Skink Story

The log house has had a raised flower bed built against its front foundation wall for many years. I decided to move the bed's soil away from the foundation, which was work since the bed was raised by a stone wall. I had to remove it. In this area, stone walls create habitat for various animals, especially skinks.

One day, I carelessly dragged a large flat stone from its position, thereby amputating the tail of a mature skink which had been resting under the rock. At first I could not recognize what had happened, for only the tail was obvious at a glance, wriggling away at my feet. I picked it up in my gloved hand and quickly tossed it down for I saw what it was, and it startled me. I immediately looked for the rest of the skink.

I found him. He was too stunned to do anything but shudder and half close his eyes in pain. Skinks are known for their capacity to regrow their tails, but it looked as if the damage was too far up toward his rear end; I could see muscle tissue extruding from the stump. Poor skink! It was so sad because he was clearly so traumatized. I picked him up. He resisted only if I tried to hold him in a confined, comforting way, which is my ape desire, to hold on, to clutch, to pet in ape sympathy.

I tried to relocate him to a spot where he was out of harms way. This was difficult. I returned often to my first selection, another stone wall, only to see him spasm and try to shake off ants that were collecting around him and even biting him between his toes. As I picked him up again, his front foot trembled. I am suffering in sympathy and did what I would have wanted: I doused his tail into the cool water of the rain barrel. He just kept his eyes at half mast and sat there in my hand, retreated into his body. I then located a new spot in the nearly dismantled wall: a well, formed in its flat rocks, a hole with a flag stone over it, a chamber big enough for him to rest in. I could only hope the ants did not find him again. I said a bit of a prayer and went about my business. The next day I removed the top rock to see an empty cavity. I thought, he's either improved or he is food. But I was glad not to see a dead skink.

Now here is the strange part: two days later I am sitting on the front steps of the log house. And lo and behold, here comes Mr. Stump-tail Skink across the gravel to my Jesus sandaled feet. He boldly climbs right up onto one sandal and then onto my hands which I put down for him. He walks just as fearlessly and comfortably as you can imagine from one hand to the next. He wiggles only as my hand closes around him to hold him as I put him down. Then he walks among the rocks, spot away from the dangerous wall I was moving. I wish him well and tell him to keep clear of my work. And I just am amazed for the rest of the day.

Even now, I catch myself wanting to see him again. But I know that he has shown me enough of himself for me to get the point. More contact would be mere attachment. Imagine, being made a believer by a skink. 

This Year's Spring

In "Letters from Bea's House" I mentioned the constant hum of the wasps and bees about the house when I first came here. This summer it took a while for me to realize they were largely gone. Right now as I write I can hear the cicadas starting their August chorus, but as for the mud wasps, paper wasps, carpenter bees and various other droning insects, they are present by their absence. But they were here, hatched and revived too early this spring, one of the earliest and warmest springs on record, a spring cut dramatically short by a hard freeze lasting about four days right at Easter. Here is the poem I wrote in response to that occasion.

Elegy for Spring

Cat basks in my hand light
As if saturated with sun,
But we have abandoned the porch to be
Warm again by the fire.
Spring has died this year.
Black gum leaves hang now
Like withered bats leathery
In the breeze--
Oh wicked joke on us!
Re-cocooned,
We gaze at March over again,
At dogwood blossoms: tear sogged
Wads of tissue clotted on branch tips.
Hardy oaks and hickories, once distant sprays
In varied greens, now brown and rusty
Winter hills, reappeared.
Sapped I am by what has passed
Or failed to pass--a simple spring--
When warm air resumes exhaling
Evening and inhaling morn
In slow sweet rhythm--like baby’s breath--
Instead, a crib death:
Spring held its breath and stopped.
Asked the cold in that Easter Eve
Asked the stellar air to descend
On us all; All Things Considered
Said one blue bird box in
Minnesota held fifteen song birds--
Stumped for warmth.
They spared the details, withheld “dead”
From the report. The
Peaches pecans apples plums blueberries:
All gone to bed with the birds.
So what’s to worship here?
That Sunday I too felt
That “blonde assassin”
Chill our world: the one
That measures peaches only
By money lost--and the one
Struck dumb by mayhem
And by our need for resurrection.