Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

Intro: The following essay is on the mythos of amphibians and what their reductions in population tells us, a classic piece from Kindred Spirits – a book of mine no longer in print. We’ve decided to give all the chapters away free here over time, and chose this piece to start with after hearing that one of our On-Site Helpers, Mattie, had been overcome with emotion after reading it. An important issue when I wrote it so many years ago, my projections for amphibian extinctions have actually been exceeded, and their worsening plight tells us something prophetic and urgent about a potential future for humankind as well. Get into your frogness, and tonight sing out….

AMPHIBIOS:
Prophetic Silence and Vital Song

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Anima School and Sanctuary  –  www.AnimaCenter.org

“The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes”
-Rudyard Kipling

Listen! Listen hard for the happy orchestrations of moon-crazed croakers, and the story such songs tell.

Amphibians, and frogs in particular, are living metaphors of evolution. The distinct stages in their lifecycle parallel the evolutionary imperative, from a unicellular egg into a purely aquatic tadpole, slowly developing the legs and shape of the adults. Each new frog reenacts their ancestors’ first fated gulp of air, and initial ascension onto the verdant land mass. They teach us the crucial processes of metamorphosis— changing appearance without ceasing to exist, changing form to reveal the realized self. Listen! Their raucous and amorous songs are the unequivocal announcement of a still-livable ecosystem. Their buoyant social chirps and echoing mating grunts are an environmental sound-check— a tonal, rhythmic, soulful “all’s well!”

Thus, there’s certainly no more dire portent than a quieted frog pond, no more certain omen than the recent world-wide disappearance of amphibians. Like the audible pleas of Cassandra, the plaintive silence of the frogs is a certain prediction of unfolding catastrophe. And as with Cassandra, no one heeds the crushing hush of wetlands once alive with the croaks and bellows of jeweled songsters. It is in their arresting absence they take on the role of soothsayers, forecasting disaster in a descending wall of terrifying silence. The extended silence of extinction.

We get their name from the Greek word “amphibios,” meaning to “lead a double life” above and below the waterline. The adaptation to a dual-habitat contributed to the success of a three hundred and ninety million year existence, surviving almost unchanged for the last one hundred and fifty million. It now spells double jeopardy, with high-risk exposure to both air and water borne poisons. Their common food source is insects, the victims and carriers of pesticides. An amazing, permeable skin that allows for the direct absorption of oxygen also allows the easy passage of industrial pollutants. Sensitive to changes in water temperature, reductions in cover, and situation, resident populations are effectively halved wherever subjected to logging operations. Acid deposition in the form of rain or snow retard the growth of their eggs. Once the most abundant by weight of any forest animal, amphibians are quickly disappearing worldwide, setting off a great biological alarm.
The Las Vegas leopard frog vanished when its entire range was appropriated by the city it was named for. Adapting to the warming deserts of the west following the recession of the last great ice age, they prospered in one of the driest ecosystems in this country. Finally succumbing to suburban sprawl and the theft of the remaining surface water for the city of glitter, they were only named and classified after the last known specimens were jarred in formaldehyde.

Close to extinction are the tiger salamander of Arizona, the Oaxacan salamander in southern Mexico, the Yosemite toad of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, Michigan’s chorus frog and the western spotted frog. The completely logged and polluted Willamette Valley of Oregon is seeing a frightening decline in the population of the once prolific red-legged variety. There are believed to be less than a total of fifty Wyoming toads left, tucked away in the folds of the Laramie basin. By the mid-1980’s the southwest U.S. lost the relict and Tarahumara frogs. The golden toad was assumed safe in the protected preserves of Monteverde, Costa Rica. Within its misty embrace, beneath giant orchids and moss dangling from rainforest trees, the males stood out in a burning show of orange brilliance. In less than ten years they’ve completely disappeared.

The natterjack toad is a study in adaptability, and yet it too is on the way out. While preferring a hot dry climate, it’s learned to exist from Scotland north to Sweden, and on into western Europe. Its favorite domain however, is the loose-soiled terrain common to the open heaths and dunes of Great Britain. With digging spurs called tubercles on the back of their hind-ankles, the dig down from two to ten feet in the ground to survive the varying winters. With a yellow strip down their back, and a characteristic “gunpowder” smell, they were once a common sight in old England before being listed as endangered there in 1975. The coast to coast spread of housing tracts, industrial parks and golf courses result in deaths from pesticides and automobiles, while usurping their remnant habitat.

Amphibians are suddenly and dramatically vanishing from the face of the Earth. Species after species join the ranks of the recently extinct. Of these, one the most unusual was the gastric-brooding frog. Sheltered for millennia in the deep tangles of Australia’s Blackall and Canondale mountain ranges, they developed a singularly unique method for protecting the unhatched eggs from the abundant predators— stowing and hatching the eggs inside their stomach. Somehow they managed to suppress the secretion of digestive acids throughout the incubation period, restimulating their flow after a return to feeding. Following its 1973 discovery by the “modern world,” scientists rushed to study the anomaly of the gastric-brooder. By 1980 the frog that regurgitated live babies lived no more.

