Fred was once a frequent visitor to our place. Solitary, he hunted lizards and small snakes, grasshoppers when they swarmed every seven or eight years, and other insects. We enjoyed his company and even the dogs and cats tolerated him, mostly because they could not have caught him even had they tried. Unlike the cartoon version, no critter seemed to find him a suitable meal and in truth he looked like little more than feathers, neck and legs, all of them long and scrawny.
Usually we heard him talking, a simple language which consisted mostly of variations on 'glok'. But often enough we'd see him run along our fence, hopping from top to ground as his prey scampered and flitted away. Occasionally he'd stop and look around, his reptilian head curiously tilted and large eyes fixed on nothing in particular. Incredibly, it seemed, he always announced his presence - 'glok'. Once, Carole found him perched on our bathroom window sill, inspecting our antique fixtures and fluffy new towels. More likely, he was checking out his own reflection in the glass.
At these moments he seemed quite intelligent, but my wife and I would caution each other - "Humans turn everything anthropomorphic, even stars and natural disasters."
"Yes," we'd apologize, "but we do seem to need a point of reference."
We named him Fred early on, and fancied that he liked us as much as we liked him, even though we understood that he was only being territorial, and we just happened to live in his territory. He, like other roadrunners, greatly resembled that hundred million-year-old proto-bird whose fossils have been found pressed in ancient layers of sand and clay from Germany to China. They were first to have feathers, scientists think, but whether or not they could actually fly is still being debated. Archaeopteryx, the creature is called.
Roadrunners don't really fly, either. Their short, broad wings might seem raptor-like, but roadrunners can't flap the feathery limbs. Indeed, they are running birds which can snap open their wings and soar for varying distances, a valuable means of defense, crossing gullies and navigating the branches of trees. Running is also a raptor's trait, much like the emu, secretary bird and ostrich, but also akin to that awesome dinosaur made famous in Spielberg films. The modern critter is much smaller, of course, and probably not as 'intelligent' as the extinct version is imagined. Rather, he might be a mix of the two extinct creatures, a 'not-so-bright' relative, yet a link which has prospered over the millions of years, until quite recently.
On balance, though, few of us believe any dinosaur (or bird) to have been especially intelligent, so it is hard to classify Fred and his story. The highest point on our property drops off sharply, eighty or ninety feet, to a year round stream of pluvial water. For ten thousand years, since the last Ice-age left glacial remains in the Sierras around Mount Whitney, the melt has been seeping through underground rivers, permeable barriers, surface rivers, even across earthquake faults, with enough pressure to force it up toward the top of Onyx Peak. There it bubbles out of the ground as a spring and diverges east and west, one to become The Canebrake, the other as Cap Creek. Eventually, both empty into the South Fork of the Kern, which also began its journey at the foot of Whitney, and was once the longest river west of the Mississippi. Above and below ground, traveling in every direction from more than three miles high to near sea-leveI and up and up again, over a hundred millenniums, it all winds up in the same place.
Long ago, when the ice pack was new, this desert was a series of large lakes. Trees like the bristlecone pine were common and herds of mammoth lived on sweet grasses which grew down to the shoreline. Saber-toothed cats preyed upon their young, and giant wolves targeted the great elk. As the ice receded, humankind passed through this land and along with lesser creatures, thrived. Cap Creek is just one of the vine-like tendrils of a living, if aged benefactor.
It is a different world down there, twenty degrees cooler than above, moist, thick with ferns and stands of cattails, pussy-willows, cottonwood and tall, twisted bull pine. The pine, preferring dry feet, have side-stepped up the steep bank and their crowns arch well above the ever eroding lip of the canyon, like helmeted soldiers peering out of their trenches at a desert wasteland. Well, not a wasteland, exactly. Wind easily stirs the dust and summertime temperatures over 110 degrees are not unusual. Rabbit brush covers the land. Occasionally a thicket of cactus makes things interesting, and wherever underground streams run near the surface, lines of mountain juniper take root and release clouds of pollen, like the smoke of a forest fire, late every spring.
