Not In My Nature

By Bob Rehak

My yard is alive with the sights and sounds of nature. I live in the far west suburbs. I won’t name the suburb, but my brother calls it Iowa. He lives on Chicago’s north side (as do so many White Sox fans just like him – why is that?). Living out here where the only sirens you hear are on the first Tuesday of the month when they test the Civil Defense system - birds and rabbits and deer and foxes and squirrels have set up their own little communities. Some of them live in my backyard. I’ve got my own little Disney-esque scenery right outside the kitchen window. I think I saw a robin land on Snow White’s index finger last week, but it may have been my imagination. But as my father used to say, “Sure, nature’s cute. Until it bites you.”

We’ve had several encounters with God’s and Walt’s creatures this year. Some would make a nice fairytale; some would make your skin crawl:

The rabbits have been particularly active this year. Every few weeks it seems there’s a new addition to the family. We have one mother and baby who graze under our berry tree every evening at 6:30. I don’t know how they know it’s 6:30, since they don’t appear to be wearing any watches and they can’t see my kitchen clock from their vantage point. Maybe they hear the Wheel of Fortune theme song coming from the neighbor’s house. The bunnies are cute and cuddly and are doing a nice job of policing the area around the berry tree. They’re also teasing the heck out of our dog. She’s starting to learn when it’s 6:30, too.

In the spring we had an unexpected visitor to our backyard savanna. I was looking out the side window to assess my lawn and rate its health next to my neighbor’s (he’s still winning), when something caught my eye. Normally there are only birds and rabbits and squirrels who tease my dog like a gang of preschoolers poking at a turtle on a field trip to PetsMart. This day there was a larger animal in the yard. This time there was a coyote roaming, out back in my outback. My wife and I watched as the coyote just walked around, looking for squirrels or rabbits or roadrunners or whatever should come into the yard (my guess is that he heard about our nature preserve through word of mouth).

We did two things, immediately: we confirmed that our dog was still in the house, and then we called 9-1-1. After all, there was a coyote in the neighborhood. The operator told us that they don’t send anyone out for a coyote, but we could call animal control, if we so desired. Animal control said they couldn’t do anything until the coyote became a danger. Evidently there are polite coyotes. We watched the coyote go around to the front of the house, stop, and then proceed to head west, down the sidewalk, and turn left at the next intersection. This coyote was no jaywalker. Perhaps he was polite, after all.

Towards the beginning of summer we noticed a rather large shadow wash over our house one afternoon. It was either a helicopter with its blades set to “whisper”, or a very large bird. It turns out that it was a rather large hawk. A rather well-fed, large hawk, presumably looking for a quick meal - to go. After another quick dog-check, my wife and I marveled at the bird from a safe distance inside the living room (or parlor, as my mother used to call it). The hawk waited in silent menace (sounds like an action movie: “Steven Seagal is a ‘Silent Menace’”). After 15 minutes of lurking, the hawk moved to another tree, closer to the street, and watched for a meal to walk, crawl, or hop past. The hawk had more patience than we did; we left our perch and moved on to other things. We presume he didn’t go hungry. Come to think of it, the neighbor has been looking for her cat…

A few weeks ago, my wife noticed a pungent smell emanating from our back deck. At first I couldn’t smell anything, which isn’t surprising. My wife has smelling superpowers: she knows when a mouse burps. I also was in denial, not wanting to admit that there was any kind of smell, good or bad, coming from under the deck. I knew that a bad smell equals a bad time for me. I knew I wouldn’t exactly be picking roses. The second day the smell intensified, but I stuck to my guns. Nope, I didn’t smell anything. I learned that in Guy School: ignore a problem and maybe it will go away. (It never works).

By the third day we were close to calling in a hazmat team. Flies were telling other flies that Disney World was under our deck. Little fly minivans were backed up near the entrance. Something was under there. Something dead. Something evil. The problem was that my deck is sealed on all sides. There’s gravel under the deck, and 6 inch wide boards extend from the deck to the ground, blocking any views of the gravel. I knew that I would have to gain access to the “smelly thing”, but first I had to confirm that it was really there. Second lesson from Guy School: don’t believe it’s a problem until you can see the problem. So I used a flashlight to crawl along the deck, peering in between the boards, following the incredibly strong scent, like some amateur CSI. I was looking for a visual. I was hoping to spot the dead eye of some animal staring me back in the face. I isolated the smell, but for the life of me (and the death of that animal), I couldn’t see a darn thing. My wife inquired about the progress of my investigation. I gave her my findings: the “smelly thing’s” location had been isolated, but the only way to access it would be to remove at least two boards of the deck, which would in turn need to be replaced.

The 15 year old boards splintered and cracked and crumbled under the crowbar’s pressure. I removed a 6 foot length. Now I could see where the flies were buying the tickets to the park, but I couldn’t see the ride. There was a manmade cave of sorts made of leftover cement from when the deck was first built. The cave was deep enough that I couldn’t see inside it with the naked eye.

I had a choice to make: I could reach down in there like a catfish noodler, or I could investigate further. So I went back to my CSI kit and grabbed the handheld video camera and a flashlight. I flooded the cave with light from the flashlight in one hand while I held the camera in the other. As I swept the cave, I saw it: matted fur. Sure enough, something was dead, but it was curled into the cave’s outline. I thought about just reaching in there are grabbing it, but I watched too many horror movies when I was little, and I thought it might spring back to life and drag me under the deck, and I’d never be seen again (kind of like the neighbor’s cat). I decided to poke it with a stick instead. It didn’t move, but it had size. It took some more poking and prying, but I finally was able to expose part of its carcass from out of the cave. A tail. A long, grey tail with the consistency of a bullwhip. It was an opossum.

I know they play dead, so this one had better really be deceased or I was going to give him an Academy Award. I got my CSI-issued black garbage bags and some rubber gloves and I stared at the tail. I would have to reach down, grab it, and lift it up high enough to get it into the bags.

I counted to three. Hundred. I held my breath and just did it. I threw off the gloves, put them in the bag, and sealed it. After all the flies went home, disappointed, I replaced the boards on the deck.

I won’t say what I did with the body bag (garbage pick up wasn’t for another 5 days). Suffice it to say that there’s a new Disney World that just opened in a dumpster somewhere in Iowa that’s out of even my wife’s olfactory range.