Possum Tales
Mention possums and people shudder as though the very word is enough to send them running. How hideous: Those rat-like tails! Those beady eyes! That comical grin!
It doesn’t help that people usually only catch a glimpse of them in their headlights, grinning from the side of the road, scavenging for food.
They tend to be shy, nervous creatures. They become so frightened they “faint,” what’s called “playing possum.” They can remain comatose anywhere from 40 minutes to four hours.
They’re amazing, really: with their 50 teeth – more than any other mammal – and those pouches in which the females carry as many as 13 babies. The pouch looks more like an elastic circle on their bellies, almost imperceptible when it contains no young.
They are scavengers, eating our leftovers. That’s often how they get injured, searching through the trash thrown careless from a car window, drawing them into danger. Cats and dogs also take their toll, especially on the young ones.
In captivity, their habits sometimes resemble those of cats: they hiss, they sleep all day. When they wash, they rub their paws over their faces much in the same way as a satisfied, well-fed cat.
But that’s not to suggest they should ever be kept as pets. Because they AREN’T cats. They don’t react to humans in the same way as cats and dogs, which have become domesticated over thousands of years. Possums remain skittish, suspicious, their eyes darting around the room, not looking at you, not wanting to be coddled, to be tamed.
The Opossum Society of the United States is a great resource for information about possums. The society's web address is: http://www.opossumsocietyus.org/opossum.html
At the rehab center, we start seeing the babies in February and March, some so young they’re blind and naked. If they’re going to survive, they have to be kept warm.
I remember walking into the rehab center one day, and seeing another volunteer, Richard, his tall frame hunched over on a small stool, cupping something in his hands. It was a possum a few weeks old that he was warming in his hands, as though trying to instill in it the will to live.
Sometimes when I get angry at humans for driving Hummers, for throwing their trash onto the highway, for their callousness toward the other animals on this planet, I think of Richard sitting there trying to keep that possum alive. And I think maybe there’s hope afterall.

A Bit of Magic in the Air
The sound gives me chills – a frantic chattering that builds in pitch drowning out all other sounds. It is the kind of sound you would expect from some flesh-eating beast, not from a chimney swift no bigger than your thumb.
They are eerie birds with their gaping mouths, their sharp claws, their charcoal colored feathers, and that sound -- the stuff of nightmares.
Yet, spend an afternoon feeding them every 15 minutes, and you start to think that really, they are magnificent birds, and isn’t it wonderful the way they open their mouths so wide to be fed? And just look at the grip of those claws.
Baby chimney swifts have started showing up at the wildlife rehab center. They cling to a piece of cloth draped over the side of the cage, their eyes closed until the chattering begins, first one, then another, until they’re all clamoring for food.
They build their nests in chimneys. The nest itself looks like half of a cup glued to the bricks. In hot, humid weather as we had this week, the creosote in chimneys often becomes damp and the nest falls. If the birds are lucky, the people who find them take them to a wildlife rehabilitator so by fall they’ll be ready to make their long journey to South America where they roost on the face of cliffs in Peru and Northern Chile.
Back before there were chimneys, they nested in caves and hollow trees. They’re often found in the tall round chimneys found at old school buildings and industrial sites. Only one pair nests in a chimney, but hundreds may roost there later in the season.
But as those chimneys are torn down, the number of chimney swifts is also decreasing.
Most often, you see them high in the sky, flying in a big loop. Flying cigars, some people call them because of their stubby bodies, the sharp wings that slice the air. Chimney swifts never alight on the ground. They eat as they’re flying, about 25,000 mosquito-sized insects a day. When at rest, they cling to the inside of a chimney with their long claws.
In August, I released five young chimney swifts from the rehab center to join a colony in downtown Greensboro. I had been told that near sunset I would see a few “scouts” flying around the chimney. Slowly the others would join them, flying in a loop, chattering, until hundreds were in the air. The birds I was releasing would join the flying circle. After an hour, they would drop back into the chimney. The scouts would round up the stragglers, then they, too, would disappear.
It happened just like that, and yet I was unprepared for the way it moved me: their movements like a ballet, their chattering a symphony. The sight of hundreds of birds dropping into the chimney as though drawn by a magnet was a bit of unexpected magic.
Then all was quiet.

Nothing's as lovely as a tree
Sometime Thursday when I wasn’t paying attention, the big tree in the lot at Spring and West Market streets was cut down.
Of course, I had been expecting it, ever since the Arbor House was demolished two months ago to make way for condominiums. But the house was razed and the tree remained, and a voice inside me whispered maybe it would be spared. Maybe.
The Arbor House, as it was known for several decades, was built in 1875, possibly as a carriage house for Blandwood Mansion. In recent years it had been a gift shop.
I used to look at the tree while I was at the YMCA. From the elliptical machines on the second floor of the Y, I had a good view of the upper branches.
I’m ashamed to say I don’t know what kind of tree it was. But on hot days in the summer, its shade looked inviting. In winter, the vines covering its trunk teemed with life. Blue jays, cardinals and sparrows flitted among the leaves; squirrels chased each other around the trunk; crows courted each other from atop the high branches.
On Friday, all that remained were some limbs and roots being bulldozed into the dirt.
An old mansion and more trees were cleared years ago to make room for the YMCA where I work out. That pains me, too, even though I never saw that house or the birds and wildlife that lived there. Maybe we can’t miss what we don’t know.
I fear that someday we won’t miss the trees.
The hole in my heart when I saw the tree gone was almost as big as the crater left behind.
Now condominiums that use the word arbor in their name – meaning trees, a shaded area – will take shape on a barren, dusty lot.