Amphibians first appear on the fossil record between the late Devonian and Mississippian periods. Their ancestors were the crossopterygian fishes, with flipper-like lobed fins, and lungs as well as gills. It’s unlikely they ever chose to leave the water. More likely they were caught in isolated, evaporating seas, their first excursions above a search not for land, but for more water. They were pre-adapted to life on land. Lunged fish thrived without leaving the water for hundreds of millions of years, and survive to this day in the form of prehistoric-looking coelacanths of the Indian Ocean. It was however, the existence of already developed lungs that made their land travels possible.

You can see the timelessness of amphibios in the unfocused, dinosauric stare of the rough skinned newts. Their endangered habitat is the last of Pacific Northwest’s temperate rainforest, where they float in the perfectly clear pools of rainwater. They absorb oxygen from the water, supplemented by occasional sorties to the surface for a gulp of mountain air. They rise from the depths in slow spirals in an economy of movement, their almost still tail following behind. With intense, vertical pupils, here is the “eye of newt” staring back from many a witch’s brew. The headwater seeps feeding these pools shelter the rarest of California amphibians, the Olympic salamander. Intolerant of any rise in stream temperature, they easily succumb wherever logging reduces the total amount of shade. Their rapid disappearance is a direct and accurate measure of ancient forest destruction.

The oldest frog fossils are of the family Ascaphidae, dating back two hundred million years to the Jurrasic Period. The remnant wilds of the American northwest are also home to the last living member of this family, the tailed frog. The “tail” is actually a rosy, spade-shaped cloaca, or penis. Needless to say, the female is “tail-less”. They are the only frogs that fertilize the female internally, having adapted to the coldest, hardest-rushing streams where typical external fertilization would be untenable. The eggs are then laid in a sticky secretion cementing them firmly to the rocks, and to the same end the tadpoles employ large suction-cup mouths. This creature of the torrent, muted by the roar of whitewater, faces an uncertain future. Like the Olympic salamander, the tailed frog’s sensitivity is what makes it so vulnerable to human impact. A change in average water temperature of less than five degrees can kill them.

Besides the draining of wetlands, damming of rivers and other habitat loss, amphibians suffer disproportionately from the effects of ultraviolet radiation due to atmospheric ozone depletion. The increase in acid-rain is resulting in the deformation of egg and tadpole, reducing their chances of survival. In addition, they face a mysterious “red leg” epidemic, a spreading immuno-deficiency disease often referred to as “amphibian AIDS”. Given their susceptibility to toxins, there is likely a causal connection between the disease and existing environmental pollutants.

Human beings are far more tolerant of adverse changes, and measurably less vulnerable to the toxic residues of our consumerist civilization. It would appear at first glance as if we could proliferate indefinitely, immune or insulated from the deleterious effects of such promulgation. An insular, detached humanity often seems lost in denial, desensitized, oblivious to worsening conditions, to the silencing of the frogs— conditions that in the end, will prove as disastrous for us as for them.

The coal miners of recent American history carried into those cold, black shafts a bird locked inside a cage. The golden “miner’s canary” was markedly more sensitive to the accumulation of underground gases than the men working beside them. Thus, the silencing of their song was a sure signal of impending doom. In the same way, the quieted ponds of the frog serve an imperiled planet as a tocsin for toxins, a harbinger of destruction, a red alert. Alert. Alert. Alert…

Amphibians have been communicating with our species since well before the first writing of human history. In ancient MesoAmerica, the Earth Mother was often portrayed as a giant, clawed toad squatting in the traditional birthing position. Like Kali, she wears adornments of human skulls, her gaping maw the opening to the transformative womb, the threshold of death and rebirth. In Europe as well as the New World, toads were associated with hallucinogenic mushrooms— the mythic “toadstool.” No doubt, given that the skin secretions of Bufos contain a similarly powerful psychedelic alkaloid used for centuries for shamanic spirit-travel. Vilified in the middle-ages as agents of Satan, and then as embodiments of the devil himself, amphibians have long told a story of transformation the dominant society could not afford to hear.

It is said that toads and frogs can live buried in mud for years, hibernating, mindlessly awaiting the thaw that will release them. There are incredible folk-stories of them somehow becoming entrapped in solid stone or coal, then jumping out unharmed when the rock is unexpectedly broken open. One hopes that within the core of humankind’s hardened, impermeable sheath a secret still rests, fetal, toad-like— a wilder spirit ready to spring forth, ready to belie the extinction of its kind, ready to leap the bounds of muted testimony!

Us humans seem to find it so hard to hear, so hard for even the most inspired teachers to accept the leading guidance of the creature world. I knew one particularly sure of himself educator, a brilliant cynic who needed regular visitations and miracles in order to keep his belief alive. And so long as he was open, Nature and Spirit provided. One of his lessons in perspective came at what used to be his school for “troubled youth” (meaning “hurt, conscious, and fed-up kids”)— through the timely attentions of amphibios. It happened inside of the “Earth Classroom,” a dome structure made entirely of earth and branches from the surrounding area, and completed largely due to the obsession of a particularly gifted student with the proud nickname of “Frog.” Before graduating the program, he gave a talk to the kids and counselors. For his “final” he put on a “show and tell” on all the flowers, pieces of moss covered wood, bones and such that he had brought with him, explaining their significance, and concluding with the admonition that these, rather than words and textbooks, told the real “story.” At the completion of his presentation, the young man carefully took the frog he had brought in to show and ceremoniously released it outside.