Rabbits, both cottontail and jack, thrive among the brush. Field mice and pack-rats and gophers do nicely, and so do the snakes which stalk them. Quail and chukker, smaller birds and deer flit uneasily from cover to cover. Bobcats have replaced their saber-toothed cousins. They share choice hunting spots with three different packs of coyotes, who have become smaller and leaner than the huge wolves which once claimed the region. Lions and bears come down out of the pinyon covered mountains, especially in late summer, looking for food and water. But it is a different world down in Cap Creek. Orioles flourish there. So do half-a-dozen varieties of salamander and frog, bats and swifts, kingfishers and jays. The rare Cooper's Hawk has a nest upstream. Red tails and golden eagles share the hunting grounds. Down on the bedrock of the streambed mosses cling to small waterfalls and in the ponds a pungent seaweed blooms into a thick carpet every spring. Ducks have tried to live there, but constant movement on the steep cliff sides spooks them and so they fly a mile or so north and nest on the Kern. Now and then skunks and opossums search the rotting leaves for centipedes and once our dogs flushed a ring-tailed cat, hundreds of miles outside his normal range, from out of the thick undergrowth and chased it fruitlessly out of sight. Foxes call the place home, as well, and more than one person has been surprised to discover what fine tree climbers they are.
Also down in the creek are man-made relics, middens from ancient campfires, grinding stones, trade-goods, like jasper from the Mojave Desert and obsidian from far away Utah, and from recorded history, caches of trade beads, Russian and French, are scattered about - even primitive toys - clay marbles and such, which are said to have been used in gambling games. More recent technology is evident, too. Mostly it is steel and plastic pipe ranging from 1-1/4" to six inches in diameter, abandoned hydraulic rams and small electric motors, evidence of my twenty year experimentation with power generation and water pumping. Most of the efforts were a failure, underpowered or too much trouble to make it worthwhile, but many summers the water we pumped from Cap Creek made all the difference to our plants and animals, flora and fauna which are not native, therefore not acclimated to this dry heat and alkaline soil.
But it is a magical, peaceful place, quiet as one imagines quiet before industry and population grip a place, where no street lights obstruct the darkness or diminish the stars. And the dawns deserve every note the varied songbirds sing to greet it. In the tallest of the bull pines is a family of ravens and they roost over our house like guardian angels. Owls share the tree, too, and probably (unless they are nesting) they do not mind if a ground bird like Fred searches its branches for beetles or the eggs of song birds. Or maybe they do mind, for neither owls nor ravens would allow a snake to prowl their nesting sites. If so, maybe this is how Fred got into so much trouble. And, of course, I must share a good deal of the blame, however unintended my actions.
A water tank stands on that high ground. It is grey with weathering and open at the top. Perhaps twelve feet high and ten across, it holds thousands of gallons of water. Some of it came from our well in those days, but most was pumped up from the creek, eighty or ninety feet below. We use the water to irrigate small gardens, supply chickens (in the 'old days') and ducks and dogs and cats and, of course, ourselves. Unlike our distant neighbors, we were not tied down by cattle or horses, and so we did not need water for them, but we all were very conscious of fire danger, so we kept the tank as full as possible. As a rule, though, it was not completely full. But it was on this occasion.
Fred was not totally luckless.
One summer morning as the sun rose above the irregular, but equally tall pinnacles we call Four Sisters, I stepped out to feed the dogs. A splash of water, so unusual at any time of year, caught my attention. It came from far away and I looked east, toward the sun, just in time to see it reflect on another spray. 'What the hell,' I thought. 'Are ducks playing in our tank, and crapping in it?' For we had raised ducks once and knew how messy they could be.
I marched up the slope with purpose, but also quietly, because I wanted to see if I could sneak up from below. The play was still going on when I reached the tank and whatever it was seemed oblivious to my presence, even when the noisy metal ladder was lifted and placed against the opposite side. As I climbed, o-so-stealthily, I began to believe I would actually witness some wild web-foot in an alien environment. Slowly, I raised my head above the lip of the tank, betting expectantly with myself. Pin-wheel, Teal, Mallard, possibly a goose?
'Damn!' It was a roadrunner, thrashing frantically, desperately to reach the edge, to lift himself from the clinging water. But his feathers were not designed to repel the stuff and it was soaking him like a sponge. He was drowning.
I slid down the ladder and rushed back to the house. What would it take to rescue him? A long handled net! But we did not have such a thing. What, then?
