Ghost cat

When we got back from a recent road trip, there was a dead bat at the foot of the basement stairs. I’d never seen a bat up close like that. Alive, the darting flight path left no space for study, and primal fears kept me jumpy to a useless degree. The dexamethasone is no help, either, when it comes to jumpiness. This bat was going nowhere, however. It lay on its back, wings drawn up tight on either side, teeth tiny but brilliant in the light. The house is old--90 years or so--but pretty tight. Hard to say how the bat got in.

I bagged it and sent it out to the trash, not wanting to risk exposure to some interesting bat disease. As I came back into the kitchen, it occurred to me that not very long ago (last summer?) we’d returned from a trip to find a mouse carcass in the same place. It’s that location that’s interesting. Not some dank corner (trust me, there are many), but out in the light of day, right where it will be spotted as soon as you come home and are looking to see if there was any wine left before you went away. 

Two deaths, small furry animals left at the foot of the steps. You can see where I’m going with this. It almost has to be a cat. Of course we don’t have one--haven’t had one since Eddy died 26 years ago.

I’m not against the idea of a ghost cat. Especially if it actually catches mice (lay off the bats, though--we’re having some issues with those). Our nephew Sam has a ghost cat, sort of. Actually it’s a real cat that lives in their basement and only surfaces when their children go to bed. Sightings are infrequent, to the point that neither Liz nor I can remember its name. It doesn't seem to possess any supernatural powers.

Not the ghost cat, probably.

Ghosts have other uses besides catching mice. I’m rereading an old Anthropology classic (Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger, for anyone who cares), which has helped remind me that ghosts often serve as intermediaries not so much between the spirit world and the physcial world, but between what actually happens, for better or worse, and what we think should happen. Or between what we can explain and control, and what we can’t. Ghosts, witchcraft, sorcery--they take up the explanatory slack, relieve you of some personal responsibility, and sometimes can give you a plan of action, or inaction.

Not so much in this case, I guess. I’d like to assign responsibility to the ghost cat, but in truth should probably try to figure out how the bats are getting in. Liz found another ex-bat just around the corner, probably a bit older than the first, and the night before last we were watching TV downstairs when we received a visit from a very much alive (and presumably non-ghostly) bat. Bats have enough problems without our basement becoming a bat death trap.

Travels

Liz and I have put many, many miles behind us this Summer. We drove out to Colorado for Frankie and Emily's celebration, north to Mount Rushmore by way of Rocky Mountain National Park, then wandered through the Black Hills, Badlands, and Sand Hills before resigning ourselves to crossing the prairies to get back to Kentucky. I figured the drive was about 3300 miles not counting side trips. We took our time, saw all kinds of things we hadn't seen before, and returned relaxed and happy, although Louisville had appraently remained very hot and steamy during our absence, and showed no inclination toward moderation after our return.

So when we got a text from our old friend John Schaefer inviting us to camp with him and his wife Cathy in Yellowstone last weekend, we could not dismiss it out of hand. In fact, we couldn't see why we shouldn't go--so we did. Cashed a few frequent flier miles for round trip tickets to Jackson, rented a cheap car, and experienced Yellowstone at its peak tourism season. This is surprisingly tolerable, even transcendent, if you know what you are doing. John and Cathy have been doing this for a long time, and we joined them when we could, the last time being in October of some year like 2006 or 2007. We'd always waited till the "tourists" had gone home.

The park itself has changed in the years since, mostly as a result of forest succession since the horrific fires of 1988. I'd never seen the park until some years after those fires, so my entire experience amounts to watching the new growth take over, along with concomitant changes. Some things haven't changed, like gaper's block for elk or buffalo, but others have changed a lot. Full disclosure here: I'm not primarily moved by the geysers, hot springs, boiling pots of toxic chemicals, and so forth, that Yellowstone is famous for. They are amazing to witness, but to me they seem every bit as scary as industrial disasters left by humans as a by-product of coal, steel or uranium production, say. But they're thought-provoking in the sense that they can allow ourselves to see our own massive toxic contributions to the planet as part of a continuum that existed long before we did. Maybe that's not helpful.

The biology is fascinating to me, though. On our earliest trips to the park, the scorched earth and dead trees dominated the visual landscape, but the enthusiastic growth of the next generation (knee- to shoulder-high at the time) was impossible to miss, and the large mammals were much easier to spot at a distance. Now, 30 years later, many (millions?) of the dead trees remain standing, many still taller than the new growth in spite of having lost tops and middles over the years. The young trees in many places are propping up their dead ancestors. It's easy to see how some slopes and basins support much faster, denser growth than others, and how the character of others has changed completely.

We saw monumental traffic snarls caused by just a few elk grazing on the banks of the Madison River, and were caught in some animal-caused jam for a half hour, the specific cause of which we never did identify (let's assume it was a grizzly bear to make it seem almost worthwhile). An old bison bull wandered through the campground on his way back and forth to the river, but even bison sightings were (for us, at least) down from previous visits. This maybe is typical of Summer, with so many more people jamming the roads, but it's also true that the hiding places have improved a lot in thirty years.

The last time I visited, brook trout were abundant and aggressive in small upcountry streams. Willy and I could race to any miniscule pool, put any fly down anywhere with any level of grace, and have 7-inch fish landed (and returned) in less than a minute--then on to the next pool. It was a sweet experience (for the humans at least), especially with a kid--and brook trout are beautiful fish--but they really are (were?) an invasive species for Yellowstone, or anywhere out West.

John and I revisited one of those streams this time and found that the brookies were gone. With only a little more care and time, we found ourselves similarly entertained by native Yellowstone cutthroat trout. Those are the fish that brook trout replaced, out-competed, and not infrequently ate. This must represent a big commitment by NPS. We are required to return a cutthroat, and encouraged to keep (= kill) brookies, rainbows, and browns (none of which are native). Apparently the campaign is working, at least in the upper Gibbon River. I hope the cutts can learn to eat more mosquitoes--a major untapped food resource in the area. Here's John's first fish caught with a Tenkara rod.