Bull ’Gator’s Lament
What’s that man lookin’ at, down here in this cypress swamp, so thick with branches that sun barely gets through? He’s lookin’ at me, Old Bull ’Gator, and I’m lookin’ at him.  Why don’t you come on over for dinner?

Speaking of dinner, you should have been here when I grabbed that turtle from his sunny spot over there by the water hyacinths. When I broke through to meat, those tourists thought a riffle shot had gone off. Fish, man, bird, or turtle, I get my dinner.

Sometimes though, man eats us. He’ll come down to this swamp and put a bullet in a ’gator’s brain. Those poachers don’t waste any time. They skin the ’gator out right here and cut up the tail meat for Cajun delight. The hide gets made into boots.

The poachers never got me though. Bigger ’gators missed their chance too. I had to be careful when I was young, because we been known to eat our own. But now, I’m king of this here swamp.

Springtime is my favorite time of year, with Spanish Moss fluttering in the breeze, like curtains in an old mansion house. That’s when I get to bellowing. My bellows echo off the cypress trunks and all through the swamp. Those lady ’gator’s bellow right back. When one of them judges Old Bull fit, we spin like two demons in a whirlpool.

Pretty soon, she’ll be building a nest out of mud and sticks. When the eggs hatch that fierce old momma ’gator hears those young’uns grunting She gently pulls the nest apart and tenderly frees the baby ’gators.
That’s when she won’t want Old Bull around, because we’ve been known to eat our own.

Maybe I’ll just wonder off and watch those fishing boats go by. Perhaps one of them will flip over. Man, fish, bird or turtle, I get my dinner.

​Look over yonder at those little ’gators sunning themselves on their momma’s snout. I believe one of them is a baby bull. He will have to grow some before he can be king of my swamp.  

A Unity of Minds 
Could a mockingbird mimic the strains of “Jupiter: Bringer of Joviality,” or any other section of “The Planets,” that whimsical set of tone poems composed by Gustav Holst? Imagine the morose tune of “Mars: Bringer of War” issuing from the throat of a bird. Though such complex mimicry may be beyond the abilities of birds, animals frequently amaze and amuse us with their behavior, sometimes mistaken as antics.

Why do these behaviors hold such charm for us? Is it the recognition of our own triumphs and foibles when we look at them? We see ourselves in their behavior, and even their anatomy. The bones of a bird’s wing are those of a human hand, revealed in the glow of an X-ray. The same is true of a whale’s flipper, which moves them through the ocean in tandem with the thrust of a tail.

Humor vanishes and we gasp when hearing of how a captive killer whale, incarcerated for years, bit more than the “feeding hand” and took the life of its keeper. Intelligent beings, they learn tricks rapidly, but intelligence makes them dangerous captives. For millennia, killer whales have survived in ocean currents, but escape becomes a “current event.”

We forget that they are killers, able to take a seal or a man in a fast attack. Charm ends here, for they have become too much like us. We too kill to survive. Whether dining on wild harvested venison, or range fed beef, we sacrifice other lives on the altar of our continued existence.

This is also true for wild killers. They are not meant to perform for our amusement let alone on a regular schedule. Such shows may be said to generate respect for our wild kin but do they really. We will only make peace with our animal neighbors when we see them in us, just as we see ourselves in them.
 

As published in The Weekly Avocet

                     Dobsonfly


The Hellgrammite has a painful bite,
and their pinchers give a horrid fright.

They hide in the rocks and shun the light;
for a smallmouth bass finds their flesh a delight.

The shed their skin before taking flight to
transcend the world of Hellgrammite.

Ray Zimmerman - Chattanooga, TN - znaturalist at gmail.com

Coolidge and Renaissance Parks present a variety of images, from the utilitarian to recreational to natural beauty. 

My Nature Journaling group, which meets on Tuesday mornings, got special permission to visit this lovely property. Thanks to the land trust organization which protects it. 

All shot at Chickamauga Dam. The goose was not impressed by the heron's antics. 

I was at Amnicola Marsh, intent on capturing an image of a Great Egret when this Green Heron flew out of the vegetation and landed in the foreground. Below is a distant image of the Great Egret, captured at Amnicola Marsh and some images from the Brainerd Levee including a Red-wing Blackbird, a Great Blue Heron, and an insect on some vetch. Note that it does not have the rounded posterior contour on its abdomen of which  bees normally have. It may be a mimic. 

Chickamauga Dam, April 29, 2019

1 Icarus got too close to the sun; fell to earth when wings of wax melted.
2 The meadow vole never hears the owl’s wings.
3 Monarch butterflies cross a continent to mate in trees of Mexico.
4 Leonardo designed flying machines that never took to the air.
5 I still dream of flying and really want a set of mechanical wings like those worn by the protagonist in the movie Brazil.
6 Only when designers gave up on the idea of wings which flapped did the reach the skies.
7 That driver is flying low. 

Alabama Highway 75
 Words from the Labyrinth Ray Zimmerman (c) 2014
​
Churches without steeples line the road.
Buildings Methodist and Pentecostal pass my view
as the car radio blasts out Johnny Cash.
 
It’s not just any tune by Cash, but
a religious classic recorded near his death,
“When the Man Comes Around.”
 
Despite the apocalyptic images in the song
I see only one church that boasts the name
Holiness, and none mention “Signs Following.”
 
My mind is on that book, Salvation on Sand Mountain
as one other church boasts a “No Denominational” sign,
but I still see no indication of snake handlers.
 
I can’t blame those folks if they’re circumspect.
Strangers might confuse their services with theater,
though one should never make a circus of another’s beliefs.
 
If it’s rattlesnakes you want, I once photographed a beauty
crawling along another mountain, up near Mentone.
Big around as my forearm, she must have been pregnant.
 
A Chattanooga naturalist once took a program to a church.
She delighted the audience with hawks and owls.
At the harmless blacksnake, someone shouted,
“Wait, it’s not that kind of church.”