A few months later the educator was back at the earth shelter trying to find a way to talk about Spirit to his assistant Cathy— trying once again to conquer his incessant doubts, his cynicism, and the demon-making propensities of a troubled mind. As if on cure it began to thunder and lightning, and a storm was soon ripping through the forest. They sat inside, to the south of the fire, trying their hardest to relax and to receive, praying to quiet their thoughts long enough to truly feel. Suddenly into the hut hops a frog, perhaps the very same frog the student had released so much earlier! He moves into the perfect position to look them eye to eye, patiently waiting for them to notice. Once they did it began bobbing up and down, its pink little mouth opening and closing as if to remind them of a magic so easy to ignore and deny.

Without a doubt, we ignore the attentions of the animal world at our own peril. One by one the shrinking ponds cease to ring out with the glad-croaking songs. One by one they are hushed by the weight of our presence— and by what we, as lovers of this Earth— have yet failed to do. The moonless nights may soon be as still as stone. In the face of such a final silence, we should be “all ears”: attentive, concerned, and vigorously responsive.
Surely we can still learn from the example of amphibian metamorphosis. Let us look to our own cyclical unfolding— for a manifestation of self more conscious of miraculous life, more in tune with the processes of our shared Nature.

And like the so-vocal surviving tree frogs outside our cabin… let us sing.

———————

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Greetings to our reader friends, on a beautiful September morn.  We’re hosting activist film makers Marissa and Patrick this week, as they record footage of me talking about a range of topics from sense of place to principles of healing, and rest and reward themselves with canyon magic prior to documenting the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference.  We continue to work hard on last minute details, while doing our best to keep up with our magazine deadlines and student responses.  It’s only a week away now, and as we gather ourselves for the coming event the monsoons seem to be receding, attended by echoes with the first thrilling elk bugles of the season.   Today’s blog focus is nothing but sweet, following the dearth of response to my apparently discomforting post on the lessons of death and life’s imperative.  Following below are some irresistible  photographs taken by folks in the front yard of their Harrisburg, Pennsylvania home.  The young buck is not their pet, it’s a wild deer that showed up several mornings in a row for no other apparent reason than to visit with their gregarious tabby cat.  When we think of interspecies interaction, we’re inclined to imagine a lion taking down an antelope, or a clever hunting alliance between a badger and a fox.  We’re less likely to picture such an example of prey species and predators  simply enjoying each others’ company.  In a month when I have had to deal with deep personal tragedy as well as a flurry of difficult and unfamiliar tasks, it is a real pleasure to see and then share with you these images of inter-critter affection and wildly contended lives. -JWH

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Intro: Besides our personal trials and tasks, we’ve been working such long hours on the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference that I’ve been tardy in getting Loba’s following story – and resulting recipes – to you like I promised.  With all due respect to the sensibilities of our earth-loving vegetarian readers, this is a tale of fang and claw, hunter and gatherer, flesh and feast.  It is inevitable that we intimately and corporeally share with the rest of life, share in its body and force, then one day share in turn the nutrients that are us.  In death we are without exception a precious gift to the all, even if we never give ourselves enough credit for the gift that we are when alive. -Wolf

The Lion’s Elk
by Loba

Anima Wilderness School: www.AnimaCenter.org

Rhiannon and I were out near the third river crossing picking grape leaves early in the morning for a special morning adventure. We were picking from vines that wrapped all the way around a big oak tree. She had gone around one side of the tree to pick and wandered off a little ways, and came back to me all excited. “Mama Loba, there’s an elk that’s been half eaten, pretty recently!” Of course I had to investigate. We went through the forest a little bit, and there right under a juniper tree in plain sight were the remains of a young elk. The skull had been picked clean, the guts eaten, and the hindquarters were perfectly intact. Barely cool, it had been, I guessed, only a very few hours since the elk had been killed. Claw marks showed where she had brought the unfortunate animal down… marks that remind us how in the long run the lions bring a gift of strength and awareness to the elk tribe!

We picked some more grape leaves, then walked back to tell Wolf and Kiva about Rhiannon’s discovery. Kiva drove out in the jeep with me to gather up the hindquarters. When we came back to the site I went looking for tracks, and was able to find some very close to the elk that were, indisputably, lion tracks!  Later Wolf pointed out the clean, knife like, nearly surgical cuts, typical of a cat and not a coyote or wolf.  He told us that the lion had most certainly been interrupted by us in the act of eating, as they tend to cover and hide any remaining meat for later.  No doubt she was very close by, watching us the whole time!

Once discovered, I knew she wouldn’t go back to eating, so there was nothing to do but bring the undamaged portions home!  We far prefer to eat wild meat to any other, for flavor as well as to be getting chemical free, wild hearted protein, so this was a real boon!

I was so excited, I wasn’t even finished skinning the hindquarters when I had to heat up a pan and fry up a bit of the meat. It was as juicy and tender and mild flavored as any I’ve ever tasted.  This Wolf tells me is not only because the elk was so young, but probably because the quiet stalk, sudden rush and incapacitating bite to the neck happened too quick for hardly any adrenalin and fear vibe to kick in!

