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    Wildlife, Volume 2: The Mountain Pond
    Wildlife, Volume 2: The Mountain Pond
    Wildlife, Volume 2: The Mountain Pond
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    Wildlife, Volume 2: The Mountain Pond

    By Pat Neal

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    About this ebook

    This collection of humorous short stories tells the tale of a pond in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains. Formed in the last ice age, the mountain pond has served as a magnet to animals and humans ever since. Pat Neal moved into an abandoned homestead near the pond that was watched over by a Great Blue Heron named Bill. Neal made friends with Bill. When the rest of the birds and animals saw Bill trusting a human, they began to trust him as well and they came to visit him.

    WildLife, Volume 2: The Mountain Pond offers charming tales of a dysfunctional wildlife refuge where the poor creatures were lost, lonely and looking for a meal, even if it was each other. These stories offer an intimate look at the private lives of wildlife at the end of the last frontier.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateJun 23, 2009
    ISBN9781440145513
    Wildlife, Volume 2: The Mountain Pond
    Author

    Pat Neal

    Pat Neal, a fishing guide, began writing the newspaper column WildLife in 1998.These stories offer a natural history of the Olympic Peninsula based on his research as a historian for the Washington State Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation and the life of a guide. He lives among big trees along the Hoh River. This is his fourth book.

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      Book preview

      Wildlife, Volume 2 - Pat Neal

      Wild Life

      Volume 2

      The Mountain Pond

      Pat Neal

      iUniverse, Inc.

      New York Bloomington

      WildLife, Volume 2

      The Mountain Pond

      Copyright © 2009 Pat Neal

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

      iUniverse

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.iuniverse.com

      1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      ISBN: 978-1-4401-4552-0 (pbk)

      ISBN: 978-1-4401-4550-6 (cloth)

      ISBN: 978-1-4401-4551-3 (ebook)

      Printed in the United States of America

      iUniverse rev. date: 6/19/09

      Dedication

      For my Father, Duane W. Neal

      who showed me the Olympic Mountains

      Epigraph

      And Adam gave names to all cattle and to all the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field.

      Genesis 2:20

      Contents

      Introduction

      Spring Chores

      The Blue Grouse

      The Swamp Kitty

      The Spotted Owl

      The Love Birds

      The Deer Fence

      Blackberry Heaven

      Raccoons

      Firewood

      Fall Chores

      Shadow

      Flossie

      The Golden Harvest

      Misery of Migration

      The Winter Wren

      Crows and Owls

      Winter

      Cougars

      Bucky the Elk

      Author’s Note

      These stories may have appeared as newspaper columns in various newspapers in Washington State.

      Introduction

      It is daylight in the northern foothills of the Olympic Mountains. On a narrow bench above a wild river a mountain pond sits by the edge of a meadow. In the gray mist of morning, there is the outline of a shack on the edge of the timber. The windows are dark. There is no smoke coming from the chimney. The place appears as empty as the day I found it while wandering in the woods.

      The mountain pond was formed at the end of the last ice age. The ice sheet blocked the river and flooded the land. The ice melted. The waters receded. The pond remained. The first people came to the pond about 14,000 years ago. They came to ambush animals by the pond—mastodon, caribou and bison. They left stone tools and cracked bones as a sign that they lived here.

      The Salish people ventured upriver following deer and elk up into the mountains. They gathered bulbs, picked berries and medicinal plants. They stripped cedar bark for fabric. They left charcoal and heat-fractured rocks as a sign they lived here.

      Later the land was settled by homesteaders who came looking for the last frontier. They built cabins, planted orchards and left rusty iron implements as a sign they once lived here.

      It seems as only yesterday I came into this land. There was a homestead overgrown and empty. I chopped back the brush, planted a garden and dug out the well. I found the signs and felt the presence of those who had passed before. It was lonely in the silence of the haunted valley. I made friends with the birds and animals the old-fashioned way. I stopped shooting them.

      After a year or so, I gained the trust of a great blue heron. He was the watchdog of the swamp, making a big racket if anything was amiss. Once Old Bill trusted me, the rest of the birds and animals seemed to lose their fear. There were skunks in the woodpile, squirrels in the living room and a bear that made a horrendous mess on the lawn. Migrating waterfowl would be blown off course and drop into the mountain pond to find a welcome refuge among a corrupt pack of ravens and jays. Elk and deer came by to raise their young and pillage the garden. Predators killed and ate their meals right outside my window. It was good, too good to last. The land was being settled. The wildlife had to go and so did I.

      As I stood in the doorway on that final morning, the voices of the forest awoke. There was the cooing of the band-tailed pigeons, the hooting of the blue grouse and a guttural squawk from Old Bill, a sign of danger coming. I said goodbye to my friends. These stories are a sign that I lived here.

      Spring Chores

      Springtime was my favorite time of year in the hills. On a clear blue morning, the snow-capped Olympic Mountains seemed to stand so tall they could have fallen over, but they didn’t. Although I was never one to stand around and enjoy the view when there were chores to do.

      Springtime on the homestead meant that even though the days were getting longer, there still were not enough hours in the day to get all the chores done. I had to prioritize, delegate, and move on. I didn’t set myself up for a lot of unrealistic expectations. When it came to chores on the homestead, the sooner you realized your expectations were unrealistic the better.

      It is an eternal truth that you need the right tools for the job. Archaeologists tell us that man has been a tool user for over a million years. Recent advances in radiocarbon dating have determined that many of those tools were borrowed. In the course of human evolution, whoever borrowed the most tools ruled. Inevitably, early man gathered into walled cities to make beer and over the centuries, tools became more advanced. This may or may not be related. Anthropologists have theorized that the more advanced the tool, the greater the likelihood it was borrowed.

      Take my shovel, please. It was one of the most highly evolved tools I owned. I needed one to spade the garden. Too bad some worthless clam digger borrowed

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