CONTAINING THE WILD THINGS
Nesbitt, Caroline
CONTAINING THE WILD THINGS Of cats, coyotes, & cows; also moose, horses, & corn Caroline Nesbitt The grass is always greener on the other side. Anon. Good fences make good neighbors. Robert...
...He bought an awful lot of corn," my neighbor said ruefully...
...hunting season posing another serious threat...
...I do a head count every morning...
...Caroline Nesbitt L ast night we were kept awake by a coyote barking wildly in the field next to our house...
...the openness of the hayfields safer...
...Assurances that the fence-to-end-all-fences had been constructed to prevent further transgressions came to naught as soon as the animals were hungry again...
...Nothing she wouldn't run through...
...Always trying to keep something out...
...Tamed lightning isn't a perfect solut i o n - b u t then, what fence or wall or national boundary or locked door exists that isn't somehow permeable...
...It isn't stupidity...
...Snow turns horses into birds on telephone wires...
...No shock...
...With no one to say as a matter of absolute truth whether it is dire necessity or merely a well-argued convenience...
...Yet they are herd animals, and herds have rules far more stringent, with punishments far more severe, than those meted out by the sting of a fence...
...There was nothing she wouldn't jump...
...Commonweal | 9 August 14, 1998...
...Caroline Nesbitt is an actress as well as the author of The Pony Breeder's Companion (Howell Book House, 1995...
...The coyotes rarely visit our own field, which is bounded by electric fence...
...I expect they were better off dead, given their circumstances...
...Of the myriad concerns that make fence building necessary, the most important is safety...
...Eventually we learned to use wire Commonweal | 8 August 14, 1998 strongly tensioned by large springs that makes the whole thing collapsible under pressure a sort of "be as the reed and not the oak" slant on containment policy...
...I was left to curse and repair the damage, wait for spring to bring hooves back in contact with damp earth, and to listen for the dulcet crraack of electricity arcing against naked flesh that teaches the lessons that will permit the filly to thrive here...
...Something else in...
...Share the adventures of Maryknoll Missioners in distant lands Tune in every Thursday at 10 PM or Friday at 1 AM (Eastern Time) weekly thru September 25th Only on 0 D Y S S s Y ~3 For channel designations and air times in your zone, call your local cable television company or o D V S S E Y [] toll-free at 1-888-390-7474 Odyssey is also available on Primestar Channel 84 Maryknoll's Mission of Hope and Healing Produced by Maryknoll World Productions and Hispanic Telecommunications Nelwork Maryknoll Missioners, Maryknoll, NY 10545 run over, and crop-damaging as our horses...
...So this past winter I struggled with a scofflaw filly who, weaned too soon before heavy snow, had no respect for our fences...
...But I suppose when it comes right down to it I'm really no different from my friends in the city, or my remote kin in small countries the world over...
...No ground contact...
...The comfort of the known...
...But every now and then a bull takes exception to these obstacles to free movement, hooks a great rack under the top wire, and yanks it with a whaaannngg that rings for miles and sends hefty posts flying out of the ground like so many Tinker toys...
...We find electric fencing both cheap and easy to maintain, but it has one major drawback: Moose...
...So invisibility is not a problem...
...He maintains that our patrolling dogs prevent far more crippling destruction by corn-marauding raccoons, thus evening the score...
...Could it even be some moral sense developed over years of acquiescence to the necessities of human civilization, something whispering to them that this is not good, not acceptable, possibly even dangerous...
...I've always felt a little smug about my unfettered life in a rural area...
...Fences are no guarantee, of course...
...In effect--no fence...
...Herds also offer the balm of comfort, food, and company, reinforcing a conviction that there is no immediate reason to expend the energy required to do something different...
...In benign moods, moose are content to jump the fences while ranging across the immense territories that have been their highways for thousands of years...
...I've watched conservative animals run familiar pathways, whinnying piteously, while renegade fence-breakers race away for more exotic landscapes...
...Robert Frost Ohmygod, they're headed this way...
...But snow is...
...You educate it first, then send the creature out with law-abiding companions who understand to the fraction what the parameters are...
...No boundaries, no locked doors, no fears...
...Is it fear of pain or retribution that keeps them in...
...She lives in North Sandwich, New Hampshire...
...They know the difference between hot fence and downed fence as surely as we understand breaking-and-entering, or the difference between double-yellow and dotted lines on an open, empty road at dawn...
...The massive price we must pay for our stock transgressing the border ranges from our sudden ownership of several hundred squashed melons, to vet bills incurred by horses gorged into oblivion on illicit corn...
...There is something in a limit that begs to be pushed, and thousands of beings that can argue with perfect validity that their right to invade, escape, or re-invent is just and God-given...
...Why do some hesitate while others seize any serendipitous opening...
...Moose and coyotes are just as likely to be variously shot, Join us on a journey t o . . . Watch...The Field A f a r . . . a new weekly series that will change the way you see our world...
...The adults have learned to use dense fur as a barrier between flesh and wire when crossing from one side of the field to the other, but they don't hang around inside...
...Habit...
...The owner concluded that mowing was a cheap alternative to keeping cattle, and shipped the culprits for slaughter...
...Give them contentment at home...
...Some will argue that horses don't possess this sophistication of thought...
...though I would be hard pressed to say they deserved their fate...
...And indeed, you would no more let a strange horse into an unfamiliar field fenced with wire than turn your son loose with the car just because he became sixteen today...
...My neighbor has been magnanimous after rare and quickly rectified break-outs onto his land of abundance...
...Recently a local horse escaped its fence after dark and, terrified and lost, jumped through the windshield of an oncoming car...
...The lesson was almost Machiavellian in its simplicity: Feed those whose lives you have made your responsibility...
...Fences also serve a political necessity...
...But fences minimize danger by providing a visible barrier between Us and The Dangers That Lurk Outside, as long as everyone involved respects them...
...The fence thus makes a tidy boundary between the wild and the domestic, although its actual raison d'etre is to persuade our horses to renounce the nomadic tendency that is their biological imperative...
...Most horses never take advantage of this...
...But another neighbor did not fare so well...
...Misdirected hunters account for at least one mistaken shooting per year...
...something it behooves me to remember while teaching young horses that they must obey certain rules...
...Maybe a young one, excited or threatened...
...Detractors of electric fence say its relative invisibility poses a danger to forgetful horses indulging in normal behaviors like galloping idiotically around their fields on windy days...
...But they represent a culture outside of mine, and the best we can do is adapt to one another, coming to certain agreements regarding who inhabits, who passes through, and what may or may not be eaten en route...
...Now and then we're awakened by the yowl of a youngster who has touched a curious nose to the lower strand and discovered the power of tamed lightning...
...His cattle, bought as bush-eating scenery and cared for erratically if at all, wandered through their pasture fence when the feed ran out one day, and then devoured a large section of cornfield...
...Maybe having treed a raccoon, a skunk--or one of our cats...
...And secure your borders...
...When they cross the lines and don't return, I mourn them...
...Tamed lightning is tricky...
...Traffic is a source of perennial horror here in New Hampshire...
...not like my friends who live in secured buildings in places like New York City...
...Our next-door neighbor's market garden forms the backbone of his living...
...Once habituated, horses can safely stroll into any field and spot the perimeters by following post lines...
...last thing at night I exhort all our cats to hunt near home and not wind up as coyote food...
Vol. 125 • August 1998 • No. 14
