The Nature of the Beast (according to Susan McCarthy)

The Horror at Arlington

The friends I was visiting in Massachusetts had a groundhog in their yard. They saw it regularly, usually grazing the rich growth of plants next to the gate between the driveway and the back yard. Where I live in California, we have no groundhogs, although I have seen their cousins the marmots in the Sierras. The groundhog, Marmota monax, is the same animal as a woodchuck.

My friends said it was very fat, appropriate for an animal that hibernates in the winter. If you say to a groundhog, “Wow, you're a real tub of lard!” it's a compliment. (But don't get addicted to saying this.)

One afternoon, while we were studying sangria in the yard, my friend said “Look! Groundhog! Quick!” I couldn't turn around in time to see it dash across the yard and dive under the toolshed. I did hear it, because it was very noisy. Pounding feet, rattling against plants -- we practically heard change rattling in its pockets. A bear makes less noise.

We went to the other side of the shed, and the groundhog put its nose out and looked at us thoughtfully. It had a nice face. With its body safely underground, or undershed, it wasn't worried by our regard. It wasn't all that interested, either.

That weekend there was a barbecue to celebrate the graduation of a son of the house. As soon as we went out to the yard, my friend asked “What is that horrible smell? Like sewer gas?” While I stood around with condiments saying “Where?” two quick-thinking guys spotted a heap of dung, carried it away on shovels, and covered the spot where it had been with leaves.

It had been a really dreadful smell, apparently, a foul smell, a disgusting smell, an H. P. Lovecraft smell (i.e., too awful for human vocabulary to describe). And it had been an enormous ghastly heap of dung. They said it must have been the groundhog. They said the groundhog had to go.

I said it didn't sound like the work of a groundhog, but since I hadn't actually viewed it, and since there was little enthusiasm in the crowd for a detailed description of the monstrosity, my comments lacked impact. My friends said they hadn't minded the groundhog before, but literal partypooping was intolerable. They would ask the city to trap it and take it far away. “It might not have been the groundhog,” I squeaked. But the conversation swept relentlessly to daintier matters.

When I got home, I did an internet search for “groundhog” and “scat.” I hoped to clear the groundhog's name and save it from captivity and exile. Just as I had suspected, groundhog scat consists of dry pellets of plant matter. It is not as big as The Thing that appeared at the party. And since groundhogs are vegetarians, it's not very stinky.

Anxious to avert injustice, I hastened to present this testimony I hoped would exonerate the groundhog. My friend was amused. She was glad to hear that the creature was innocent, but my argument was beside the point. That morning her husband had gotten up early and seen the groundhog in the yard – playing with a baby groundhog.

She had a baby. The groundhog was safe now, even if that had been groundhog poop at the party. She was safe even if she pooped in the yard every day. She would be safe even if she went out in the front yard and flung poop at passing cars.

The question of who the actual offender was could now be considered at leisure. What creature is big enough to create the heap described? No bears or moose currently roam the back yards of Arlington, as far as I know. So our current suspect is a raccoon. They're stinky omnivores. They're not large animals (except the one you saw that time), but they like to accumulate scat in one spot, a “latrine.” Perhaps it's a way of saying “This is my real estate!” Sort of like renting a porta-potty. Maybe they repel competitors with the sheer volume and stench of the thing.

This strategy is ineffective against people with shovels. If raccoons wish to be welcomed in Arlington, latrines won't work. The raccoons will need to invest in actual plumbing.

Downtime for Beasts

To attract wildlife, we've historically offered water, food, and salty snacks. Hunters and ecotourists can both be found hanging around waterholes. Some people put out bird feeders to watch birds. Others put out cheap corn to attract deer year-round so they'll be available in hunting season. Animals have always been drawn to salt licks. That draws people, which is why there were all those early settlements called French Lick, Boone's Lick, Blue Lick, etc. So some people put out salt blocks.

I propose a new way of attracting animals: spa weekends.

Okay, animals don't much observe the work week, so let's just say spa vacations. Spas. Places animals could visit for food, water, salty snacks – and a nice back-scratch, mudbath, massage, or pedicure.

Animals are always trying to get their backs scratched, rubbing against trees, fences, and one another in the attempt. They'd flock to a spot where toothed surfaces were mounted at convenient heights and angles. There'd be rubbing, and groaning, and clouds of fur, and great happiness.

It might take a little more ingenuity to get animals to make pedicure and massage appointments, but a nicely-scratched back ought to lower their sales resistance, to say nothing of a good hot soak.

Most animals love a nice bath, and while they are typically envisioned frolicking in a crystalline lake or a mountain stream, they gladly take hot water when they can get it. The famous Japanese snow monkeys (a species of macaque) appear to spend most of the winter in hot springs.

In the mid-90s, a cinnamon bear (a black bear with natural auburn coloring) was raiding garbage cans and fruit trees in Monrovia, California. While on the prowl he discovered the pleasures of jacuzzis. After he ate, he'd relax in a hot tub. Some people didn't like a scum of coarse black hair and bear grease in their tubs, but Connie and Gary Potter took advantage of the photo-op and videotaped the bear, called Samson, luxuriating in their tub.

One day the Potters saw Samson rolling in agony on their lawn. Concerned, they called Fish & Game to help. By the time the wardens came, Samson, who had incautiously eaten a plastic bag, felt better. Because he was a known “nuisance bear,” they trapped him. They found that he was an old bear, with worn-down teeth, who wouldn't be able to support himself in the wild.