Needless to say I had to give Kiva a taste right away, too, and she was just as excited about it as I was. Altogether there was at least 15, maybe 20 pounds of meat to freeze at a friend’s house and can for storage at home. We were all so proud of Rhiannon for finding us so many wonderful suppers-to-come!  She’s learned so much about nature as well as herself, and Wolf’s awareness training has really paid off!

For those of you omnivores who might hunt, discover a truck killed animal still warm on the side of the road, or be given the gift of wild meat, below is my favorite way to serve it up fresh.  Note that this works equally well with deer and other red meats. Very easy!  And by preparing it so well, and appreciating it so much, we help honor its mortal blessing and gift!

Elk with Fennel and Garlic

1 pound elk meat
1 tablespoon fennel seeds, ground in a mortar and pestle OR 1 tablespoon fresh sage, minced
2 tablespoons minced fresh garlic
2 tablespoons mixed dried veggies (optional)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Butter or bacon or lamb fat

Slice the elk meat across the grain in pieces about 1/2 inch thick. In a medium bowl, rub in the fennel seed, garlic, dried veggies, salt and pepper. Heat a large skillet to medium-high, add the fat and then the meat as soon as it’s hot. Fry the meat until lightly browned on one side, then flip and quickly fry the second side. The meat should be done cooking in about 5 minutes. Serve with sauteed wild greens or with other green veggies.

(Please post and share this piece…)

(photo of lion in the act of pouncing courtesy of Scientific American Magazine.  All other photos by Kiva Rose)

(For more homesteading and rewilding tales, stay tuned for our upcoming new online magazine site this Fall)

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BEAR TRUTH REALITY

and Montana Grizzly Encounter Sanctuary

Trust me, the photo above is not a photoshop composite, but an actual photograph of Brutus the 800 pound grizzly bear joining the family for lunch.  Brutus is one of several bears saved from being euthanized by impassioned naturalist Casey Anderson, and displayed in natural environs at the Montana Grizzly Encounter Sanctuary.  The sanctuary serves not only as a home for cage-raised animals that could never survive being released, but also as an educational facility to help dispel the stereotype of the grizz as always being a blood thirsty man eater.  Busloads of school children regularly get fairly close to these admittedly exceptional tempered examples of bruinhood, thrilled to watch these giant critters interact in relatively natural surroundings.

As Casey well knows, there is danger in making all big bears seems as docile and approachable, which is why he teaches about caution in bear habitat as well.  For balance and perspective, it is important to take to heart not only the gregariousness of friendly and faithful Brutus, but also the case of bear activist Timothy Treadwell who insinuated himself into a wild group each year in Alaska.  As the excellent documentary film Grizzly Man describes, most of the animals were indeed accepting.  He used his films of these often playful animals to help win support for their protection, putting their images to work for the cause of improved public relations.  One such furry browed individual, however – the one that decided to kill and eat the well intentioned Treadwell – apparently couldn’t care less how his behavior reflected on the species.

The bottom line is that bears, especially wild ones, are potentially unpredictable and dangerous.  On the other hand, they are not and never were the exaggerated threat that civilized humans have made them out to be.  We evolved with them, not in spite of them, coinhabitants of a wild and magical world where we are not the top of the food chain, but a conscious link… finding not only nobility and beauty in the great grizzly but also inspiration for healing.

To read more about Casey’s sanctuary or to support its work, go to the BrutusTheBear.com For further bear reading I invite you to enjoy my piece below, a rather lengthy article entitled “The Medicine Bear”.

-Jesse Wolf Hardin – www.AnimaCenter.org

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Intro: Anima School is developing a number of focused niche websites with changing, dynamic content.  The following article is your advance look at one of the kinds of pieces that will be featured in the newsletter for the ReWilding & Libertarian site (name to be decided on!).  It features down home language and practical instructions, combined with deep ecological insights and a deeper point about our potentially conscious place in the Gifting Cycle.  In three parts, the Part 1 tells the in some ways humorous story of my relationship with rodents, as their champion and advocate more than occasional nemesis.  Part 2 is a fact-packed description of Pack Rats and their rat lifestyle, while Part 3 take a serious look at rats as not only survival food but as part of a healthy and humble primal diet.  Easily disturbed vegetarians may want to enjoy the first two parts, and then drop down to the very last paragraph and its emphasis on connecting to the give and take of life through not only what nature has to offer but on our responsibility to offer something in turn to it.  Your comments, appreciation or dismay or appreciated as always. -Wolf

EATING PACK RATS & PRAISING RODENTS:
Survival Mindset, Reconnection, & Responsible Participation in the Food Chain

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Part 1: The Good, The Bad & The Fuzzy

“You dirty rat,” the actor James Cagney is supposed to have snarled in one or more of his 1930’s movies, presumably right before slapping or shooting some guy failing to exhibit the minimum standards of honor and style expected of an upright criminal.  Go ahead and let the schmuck have it if he deserves it, Jimmy-boy, but kindly get off the rats’ backs.