'How had he gotten into the tank?' I wondered, as if knowing that held the key to his salvation. Probably, I decided quickly, he'd been looking for breakfast in one of the nearby digger pines. Ravens, or possibly an owl returning from its nighttime hunt, had spooked him, and he ran down a branch, opened his wings and soared to safety, as he must have done a hundred times in his adventurous life. Much higher than normal, perhaps he panicked and reached out for the closest solid object, the rim of a water tank. I could see him misjudging, or teetering frantically on the thin metal edge before momentum toppled him into the drink. Or had his instinct to hit the ground running betrayed him? How long had he been in there? How much longer could he hold out?
I saw a shovel and grabbed it. It would have to do.
This time I made no effort to be quiet. I wanted him to hear me coming, for I became afraid that my sudden appearance might further panic him. My shoulders barely reached the rim. He was still struggling, but weaker.
Bracing myself by my armpits, standing tip-toe on the ladder's highest rung, I swung the shovel over the top and extended it across the water. It was a couple of feet too short, even as I held the end of the handle.
But Fred saw me and said, 'Glok!' in a tired voice, or perhaps 'Glub!" At once he began moving toward me, walking on the circular inner edge of the tank, using his sodden wings to keep his feet in contact with the metal. He was, after all, a running bird so what else would he do? Slowly, bravely, he came closer to me. Offering him the shovel's blade, I held it under the surface to keep its sharp edge from cutting his legs. At last, he came up to it and then over it. Carefully, I lifted, but it was heavy with water and my poor leverage. As I swung it over the edge, the water cascaded off, and Fred with it, like a child down on playland water chute. Only the chute ended abruptly and Fred fell like deadweight, a dozen feet, and landed on the rock hard ground with a sickening squish.
'Christ!' I thought. 'I've killed him.
He lay lifeless, covered with small sticks, dead grass and moist sand. Worse, his neck seemed broken and I could not detect a heartbeat. As I carried him back down to the house I remembered another bird, another small tragedy from years before.
Two hundred miles from the nearest land, probably Taiwan, several of us lounged around a destroyer's stern, enjoying the sun and choppy sea. Suddenly a tiny bird flitted past and clutched the railing quite near us. He was plainly exhausted, eyes squinted and glazed, his narrow chest aflutter. The sailor nearest him said, "Here, climb on my finger. You'll be safer inboard ...." , but as he extended his hand the poor bird panicked, tried to open its cramped wings and let go of the railing. But instead of rising it fell upside down into the ship's wake.
My shipmate had been visibly shaken and undoubtedly filled with remorse, but all he managed to say was, "Stupid bird!"
Carole brought out an old towel and we did our best to clean and dry Fred off. "He's alive," she said, holding his chest, and we both became hopeful. We laid him in his towel on the sun side of the patio and the dogs came up to sniff him and look at us with dog eyes, sad ones, I suppose. They made no attempt to bother him. The cats came, too, and twitched their tails.
For two hours Fred lay still as death. We checked on him once in a while but saw no change. And then I thought about the little bird on the ship again. What if Fred woke up suddenly and found himself surrounded by cats and coyote-like dogs. Would he panic? Would his little heart give out over one last straw? I carried him up to our old pick-up truck and placed him on the seat. I left the driver's side window wide open, for it faced the fence line and the wild scrub close by. Perhaps, despite such alien surroundings, Fred would see safety out there. Every hour or so I checked on him, but he hadn't moved. The third time, before I was even close to the truck, I saw movement. He stood in the window, head bobbing up and down. Then he flicked his long tail and jumped down. In three long strides, he was gone.
We were thrilled. Many people know that feeling, those who have helped save 'dumb' animals or other people. Even 'uncivilized' critters have been known to save others of their own and alien species, so it is not an unusual thing, even if it gives us a sense of wonder, satisfaction, pleasure or even joy.
That is not what makes this story unique. What happened next seems extremely unusual, mysterious, possibly sacred in a new-age sort of way.
The next morning, before sunrise, I looked out of the bathroom window and saw the dogs walking single-file from the direction of the water tank. It was an odd formation for them, and their gait seemed subdued, as though they were stalking something or trying to avoid notice. Curious, I slipped out the front door just as they reached the driveway and saw them sit in a row facing uphill, to the south, where our old pickup truck was parked. They did not stir at my approach, so fascinated were they, and I saw why immediately.