Fish & Game has views on the unwisdom of people feeding formidable wild animals. (F&G would get the blame if Samson gummed a Chihuahua.) They have experience with relocating garbage-eating bears (who return to favored garbage dumps with lightning speed). They also know that zoos are full up with black bears. They announced that they would euthanize Samson. Horrified, the Potters took their videos of Samson bathing to the television news. The public was appalled, as anyone would be who can identify with an innocent woodland creature lolling in a hot tub after a satisfying meal of garbage. The governor issued a stay of execution.

The Orange County Zoo, with a sharper eye to public relations than F&G, announced that it would take Samson in. They built him a big enclosure with a waterfall and a pool. (But no hot tub, and I am betting no salty snacks.) He lived there for years, until he got so sick he really did have to be euthanized.

So if we already have wildlife trying to sign up for the spa treatment without encouragement, think of the business we could do if we were trying. Spas where they didn't have to dodge wardens, where the salty snacks were laid out on buffets, where dogs wouldn't bark at them.

We'd need to be clever. We'd need to be sure that a rabbit coming out of the massage room (blissfully relaxed), didn't encounter a coyote (invigorated by a back-scratching session), back into a bobcat exiting a meditation class, jump sideways and bump into a moose heading for the jacuzzi, and startle a bear into swallowing a loofah. Since none of these animals really want to meet humans either, we'd do it by monitoring video cameras and not opening gates that would let predator and prey or any kind of enemies into the same space.

(It wouldn't be right to use spas to attract animals for hunting purposes. What if the custom spread? What if manicurists and masseurs went Sweeney Todd on their clientele? Think about it.)

Why on earth would we do this? It's not like animals can pay. We would do it because it would be cool, because we like animals, because it would be interesting to see what happened, and mostly, as the story of Samson shows, because we would get Such. Cool. Video.

A Worrisome Precedent

A black bear is being sought by New Jersey police on suspicion of stealing a minivan. Officer Dave Dehard came across the stolen minivan abandoned by the side of the road with dented door panels and a broken passenger window. Looking for clues..., Dehard found the front seat covered with drool, candy wrappers, and coarse black hair... Police theorize that the bear smelled candy..., smashed the window, then “accidentally released the emergency brake” while foraging inside, causing the vehicle to roll down a hill. ---The Week

“Mom, Dad, I theorize that a black bear smelled brownies, entered our home through the dog door, was attracted to your purse by the smell of gum, inadvertently swallowed a twenty dollar bill, lurched against the computer, accidentally linking to that porn site, which automatically linked to a couple other porn sites, and then exited through the mud room, probably picking up a six-pack of the Moosehead as he went. I knew you'd be upset about the mess, and I was trying to clean up, but I only got as far as vacuuming up a whole bunch of coarse black hair.”

“Sweetheart, I just came home a minute ago and found the place like this. I theorize that a black bear smelled that shaving cream you got on the rug the other day, entered our home via the chimney, found itself in our bedroom, spritzed itself with your aftershave, and then exuberantly rolled on the bed, dislodging that pair of somebody's boxer shorts which must have somehow gotten accidentally included with our dry cleaning. What a mess! I got what must be bear drool on my clothes when I came in, so I took them off right away. Ugh! Bear drool! So gross! Hold me!”

“Captain, my theory: looks like the perp was a black bear. Bear smells something in the evidence room, sneaks into the station house. Maybe hid in the back of a squad car, lay low in the garage until the day shift went home. Then made unsuccessful attempt to break and enter the evidence room. Grabbed and consumed snacks from the detective bureau desks. Then detected candy scent in that piñata of the commissioner the detectives have. While attempting to access the candy the suspect climbed onto a computer that was logged on, through the use of a back paw got into the discretionary fund, accidentally clicked with its claw to bet it all on European stock indexes, then, hearing a noise, exited out the side. Doesn't it seem to you like there's more coarse black hair than usual lying around? Too bad about the money. You wouldn't really expect good investments from a bear. Though of course if the indexes had gone the other way, he'd be a total hero.”

Editors—I hypothesize that a bear, attracted by the lure of publication, which the animal took for the scent of fame and for the deep primordial call of self-expression, made its way into a small office in the downtown area of a Western city, where it raked its long curved claws across a keyboard with a grace surprising in such a large creature--one typically thought of as ungainly, and one which does not invariably feed only upon the canonical “roots and berries,” but on rare occasions reveals itself as a formidable predator--creating a short work of apparently lighthearted prose. Accidentally releasing its own innate sense of literary restraint, the bear, or if not a bear, a person strongly identifying with bears, composed a brief fantasia addressing the human penchant for relentlessly deterministic explanations of animal behavior, and the equally marked human penchant to employ these explanations in self-justification. The innocent animal—and I knowingly use the term “innocent” for its several meanings such as “not cognizant of current normal literary channels,” and “free of the imputation of original sin,” and “hasn't killed anyone yet, or even hurt anyone, and knocking over dumpsters is hardly a felony”--then flicked a claw rapidly across the metallic device which it simultaneously found disquietingly natural and so familiar as to be almost invisible, sending the odd missive on its electronic way, exhaled a bitter gust that seemed to speak of the high mountain ranges, spun once in the office chair, and lumbered away, leaving the workspace littered with drool, candy wrappers, and coarse black hair.