Before we begin to consider rodent nature, any problems coinhabiting with the species, or their inarguable culinary value, let us first have done with the vulgar myth that rodents are unclean.  Libelous!  This, like so many other generally accepted “facts” of nature, is simply and utterly untrue.  Yes, house mice lack the public relations sense to go outside to defecate, which makes for an unsanitary addition to any silverware drawer.  Rats do sometimes host fleas that themselves carry diseases like Hanta virus and Bubonic plague, which on rare occasions is transmitted to what prove to be highly unfortunate people.  But let’s begin this conversation by giving the lil’ buggers their due: most if not all species of the fuzz bottomed, bucktoothed creatures – from miniscule predatory wolf mice to big-city Norwegian alley rats – can at the very minimum be counted on to be well washed.

One could even call it a grooming “fetish” that they exhibit.  Anyone who has ever raised a white or saddle-backed laboratory rat knows not only how incredibly affectionate they can be, but also how they are likely to be busy cleaning themselves any moment of the day or night that they’re not sleeping, eating, fighting or engaging in wild eyed carnal excess.  Every inch of fur gets regularly, obsessively licked and fluffed.  They can often be seen washing between their toes, and how many of us human types ever think to do that?  Mice are even more fanatic than rats, stopping whatever task they’ve been tending to in order to immediately clean off the slightest bit of sticky food that ever musses their well kept coat.  There was in fact a thankfully brief period in my early childhood when friends and family wondered if I might grow up to be an animal abuser… and all because of how much I enjoyed daubing a little bit of peanut butter on the bridge of my pet mouse Ebeneezer’s nose, laughing until the tears flowed as the poor little beasty performed multiple backward somersaults in its frantic attempts to lick it off.

My understanding of and continuing warm feelings for such nose wiggling rascals makes ending their lives for any reason difficult, let me tell you.  I get a jolt any time I hear a mouse trap go off in the night, picturing yet another personable Ebeneezer suffering a slamming wire bale, for having committed no greater crime than to seek a bit of spilled rice with which to fill its belly.  Be that as it may, I’m still not inclined to allow anything that much smaller than I am run roughshod over us.  As nuevo-aboriginal as I’ve become, I’m still civilized enough to find defecating in the kitchen – even odorless black mouse droppings – unacceptable and potentially punishable behavior.  And our very survival depended then as it does now on the able protection of our foodstuffs.  Just trying to do a better job of sealing up our old cabin wasn’t helping much, since it seems as if mice can squeeze through the eye of a needle.  Nor does it apparently matter if we left any tempting unswept crumbs behind or not, making me wonder if they came in for the company instead.  For the warmth.  The ambiance and fine music.  Or given how many utensils and decorations are still rearranged each night, perhaps they enter in part to stir things up like trouble-loving, fur-tailed Dennis the Menaces or palm sized rodent versions of the Navajo’s trickster coyote!

I first tried to make things easier on both myself and the mice by purchasing a high dollar “live trap” that promised painless “catch and release.”  The instructions said that you just wind it up and then every curious mouse who enters would be “gently spanked” into the cage.  Supposedly the squeaks from the first would then attract others until one had a cage full of them, ready to be released where they could either find a new home or at least be killed by snakes, owls and rival mouse gangsters instead of by soft-hearted me.  Sorry to say, we never got to test their claims about the squeaks drawing in more mice, since the only one that ever ventured into the darn thing was slapped so hard it didn’t have any squeak left in it.

Then there is the primary subjects of this story, the beer bellied Wood Rats or Pack Rats of the rural West, who while considerably cuter than their cappuccino-sipping urban cousins, can be even more of a proverbial pain in the rear.  Looking a lot like like hamsters, only with tall round ears and adorably huge black eyes, it becomes hard to reconcile their appearance with their problematic impacts.  One of the more infuriating of these impacts is the way they infiltrate outdoor sheds and storage areas, quickly filling them up with nesting materials as well as (in the Southwest at least) the painfully prickly cholla cactus joints that they drag home to feed on.  Whatever stored personal belongings of ours that they don’t chew and damage are still in danger of being urinated on, with rats in the arid regions conserving water by expelling an especially thick fluid.  This can harden into an amber varnish lasting in some cases 50,000 years or more, encasing middens of feces along with captured plants and even Native American artifacts.  An unexpected benefit of this process is the ancient pollen and plant matter stash, as well as a trove of well preserved archaeological evidence, providing the best known record of climate changes over the millennia, and increasing understanding of the effects such changes have on vegetation and livability.

Sheds can potentially be made rat proof, of course, even if not often totally mouse proof.  Far more felonious would seem to be rats’ habit of crawling into the impossible to seal engine compartments of parked vehicles, making nests that are only evident on the highway as they begin smoldering from the engine’s heat.  It is while nested under the hood that they famously chew the insulation off of expensive spark plug wires and other essential electrical components, either seeking to ingest some undetermined mineral or simply acting mischievously as a predictable result of some sort of clinically verifiable Bored Rat Syndrome.

My initial response once again was to set live traps, this time a peanut butter baited, falling door “Have-a Heart” type which did indeed harmlessly do its work of incarceration.  Having once spent time in a Juvenile detention center, I tend to feel considerable empathy for any caged being, one result being my checking the trap first thing when I got up each morning.  Almost without fail there would be a Pack Rat customer awaiting me there, neither cowering in the corner nor charging my fingers when I stuck them through the wire, but looking remarkably comfortable with its fate instead.  Each time my daughter would make sweet noises at it before carrying it a couple hundred yards away for a friendly release.  Always the inmate would appear unperturbed, unreasonably content, with the same engaging look and expressive breathing same rat time after time… a little too much the same, I finally began to realize.  Only after spray painting its rump was it finally confirmed, that we were indeed daily hosts to the same repeat diner, having returned for its accustomed night time snack.  And only after considerable experimentation did we realize just how developed the homing instincts of rats really are, requiring that they be taken a mile or more away.

