OF
SWALLOWS, SNAKES AND SCIENCE
AThat
cold snap killed all the swallows,@
Eloy says. As he sweeps his hand, the dead swallows
materialize, dull gleams in the grass all around us.
I hadn=t
noticed them right off
C
or I mistook them for autumn leaves, brown with
death, black from frost. I stoop to look more
closely at one, and feel familiar sorrow for its
collapsed fawn-colored breast, the distinctive
boomerang angled black wings.
Eloy
C
I found out after tracking him down at the city
office that it=s
pronounced Ay-loy, a welcoming name that reminds me
of the
Aholas@
a friend from Madrid called out
C
asks again if all I want to see is the discharge and
I say yes, only that.
We continue our walk down to the
river and I watch the grass carefully, so as not to
step on any of the scattered bodies. I see Eloy is
doing the same. When I was a child, I learned you
should not walk across a grave, but circle around,
out of courtesy for the dead. I feel much the same
way now, though all that remains in many cases are
the spidery wings.
Eloy watches me and I wonder if he=s
worried that I=ll
take notes about the wave of swallow death. I=m
here working for the EPA, after all; most guys like him,
overworked, underpaid, trying to do his best by a state
job, see me as a spy. But I=m
here to look at the river, at the cleaned water
discharged by Santa Rosa=s
wastewater treatment plant to the Pecos River. I=m
here to count trees and see if silvery minnows and
willow flycatchers could thrive here, or on the Rio
Grande. Dead swallows aren=t
my official concern. Besides, the ranger at Bottomless
Lake State Park mentioned yesterday the unseasonable
cold in northern New Mexico that had affected wintering
birds over a wide area. I knew nothing at the treatment
plant had caused the mortalities.
It=s
not an environmental issue
C
not the directly-caused-by-humans kind. No one=s
to blame. No regulations to invoke, no reports to write.
In recent years, our winters in the West have become
milder, less severe. I remember my childhood in Denver
when the Canada geese would fly through in the fall and
congregate noisily at the lake near my grandmother=s.
After a few weeks, their southward vees departed and
silence spread with the ice. Spring trailed back in on
their wings as they paused to refresh themselves on the
way north. Today, a short 25 years later, the Canada
geese pass the whole winter along the front range in
Colorado, much to the dismay of golfers. There=s
no need for the geese to press farther south. But it=s
a gamble. A gamble the swallows lost by lingering in
northern New Mexico.
I understand all of this. I can explain
Darwinian theory and what happens when a species
stretches its niche boundaries in a precarious
direction. Yet I feel this ache to see their tumbled
damp feathers, sorrow for their lost lives. My study of
biology grew out of a passion for animals. I learned to
walk hanging onto our family dog. At five, when we no
longer had a house for a dog, I would go door to door at
my grandmother=s
apartment building, asking people if I could walk their
dogs? Cats, lizards, snakes, fish, turtles populated my
childhood. Their deaths were all actually disappearances
C
cats that may have been hit on the highway, a chameleon
that escaped to the heating vent, a turtle cove
mysteriously empty. Even my father, who died when I was
three, simply vanished to me, never returning from his
last military assignment. |