Gathered around the truck were six or seven roadrunners, bobbing and weaving, craning their necks, gawking at the undersides and each other, making muted sounds. Then one of them jumped up on the hood and marched around, the others watching his every move.
"Carole, Carole, come quick! You've got to see this!"
She arrived, drowsy and tousled, just in time to see Fred (we assume it was him) jump to the top of the cab, strut back and forth a couple of times, then jump down. He hit the ground running and the rest chased after him into the rabbit brush.
We've never seen any of them again.
At first we marveled at obvious things. How little did we know about birds, about their need and ability to communicate? Fred, it seems evident, had gone far and wide to gather his kith and kin. How had he persuaded them to leave their own familiar grounds? What promises, wonders or fears had enticed them to come? Did Fred give them some epic tour, complete with monsters and saviors, desperation and delirium? Was it a cautionary tale about flying too high or aiming too low? Did such urgent gatherings occur routinely, or had Fred set some sort of precedent? How did one announce such events - a dappled, croaking version of 'food fight' or 'free beer', or a feathery Virgin Mary image on the windshield of an old truck? Just what are a bird's story-telling skills?
We had no way of knowing, really, and so it became just another of the growing volume of Cap Canyon stories. Only later, a couple of years later, did we notice that Fred had not been around 'lately'. Not since that morning. Nor, it seemed, had we seen many darting across the dusty roads as we went and came. Had we seen any? Concerned, for roadrunners were an endangered species, I asked my neighbors. "O, yes!" they said. They had seen them around, "Lots of them." Well, not lots, but the usual number.
And so Fred, we were forced to conclude, was purposely avoiding us. Why? Reluctantly, for no one likes to doubt their own mythologies, I reconsidered my earlier conclusions about the great roadrunner gathering. Was it an avian version of ingratitude? Had our homestead been declared a hostile environment, with undetectable 'Quarantine' signs posted for roadrunner-eyes-only? Did he feel obligated, a huge debt he could not pay, and like humans before him simply avoid the one he owed? And does he resent us for his feelings? Or had he given up all claims to this sector of his territory as some wild land gift from the Roadrunner Nation and left it for us to administer, enjoy and pass on to our children? Do lesser creatures have such motives, thoughts, consciousness? Apes, maybe. And elephants have been observed showing 'higher' emotions, maybe whales, too. But birds? Such antique, primitive things? Next we'll be recognizing insects as sapient, useful beings. Like bees, perhaps, the only animal who makes food for us. Of course it is possible that Fred died a quite natural death, but surely, over four or five years, another roadrunner would have taken over this territory. Or would they? With so few of them, perhaps there simply aren't enough to fill the available niche.
My wife likes to look at these odd occurrences as 'spiritual lessons', which implies that some cosmic teacher is out there, manipulating the large and small for our pleasure and individual good. This may be so, but if it is, this teacher is surely manipulating us in the same way in order to teach a greater wisdom to something greater than we, as if to stack larger and heavier objects upon those smaller - a sort of inverted pyramid standing on its point. Some argue that this is a proper illustration of the 'Big Bang', a vast, ever expanding thing created out of nothing. If it is, then it seems mighty arrogant and more than a little unstable. Probably it is wrong. Who knows how many quadrillion zillion 'lesser' creatures lived and died (and still do) so that mere billions of humans can imagine themselves kings of the hill, lords of the seeable. At least that is a broad-based platform, but also arrogant. Perhaps Fred's muscular ancestors thought of themselves that way, and look at him now. He can't swim any better than we can fly. Or fly any better than we can slither. And we have the same limitations when trying to pry out the nugget of truth out in this story. Why doesn't Fred come around any more?
Carole's notions are just as good as mine. Neither of us can decipher the truth of this one, unless it is that wagish bit, "No good deed goes unpunished." But that is unnecessarily negative, and if a positive spin seems too romanticized it deserves at least a neutral ending. "You take things too seriously," she reminds me. "Lighten up."
She's right, of course. But that doesn't resolve very much.
I miss Fred.
Copyright 1995 H.F. Jansen Estrup 