It was after our resident Pack Rats had damaged our vehicles several times, and after they’d glued together the pages of our bird identification books with pee, that I finally opted to use deadly force.  Research turned up California recommendations that included Exclusion (good luck!), Toxicants such as Zinc Phosphide and Anticoagulants that cause internal hemorrhaging (no way!), Live Traps (see experience above!) and Deadly Traps.  With so few acceptable methods, I opted for both a series of primitive wire snares, and some vintage wood snapping models purchased at our local Jake’s Grocery Store.

What’s odd, was that while the snares worked fine, we didn’t hardly catch any rats in these snap traps designed for them.  And we ended up bringing to an end the lives of a number of mice even though the rat trap package claimed that they’d be too light weight to set off the stiff triggers.  A visiting friend of ours wondered aloud if it could actually be the work of the very pack rats we were hunting, however cute and inoffensive they might appear to be… tossing one protesting mouse after another into its metal jaws like Mayans pitching vested virgins into the mouth of a smoking volcano to placate a heathen rodent god.  But even if true, it would have to be pointed out they’d done so wearing their finest coats of fur, with every loose hair carefully removed, their faces spit polished and inexplicably smiling, with both the tossers and the tossed acting out their parts in the drama immaculately groomed.

Were such a fantasy the case, however, it would have more likely been the kitchen’s murderous human guardians that the rats sought were so determined to appease, wearing our blue jeans coated with canyon dirt, needing to be reminded to wash our hands before sitting down to a freshly snared rodent supper.

Part 2: Pack Rat Facts

What we call the Pack Rat is none other than the widely spread Wood Rat, any of a number of species of the family Cricetidae, order Rodentia, genus Neotoma.  We popularly refer to them as Pack Rats due to their penchant for collecting odd bits of material for their nests, especially anything shiny or brightly colored.  Others call them Trade Rats, for the way they often leave something behind when they steal something, such as removing an earring and leaving in its place an aluminum gum wrapper.  Such trades have nothing to do with comparative value, but are the result of a kind of rat Attention Deficit Disorder, in which one precious object is dropped and forgotten in favor of a new trophy.  22 species have been identified in Central and North America, from southernmost jungles and desert lowlands up into the Juniper/Piñon forests of Western mountains such as where our sanctuary and school nests, from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans and northwards to the most icy extremes of Canada, from below sea level to over 8,000 feet in elevation.

Pack Rats are a soft buff, gray or reddish brown, usually with white undersides and feet, with hairy or “bushy” tails.  The ones we live with average 9 inches in length including a generally 3.5” tail.  Adults weigh 3/4 of a pound or more.  They build nest up to 4 feet across at the base of cliffs or trees, using a combination branches, twigs and peeled juniper bark.   The cactus parts that are in some regions distributed around their nests, serve the added benefit of helping dissuade explorative rat predators like coyotes and foxes.  When they’re most vulnerable is when they are out foraging, at which point they can become a quick meal for any snake or canine, hawk or owl that comes upon them.  Essentially nocturnal, they leave their fortress nests after dark in order to feast on and collect the necessary amount of spiny cactus fronds and yucca pods, berries and bark, nuts and acorns, greenery and seeds.  They get their necessary amount of water directly from eating the cactus pads, being one of the few creatures able to navigate among a latticework of spines without damage to itself.

Relentless nocturnal voyagers, Pack Rats forage more or less constantly from sun down until sun up, moving back and forth through a limited range, covering the are in a veritable grid along well used, scent marked lines.  Because of this, predators who depend on them for sustenance are able to predict and intercept their meals, and pit vipers need only wait long enough alongside one of the well used rat routes.  It’s only a matter of time before the local stud comes scurrying by, on its own hunt for food and a warm furry body to hotly embrace.

The consequence of such insuppressible passions is an impressive reproductive rate, decreasing with population pressures but increasing in times of high juvenile mortality rates – up to 5 batches per year, with as many as 5 young per litter who will themselves be sexually productive within 60 days.  While some may remain mated for a breeding season, they are for the most part opportunistic, rodent libertines whose passionate drive ensures species survival regardless of the numbers that are hunted and killed… an evolutionarily healthy trait given how many are regularly munched by a large assortment of fur bearing and feather flapping carnivores.

Part 3: Rodents On The Menu: How to Catch & Cook Pack Rats

Wild animals are not the only predators of rodents.  Every species of Rodentia have been hunted and consumed by humans for as long as our kind have existed, and continue to be relished as a delicacy in over 100 countries today.  Farmed Guinea Pigs in South America.  Tasty 40 pound beavers from New Mexico to Alaska.  8 pound water rats in Southeast Asia.  Tree Squirrels in the Southeast.  It is perhaps Squirrels that we should be thinking of when we consider the possible place of their rat cousins on our plates, not as alley vermin but as clean and harvestable protein sources so darling they are hard to kill, as flavorful entrees potentially on par with seasoned Georgia Squirrel Stew.