Flying Lessons

The two blue jays were sitting in the middle of a four-lane road near a busy shopping center in Greensboro. One was an adult; the other was small and plump with short tail feathers: a fledgling. As cars sped by and equipment rumbled at a construction site, the adult blue jay ran its beak over the young one's feathers. But the young one continued to sit in the middle of the road.
As I ran toward it, the adult flew away and perched in a bush behind a house. The fledgling hopped over the curb to safety.
Flying takes practice.
Parents begin teaching the young to fly by bringing food a short distance from the nest. If the young want fed, they'll leave the nest. Gradually they build up their wing muscles and flying becomes easier.
Fledglings often get themselves in difficult situations. The blue jay above was caught by a cat and lost an eye. Others get hit by cars or killed by family pets. If you see a fledgling in trouble, the best thing to do is shoo it out of the way, or if it's been injured, take it to a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. Otherwise, leave it alone. Its parents will take care of it.
I stood in the yard watching the fledgling I had chased from the road. Its parent called to it from the bushes and it took off, flying low to the ground. When it got close enough, the adult hopped to its side and again ran its beak along the fledgling's feathers.
Flying lessons are likely to continue for awhile.

Mother and Child Reunion
I don’t know what drew my attention to the tree: a movement, a rustling in the leaves, the feeling that I was being watched.
We were walking along the greenway at Battleground National Military Park about 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. The sun was shining on the trail, but it was twilight in the grove of trees to the left. The raccoon was on a branch halfway up the tree. With her paws, she was trying to still the young raccoon in front of her.
Raccoons give birth in March or April often in a hollow tree or burrow. They can have between one to eight cubs, but usually have two or three.
Wildlife rehabilitators in North Carolina are barred by the state from caring for raccoons because of the fear of rabies. At the center where I volunteer, everyone who deals with mammals is required to have a rabies shot, but the state still deems raccoons, fox and bats too dangerous to rehabilitate.
In August the state began distributing rabies-vaccine laced baits to parts of Buncombe, Hayood, Madison, Mitchell and Yancey counties.
So far this year, seven cases of rabies have been reported in Guilford County.
Rabies was the last thing on my mind as I watched the mother and her baby. The baby was at an age when it had probably started exploring its world. The mother no doubt was trying to restrain it, the way mothers of most species do when their children begin to wander. What struck me as I watched is that even though the mother must have been frightened to be discovered, she didn’t abandon her baby. She ran her paws over its back the way one would to calm a fussing child.
I could have stood there for hours watching the two. But not wanting to cause any more stress, I walked away. I looked over my shoulder once to see her using her mouth to pick up the baby by the scruff of the neck, to take it back to the safety of their den.

Jeremiah, is that you?
It might have been a large leaf blown onto the road by the storm Sunday evening, that’s how still it was.
My boyfriend pulled the car over to the berm, a maneuver he’s perfected these past few years from all the times I’ve thought I’ve seen an injured animal alongside the road. I got out of the car for a closer look.
There it was: a bullfrog sitting in the middle of Avondale Drive, a few yards from Friendly Avenue in Greensboro.
I’m used to seeing small toads on hiking trails, but not a frog this size in a residential area. I later learned that a creek runs along Avondale, a perfect habitat for bullfrogs and other amphibians.
Bullfrogs are the largest frogs in North America; this one would easily have filled the palm of my hand. They’re the last amphibians to come out in the spring, and you can usually see them in June after heavy rain. Or if you don’t see them, you may hear them: they have a booming call that sounds like they’re saying “jug-o-rum.”
Poet Carl Sandburg paid tribute to their song in “Young Bullfrogs.”
(http://www.bartleby.com/134/27.html)
They’re out for a short time. By September, they’ll be hibernating in the mud around swamps and streams, waiting for next summer.
Though a bullfrog can jump nine times its length, this one wasn’t moving. Not until I reached down to move it out of harm’s way. It took off then, jumping wildly, its legs slapping against the wet pavement, and disappeared in the grass at the edge of the road.

Where the Bluebird Sings

This blog takes its name from a collection of essays by Wallace Stegner. A Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Stegner was a conservationist before it became fashionable. He had an abiding respect for wild places and the animals that live there. Stegner wrote mostly about the West but his message resonates through all regions of the country, including the Southeast, which I now call home.
As a volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation center, I often see man's impact on the other animals that share his environment: geese suffering from lead poisoning, fledgling songbirds left homeless when the tree holding their nest was cut down, possums hit by cars as they rummage through fast-food containers at the edge of the road.
But there are also people who make you glad to be part of the human race: the families who disrupt their Sunday plans to help an injured rabbit; a woman who has given thousands of hours to caring for wildlife; a man who has sat up nights tending to a hairless baby possum, cupping it in his hands to keep it warm.
The purpose of this blog is to tell those stories and to share information about the care of wild animals. It also will include travels along North Carolina's hiking trails and through its state parks.
I hope to see you there.