by Benjamin Felser, of Bowdoin College
Returning to Ruby from our last field vegetation survey at the border, we knew we had a big day ahead of us. Bryon–the same SIA staff member who led our orientation to the Border Wildlife Study–was going to lead a tracking class for us. As a master tracker born and raised in Arizona, he spent 6 weeks in the desert foraging for cactus fruits and other edible plants in addition to the javelina jerky he had dried for the occasion. As someone more knowledgeable about the land than anyone else we had met, we were eager to learn how to read animal signs from him to more deeply understand all the creatures which surround our home in Ruby.
Living in Ruby on and off for the past month and a half, we had become habituated to the various paw-shaped markings scattered across the tailings sand dunes. As remnants from the ghost town’s history as a gold and silver mine in the late 1800s and lead and zinc mine in the 30s and 40s, the fractured rock we call tailings now serve to express impressions of all the creatures which cross them. We see claw marks, foot pads, toe pads, big tracks, small tracks, and more crisscrossing the 2-acre stretch of sand every single day.
We started with Bryon pointing out how to distinguish between cats and dogs and identify how the animals were moving (walking, loping, bounding, etc…) Within 5 minutes, he had us practicing the lope of the skunks whose itsy bitsy cute little tracks crossed the tailings.
It was surprisingly useful to be the skunk and act out their movement since–at first–I was challenged to distinguish between front and hind tracks, let alone left and right paws. By acting out the skunk’s lope, I could see how their movement was translated by the sand into tracks and learn more about how our cohabitants in Ruby move through this shared space. Embodying the movement of the animals (guided by our fearless leader) helped us visualize the stories the sand tells about the animals which cross it in the night.
That very night, while no animals went bump, the wind started to come on something fierce and little specks of sound flecked off our tents. “No. It can’t be-” I thought. I walked outside at 2 am to see snow coming down with a fury, blanketing the desert floor in flakes of ice sparkling with my almost-out-of-battery headlight. Too tired to admire it much longer, I fell asleep, awakening to foggy expanse of continuing snow. Now, I didn’t exactly come to Arizona to be shot back to spring in Maine (where I would otherwise be in college), but it was strangely comforting to look up and breathe in the floating flakes.
Any water becomes a miracle in the desert, regardless of how cold it is. Regardless, it did feel a bit strange to see cacti next to snowy earth (the cacti radiated enough heat due to their metabolism to melt any snow on contact).
Well, the snow was gone by lunch, but it set a nice tone for our midterms which we did over the course of six hours that day. I will say, three two-hour midterms one day, and a 2-hour field-based midterm the next are better any day than continuous tests every month in every class. Walking around the next morning as the birds awoke in the thawing sun, our Ben and Eli (our instructors) pointed to any number of plants, birds or mammal tracks we had learned to identify over the course of the past 60 days here. I honestly can’t imagine a better test than walking around in the marsh near the lakes in Ruby, feet brushed with morning dew, and writing down the names of the other creatures and plants which inhabit the space I’ve come to experience as home.
Assuming that the rest of the day would fail to be eventful, I was woefully unprepared to meet Morton.
We had smelled his particular smell around the area for a while now, but hadn’t seen his fluffy tail until I spotted it ducking into Ben’s tent fly. I thought he was hatch, the Ruby caretaker’s dog, at first, but Hatch wasn’t here, and he definitely didn’t have stripes like this guy. I darted to the door to see what was going on, to find him–tail raised–staring straight back at me. Now, Bryon had assured us the day before that skunks truly will not spray you unless they fear for their literal lives, but that’s still a pretty strong gamble to make when you’re faced with a skunk. I was also woefully unprepared for how cute skunks are. They look like little mice with long fluffy bodies and if they didn’t have the potential to be so stinky, I bet they would be so cozy to pet. Anyways, at the bidding of the people who own Ruby, we set out a small mammal trap which would allow us to release him up the road at a later date… But I’ll let the next blog tell the story of Perrin and the Morton.