As much prestige as the successful hunter of large game like deer and elk would have gained in primitive tribes, the majority of the animal protein in indigenous diets came from small game.  This was true in part because they are more plentiful, and part because they are simply easier to catch.  This was certainly the fact for the Mogollon pit-house dwellers, the first peoples to settle in the Gila bioregion where Anima School and Sanctuary sits.  Based on the bone remnants found near the underground living quarters, their primary meat sources were Wild Turkeys that they captured and partially domesticated, and Cottontail Rabbits, Ground Squirrels and (yes!) Pack Rats that the women and children may have had the job of snaring.

Snaring remains, along with the box trap, one of the most effective ways of harvesting.  Unlike the box trap, the snare ensnarls, hurts and often kills before the hunter ever comes up the animal.  This is a reason for faithfully checking what are called the snare “sets” every morning early, so that no creature has to suffer in anguish long, and so that no meat is left long enough to spoil.  Once constructed of twisted plant fibers, today’s trappers more often use either fishing line or piano wire that is heavy enough to hold whatever the desired prey, while thin enough to be passed off as natural plant matter by the approaching game.  A small loop is tied at one end, and then the length of line, wire or cordage is run through the loop, forming a larger loop that – depending on how high it’s positioned – the animal is intended to either step into or be caught by the neck by.  The snare is placed in a strategic spot on a known trail, attached to a stake, root or limb at the other end so that the quarry is held fast.  In the case of PackRats, the cordage or filament is set at a spot where their trail is narrowed by foliage on both sides, preferably where overhanging brush forms a restrictive tunnel.  No bait is needed for consistent catches with a well considered trail set.

Box traps are another effective method, sometimes involving a heavy wood box resting on a Figure-4 stick trigger, but more often these days featuring the afore mentioned metal screen traps with doors on one or both sides poised to fall when a bait tray inside is depressed.  Any vegetable matter with an odor will usually bring them in, from fruit slices to a drop of anise oil on a piece of bread.  Most common, however, is the application of what is peanut butter apparently as irresistible to rodents as it usually is to children.

Unless being released live miles from the site, the trapped animal must be quickly dispatched, preferably by a fast twist of the neck or a sharp blow to the head, the intent being to promptly put them out of pain.  Anyone concerned about carrier fleas should use long gloves.  Then for the sake of the best tasting meat, the rat needs to be immediately skinned, gutted and washed, the object being not only to remove bitter fluids but to allow the flesh to quickly cool down.  The strong “gamey” taste of any wild meat is most often the result of adrenaline caused by it being tormented, or else not being quickly enough dressed and cleaned.  To dress the rat, a slit is made just beneath the skin from the chest to the groin, the paunch carefully emptied so as not to spill the contents, and the skin worked off the body the way you might remove a coat.  It can then be cut up into pieces or stretched whole onto a spit for open fire grilling.  Native Americans sometimes pounded the entire animal, bones, organs and all into a mush they’d sometimes combine with nuts and berries, getting more needed fat, vitamins and minerals that way, but for those transitioning into a primal diet or lifestyle the gutted method may be preferred.  Tasting a lot like rabbit and providing several ounces of meat, the only problem with Pack Rat is how tough it can be.  The remaining key to a delicious rodent meal is to either braze the meat for a very short period of time on very high heat, sealing in the juices, or else slow cooked in seasoned water and made into a gravy.  Pressure canning is another way of tenderizing, while simultaneously preserving the food for future consumption.

For some, adding Pack Rats to their diet would be a matter of overcoming a culturally impressed revulsion, either against eating rodents or against killing any animal.  For others, the stretch is to take the life of what appears to them unsettling sweet and cute.  In each case, what is needed is a shift in perception in which we learn to see ourselves as essentially inseparable from what we consume, and each plant and creature inseparable from the land that contains and feeds it.  In this way of looking at the world, there is no one who escapes causing harm, nor anyone not meant to bring benefit to others.  We are all culpable equal to how aware we are, but also deserving of and able to best enjoy the blessings and rewards.

The most healthy diet for humans is one that closely parallels what we evolved eating for however many years of our development, a vast stretch of time with almost none of the high carbohydrate intake associated with the processed grains and corn syrup additives of the so called civilized diet, common in only the last 50 to 100 years, feasting on a large percentage of fresh plants with a smaller amount of fresh wild meat.  Taking that animal protein from low on the food chain is generally a wise move ecologically, is most sustainable for a large groups of people due to the animals’ numbers, and involves the least effort for the greatest chance of success.  By foraging small game or even insects for each day’s meals, preserving meat from spoilage becomes a non-issue, and greatly lessens concerns about getting sick from related bacterial infections.

Whether farmers with their own lush gardens and grass fed cattle or urban dwellers seeking a sense of self sufficiency and empowerment, the at least occasional trapping or hunting of small animals gives us an honest sense of being a responsible link in the food chain, of being more able to survive in the event of a collapse of the current economic system and government control and aid, and of being a capable part of the natural world we all in one way or another draw our nutrition from, and owe our lives to.  To have taken the life of another being, even or especially one that we honor and love, feels a necessary wake up call and moment of responsibility and communion for anyone who ever eats meat from a package.  And it feels like opportunity for unapologetic union for everyone, with the natural cycles of the eater and eaten, heeding in the blood and flesh a call to not only wildness but wholeness, and not only what we are given but to what we in turn have to give.

