Springs Revelations

Spring is a season that never ceases to bring new revelations about life. This time in my life physical strength is decreasing with age, but my amazement regarding spring only increases each year.

As a little girl spring brought Easter dresses and little yellow baby chickens. There were Easter egg hunts with chocolate and coin filled eggs. Time was spent looking at funny stories of animals dressed in clothes. The poor cats in my household suffered from me dressing them in doll clothes and putting them in cradles. Beatrice Potter and Thornton Burgess stories about animals mixed with life’s lessons were read with relish. Does anybody remember, The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack, and the Terrible Guns? (Burgess, 1917) Perhaps these books are why I still try to read some mysterious message from goings on each spring.

Now, as a grown up, I experienced my third spring as a Snowy Plover docent during nesting season. This springs revelation has awakened an understanding in the role that people play in helping to nurture wildlife and the habitat that we all depend on. My association with Cris Sandoval, the director of Coal Oil Reserve, has renewed and enlarged my understanding in how birds pair up and raise their families.

There is a kind of husbandry that looks after wild things just like the chick parents look after their young. Much like raising ones own family, helping to nurture wildlife has its emotional ups and downs. This, spring of 2005, has been especially challenging for Cris as she has observed again, the loss of many of the eggs from skunks. They came in the night as soon as the eggs were laid. The many people involved with working with the recovery of Snowy Plovers at Coal Oil Point Reserve found the skunks to be a formidable opponent.

There is a joke about skunks in one of Thornton Burgess’s books. It says, something like, “skunks never have to run”. What is inferred is that they do not have many enemies that are a threat to them. Unlike Snowy Plovers they seem to find it easy to live in close contact with people. As of the end of spring the skunk problem has abated and been replaced with concerns over weasels and owls.