretty bird,” “Hello, Joey” and “But I’m not interested, Joey.” He had a total of 35 words, I once counted.

He was a playful bird, liking to talk to his mirror image, to hop on and off his swinging perch, to knock and ring his bells, and to pick up and toss around various small objects and bird toys. He liked to sit on the edge of a glass or cup and drink whatever we were having. Once he fell in headlong into a tall narrow glass, and I had to pull him out by his tail.

As I did with training of the pet grasshoppers (see earlier Wilbur story), I observed Joey’s natural behavior and tried to figure out how to make them into tricks. All captive parrots will reflexively step onto a stick or finger that is pressed gently into its chest. I noticed that Joey would put just one leg on my finger if I put it only partially in front of him. Thus I “taught” him to “shake hands.” 

For some reason, Joey really liked to sit on my finger with his head very close to my mouth while I talked and made various noises to him. He would do this for quite a long time. Once when I stopped talking or making noises, he gently nipped me in frustration. Thus I “taught” him to “kiss me.” Eventually he would peck several times until I started talking again. Apparently, the sounds I made were rewarding and reinforced the pecking behavior. Then it occurred to me that I could use this for a really amazing trick. I would say, “Joey, how much is two plus two?” and fall silent. When he had pecked four times, I would say, “That’s right, Joey. Smart boy, good boy, good bird, etc.” It really wowed my friends! I would tell them to ask me any math problem where the answer was less than ten, and I would pose it to Joey and stop talking and then start talking when he reached the right answer. No one seemed to figure out how this was done.

I made little hats and outfits for this poor bird, and I made a little harness and leash so I could take him outside. He would object, but put up with it. When I entered him in a school pet show, he won the ribbon for Trickiest Pet. 

Since we had never clipped Joey’s wings and he was a very fast flyer, he did manage to escape from the house and fly away for several hours, on at least two occasions. I was devastated each time, but he always came back, landed near our house, and chirped till I came and got him, putting him on my shoulder and taking him safely back inside.

I loved that bird and wish I had another one just like him.