Julie Zickefoose: Nature Artist & Writer
Stopping to Help
When we first moved to southern Ohio in 1992, I saw things I couldn't identify. Plants, trees, lawn ornaments, that kind of thing. I'd spent a lot of time along the eastern seaboard, and there were cultural differences for which I came unprepared. After making several trips to the grocery store in town, I was stumped by some things I'd seen on the asphalt. They looked kind of like moose droppings, from a moose that had been eating an awful lot of roughage. Even if we'd been in moose country, a grocery store parking lot was an unlikely latrine. I told Bill, "I'm seeing some kind of dropping in the Kroger parking lot, and I can't figure out what's leaving it." I described the mystery wads to Bill, who frowned for a moment, then started to laugh. "Those, my dear, are chaws." I looked back at him blankly. "Chaws?"
"Chewing tobacco. Red Man, Mail Pouch. The guys don't want to have to spit in the store, so they dump their chaws in the parking lot as they're getting out of their cars."
Ah. Chaws. Vive la difference.
I'm now expert at stepping over chaws in parking lots, and I no longer give them even a second glance. Tonight, when I take Phoebe into town for her swimming lesson, I am sitting at a stoplight on Putnam Street. I glance at a little gray-brown clod in the middle of the brick street, and realize in a split second that it is not a chaw; it is a baby mourning dove, much too young to be out of the nest. I throw the car in Park and leap out, and chase the fluttering baby in a circle around my car. I'm surprised what a good race the little thing leads me. It's barely bigger than a house sparrow, but it trundles along just ahead of me, flapping weakly. By the time I catch it and leap back into the car, the light has turned green. An elderly couple waiting at the cross street light shares a laugh at my expense. The indignity is well worth it. I turn the corner, panting, and park, stuffing the bird into a small tissue box for the moment. It's much too young to have fledged; it's only about four inches long and newly feathered, still covered with pinfeathers on its crown. It's probably only about 12 days old. I walk a few yards to the first crabapple tree on the block, look up, and immediately spy a female mourning dove feeding a baby identical to this one in a flimsy twig and straw nest about 20 feet overhead. That sure was easy.
The tree would be no trick at all to climb. But the more I look at it, the more I realize that the branches I would have to stand on in order to reach the nest are about the thickness of a broom handle. The nest itself is on a whip-thin longitudinal branch, and I risk dislodging the whole thing just trying to haul myself up to it. That would be good: Dump the second baby, and then have two to care for. Worse than that, I don't know how strong crabapple wood is, and I don't relish the thought of plunging to the ground and breaking something for the sake of a dopey little dove. I need a 15' stepladder. At 7:00 on a Wednesday evening.
I walk into the open doors of the Betsey Mills Club, a kind of combination young ladies' residence/gymnasium/ restaurant/preschool where my little son is enrolled for the fall. It's just the kind of portmanteau place that small towns like Marietta have. It's lovely. By chance, I've just picked up his preschool registration packet a few minutes before. It's after dinnertime, and I have little hope that anyone will be around to help me. The receptionist uses a walkie-talkie to contact Jim, the maintenance man. He answers after four tries. He's a lanky, friendly man who sizes up the situation, disappears, and returns with the loveliest yellow 15' stepladder I've ever seen. He sets it up under the crabapple, I skitter up, and am suddenly looking Mama MoDo right in the eye. "Sorry, sweetie. You'll have to leave for a minute." She clatters off with a great flourish, and I place the errant chick right beside its warm little sibling, wait to see that it settles down, skitter back down the ladder, shake Jim's hand, thank him, and am on my way. He seems genuinely touched by the scene. Elapsed time for the entire rescue: 12 minutes. Had I not been able to find the nest and/or get a ladder up to it, I'd have been saddled with raising that bird for the next month. I've raised two mourning doves, and they're a joy, but I'd so much rather it grow up as it was meant to, with other doves.
The next night, I take Phoebe into town for her last swimming lesson, and we swing by the mourning dove nest tree for a look. Mother dove is there, and there are two sweet round heads bobbing beside her. One is looking right at us. I wonder if it is the baby I saved. What a lovely feeling, to know that it's home, and not just a sad little mat of feathers on the bricks of Putnam Street. A nest check two days later reveals two heads, and two days after that the nest is vacant. I smile broadly at the flimsy nest in the crabapple tree, a happy ending.
In late July, baby season to wildlife rescuers, I find it hard to go anywhere without seeing a young bird or other creature that needs a little help. I don't seek them out; rather they present themselves to me. I have a friend who always marvels at the amazing things that happen to me, the things I see and find and sometimes wind up raising.
On my way to town the next week, I spot a lovely male rufous-sided towhee hit on a dangerous curve and laboriously turn the car around to collect it. I'm glad I did, because the poor soul is still gasping when I pick him up. Better he die in loving hands than under a wheel. Is it better to die while someone weeps for you, even if you are only a towhee? I reflect on the strange bird coincidences that seem to follow me, this summer even more than usual. And know that it's simply because I am looking, and seeing, and present for these things that happen everywhere, all the time.
I stop at a little farm market where I love to pick over local corn, melons, peaches, and other things the raccoons on our land won't allow me to grow. No chaws in the parking lot this time, but I notice a lovely silver-spotted skipper butterfly struggling between a row of strawberry jam jars and the plate-glass window of the market. I make a beeline to the spot where it's trapped, and gently pinch its wings together along the leading edge to keep it from struggling all the scales off them. I walk outside and free it, rejoicing in its bounding, erratic flight as it finds a weedy strip along the road where it can rest. I wonder how long the butterfly had been fluttering there, how many people had walked by without giving it a glance. Two men, leaning against a box of melons, give me a long look as I come back in the door, smiling a secret smile.
There was a movie I loved with all my childish heart: Thomasina. The title character was a cat that died, and with the help of a woman thought to be a witch by the townspeople, returned to tell stories of her nine lives. I never tired of the movie, for I identified completely with the unusual woman who lived deep in the woods, taking in hurt animals and healing them with patience and love. In my heart, I knew I would be a strange woman just like her someday. When I see a box turtle trying to cross a road, I pull over and carry it where it wants to go. The last woman who had to stop her car and wait until I was out of her way – a matter of perhaps 30 seconds – swore and nearly hit me as she whipped past. That's all right. To her, it's only a turtle, and I'm a fool. I don't mind scrambling around in public after baby birds and trapped butterflies. I don't mind the strange looks and smirks that inevitably follow such activities. I can't do otherwise; I can hear their cries for help, and I get to take home the greatest treasure of all: a warm glow that one more turtle will lay her eggs; one more dove, one more skipper will fly because I stopped to help. 