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(Please RePost and Forward Freely)

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Hello Everyone!!

When I was on my alone time, I saw a very amazing thing!  A fox!  It was very beautiful and graceful.  I at first thought it was a coyote, but Mama Loba and I discovered by measuring the tracks that it was a fox.  When I saw it, I had been with my stuffed animals looking at a pretty tree and thinking about making a nice home for them.  Then I heard the sound of little feet pattering on the sand behind me, and I turned round and there it was staring at me looking very interested.  I’d seen one before but it had been far away and not close up like this.  What a lesson it taught me, getting near before I noticed because I was so busy talking to my stuffed friends.  I felt so excited, I couldn’t wait to run back up and tell everyone about my magical visitor.

Not too long ago I went on my first dentist appointment! Well I’ve had a dentist appointment before but that was when I was so tiny I can’t remember it. It was rather fascinating, cause I had never spent that long in town with lots of people around me for a long time. I have to say though I rather enjoyed it. I missed home though, and was happy to be home when I got home. Town is very interesting to me for I’m not used to it. I also love going on rides I was happy and relieved to not have any cavities except for to two in my baby teeth which will fall out so we don’t have to worry about those. One of the things I found strangest at the dentist was the moving chair!!  It felt very strange lying in a chair that the dentist pushes a button on and it moves up or down. They warned me it was going to move first of course. I found it very particular though. I also got to see a picture of my teeth I could see the insides of them and everything. I was quite fascinated indeed.

While we were at town Papa showed me something he had ordered off the internet for me and Mama Loba a Chinese Brush Painting set! It looked very old fashion too. It had an ink stick with pictures of dragons all over it. An inkwell or grinding stone to grind the ink stick into. A tiny mini teaspoon came with the set too, you filled the teaspoon with water and it into the inkwell the make the ink you have ground into liquid. There was two brushes and paints and a plate to put the paint in. Last of all there was three books instructing how to chinese brush paint. Our friend Resolute before that had also sent us a calligraphy set. There was bottles of ink the color of black, blue, red, and burgundy, there was two quills that we can dip in the ink and write on the special paper with. Also there was this special was you melt then pour on a envelope to seal and before the wax hardens you push the sealer thing into the wax leaving a beautiful picture of a fish or flower engraved in the wax. So we are sooooo enjoying our calligraphy set.

Lately I’ve been studying botany. A friend of Mama Kiva’s – his name is  7Song – is coming to teach me and Mama Kiva more about botany. I’m very exited to meet him. Botany and herbal lore has been quite a source of interest for me these days. Mama Kiva got me a book on herbal lore and botany not that long ago with pictures in it I can color. I’m very exited about it too.

Papa recorded me speaking this blog too, I hope you can download and listen to it!

I really hope you all are doing well.  I will try to write another blog post soon.

Love, Rhiannon Cadhla Hardin

To Download an Audio File of Rhiannon reading portions of this blog, click on:

Rhiannon’s Recording

(photos (c)2010 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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As the moon rises over the volcanic cliffs, the New Mexico canyon I caretake fills with the glad howls of twenty re-wilding women! A neighborhod activist all the way from North Carolina, seeking inspiration to reinvigorate her work. A mother, taking an opportunity to nourish herself the way she usually tends others. A Florida business woman, getting in touch with her needs, her dreams, her playfulness. Elders, and youth, marking their transitions with a May week next to a winding river. Each seems to sense that they are welcomed by an ancient spirit, encircled by a protective river, and soon we are feeling safe enough to take the risk of expressing and embodying our truths. Self consciousness gives way to the magic, as we’re empowered by what we’re able to give… and as we so appreciate what each woman gives us in return!

When humans all lived closely with the natural world, in tribes that were like big families, self confidence and self esteem came a lot more naturally to us. From a young age, we were given responsibilities and challenges that served as rites of passage. Our confidence grew as we learned to haul water and find wood, identify plants for food and medicine, start fires without a match, tend to our sick and enliven the tribal fires with our stories and wholesome enthusiasm. At home in the natural world, we felt a deep connection to all that surrounded us, and we prove that it is possible for us to feel that still. That was the inspiration and motivation when we first thought of this event back in 2000.

Of all the gatherings held in this remote canyon, the Wild Women’s Gathering has the greatest emphasis on this personal reconnection to primal instinct, the old ways, and living on the land. I enjoy seeing the effect of the participants of camping out together, sleeping close to the ground and to their individual untamed dreams, gathering wood as a group and then sitting around the campfire and sharing very personal stories. Practicing medicine making, gathering and preparing native foods. Identifying edible plants, but also identifying the imagined limitations and persistent fears that hold us back. Doing without the comforts, distractions, habits and schedules, and experiencing what it feels like to exist for awhile without all that. The “Wild” we celebrate is not being ”licentious” or “out of control” as dictionaries claim, but being one’s authentic, responsive self… resting, sharing, learning, savoring and reveling! Their brand of wildness is being in touch with their hungers and hurts, needs and desires, moon cycles and life rhythms, meaning and purpose. In the wind’s stirrings I can feel the movement happening in these women’s lives, growing and flowing wilder than ever!

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