Drive-by Animals [by Nin Andrews]

Drive-by animals, we called them when I was a girl—the dogs and cats dumped off on our farm by passing cars. The cats took up residence in the barns. One year our farm had over fifty barn cats. The number changed all the time—a lot of strays didn’t survive. They crouched in the alfalfa field when the mower swept by. Or they caught distemper or were killed by the dogs.

The animal-dumping practice is ongoing. I currently live on a dirt road in Virginia, and just this fall, my neighbors and I have adopted three black roosters, two barn cats, and a puppy, all left on the road. The chickens were hard to catch, but several of my neighbors were well-versed in the art of rooster-catching. “Dive for their feet or tail feathers!” they yelled as they grabbed for their claws and landed in the tall grass. Turns out a rooster can turn into a rocket and fly straight up in the air, thus avoiding capture. The cats didn’t need help finding shelter—they simply moved in to the closet barns. The puppy, a six-pound poodle-mix, flung from a BMW on a freezing Saturday afternoon (a hunter witnessed the event) was clueless. Looking bewildered, she shivered in the middle of the road. The puppy has now taken over our home.

What causes people to see the countryside as a dump? It’s not just unwanted animals you can find here. Old mattresses, toilets, air conditioners, and sofas land in the creeks, fields, and woods. There’s a rusted-out school bus deep in one of the valleys. An armchair used to sit on a hillside, as if someone dragged it there to watch the sunrise. One summer day I thought of sitting on it before bees and mice came buzzing and squealing out of it, and a rat snake slid across my path, pursuing its next meal.

I’m not one to be overly romantic, but I am a fan of poets like William Wordsworth, Robert Frost, Wendell Berry, Sydney Lea, John Lane and Nickole Brown, among others, who celebrate the natural world. I recently enjoyed this essay on Robert Frost by Sydney Lea. The poem, “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry speaks of how I find solace in times like this.  

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

That said, I’m not one to find the natural world a purely peaceful place, not when I lie awake at night, listening to the coyotes howl and hope they aren't dining on a newborn calf. Crossing the fields this morning with the pup, I watched buzzards circle overhead before I came across the carcass of a fawn.  And then there are the horrors of farm life. Whenever a cow becomes sick or injured or otherwise undesirable (like the little bull who jumped every fence), for example, the farmer who owns the herd sends them to the feedlot or the slaughterhouse. I am reminded of this poem by David Keplinger.  

The Head Gate Injury
by David Keplinger

The head gate didn’t tear the shoulder from the neck, it tore the neck from the shoulder, and the neck was displaced in a far-flung angle. They carried him toward the feedlot. And all the way he was quiet. He held his hand against the neck. He did it to keep it from falling off the world, which is to say, he did it to keep it from falling off his body. To the feedlot he floated as toward a drawbridge. I’ll pay for the gate, he managed at last. In careful English. I’ll pay for everything I did and I am very sorry.

Comments

[Grace Cavalieri]

Nin combines tenderness and steel. She's silk and silver--taking on the tough world--trading it with the the sweetness of a poet who's fully alive to all that exists.

[Allan Peterson]

I was so glad to see you point out David Keplinger’s exceptional poem, The Head Gate Injury.
I served on a prize panel some years back. That stop-me in-my-tracks poem was, to me, the clear winner.
My surprise was that none of the other panelists ranked it at all. I later wrote David (I do not know him) about it’s
unforgettable impact.

[Emily Fragos]

The Head Gate Injury is devastating.

[David Schloss]

Tonic wisdom from Andrews, Berry, Keplinger. Thanks, Nin.

[Nin Andrews]

Thank you all for your generous comments! I recently discovered/fell in love with David Keplinger's poetry, thanks to Grace Cavalieri's beautiful interview with him.