Bee Tree Farm

Sparing details, I’ll just say that one of our bucks was killed today. Attacked by coyote in the middle of the day, 100 feet from the home of our herd manager. The brutality had all the hallmarks of a coyote pair. One of our bucks was chased and clawed by one, but clearly the other coyote pinned the Alpine, and they shared him before killing him. In fact, they never killed. Filipa found him, and we rushed over to bestow one final mercy. I’ll never know exactly how long he suffered but I believe it was relatively brief and feel enormous luck in the coincidence that Jeremy happened to be home due to a back injury that kept him from driving today. It’s funny to think about luck when your hands are covered in blood, but living here we’ve learned to turn situations over until we see the spots that are clean.

Filipa is shaken, as is expected from any caring person who comes home to find such bloodshed and suffering juxtaposed against a day so vibrant and full of life as this April Monday. In the six years that we’ve lived here, the majority of our animal loss was all crowded into the first two years – before the Great Pyrenees were mature enough to guard properly, before the coyote that roamed in packs learned this particular highway was closed. They couldn’t read the No Trespassing signs we posted, but they came to understand the ferocity of Jeremy’s gun, the volume of our dogs’ growls and the size of their white bodies in contrast to their own small, low, lurking forms. In this six year expanse, it’s not that I’ve forgotten how horrible their appetites can be, how fearless, how brazen: it’s that I adopted a selective amnesia to forget. The other option was constant fear and, well, that wasn’t an option if we were going to stay.

And we were going to stay.

For the most part, we’ve learned to co-exist with the wildlife. After all, their presence is what makes this place the countryside, gives it the character we admire, demands grit from ourselves we never fathomed but have grown to depend on. I’m not saying I’d wrestle a mountain lion, but we don’t tolerate animal loss when it can be prevented and when there’s plenty of wild animals that can serve as food. I write all this knowing that I was the one who made the decision to move our bucks from their completely depleted but extremely safe pasture from behind our home. It was my decision to move them to the 8 acres that sprawl in front of Filipa’s home, a space so dense and full of vegetation it seemed “perfect for the boys” – knowing that “dense and full of vegetation” also equates to “dangerous and prime coyote real estate.” However, since her property borders an established homestead full of always barking dogs, and since she herself is the owner of many large (large!) barking dogs, it seemed – you know – safe.

Instead, it was foolish. Instead we invited the wildlife into a space that is slowly (and surely) being re-shaped and domesticated. Today I realized I am audience and witness to our own early days as we’ve watched our herd manager and her husband follow their own dreams of leaving the city for a much larger piece of land, listening to their appreciation of the overwhelming beauty of unobstructed sunsets, the fertility of soil that spits out gardens, the abundance, the abundance….

Today I saw myself in her, crouched over an animal with fatal injuries, his head cradled in her lap, her shock palpable. When she called to alert me of this particular tragedy, the panic in her voice could have been mine – a few years ago. And while I am deeply shaken and we are all re-assessing our next steps to safely integrate livestock into this formerly uninhabited property (the bucks have come back to our farm, for now), I did not feel a deep sense of loss. I did not feel broken. I did not feel anything but angry and frustrated and educated. Because it is a reminder that we still don’t and never will “own” this space. It’s a reminder that while we try to always keep our animals in lush spaces with fresh vegetation, we are then sacrificing their safety unless they are constantly accompanied by a small army of dogs (not always possible). But mostly I felt that I had seen this before, I knew it was a potential outcome, and I was at peace with the sacrifice. We cannot choose to live in the wild without living with all the wild things. It’s an agreement we make when we try to carve something into feral land. My mistake was forgetting it is feral.

This evening we talked a little about what she’d seen, how adrenaline overtakes our gut reaction to run and hide when the reality is that in this situation, we are the only responsible parties. With Jeremy’s back injured, she and I donned the gloves and lifted the body into the back of the ATV. I watched her gently rest his head against the vehicle. I respect that level of respect for any body – any body. I’ve been told before that in order to survive this choice of lifestyle, we must distance ourselves from the animals we love but I can’t agree with a statement that makes so little sense to me. The trick is not to love less, the trick is to love efficiently. I did not have the luxury of time to mourn Bowie today, but I will certainly make time to formulate a better plan for the boys. I will make better choices, learn from my continued mistakes, do better. I cried for one minute – later. In the safety of my kitchen, after we triaged the situation, took stock of our stock, inhaled three ragged breaths. I had to wash the blood from my hands and make cheese this evening. We make it from the milk of these animals that live in the wild, love to eat the wild things that grow here, love to bask in open fields. To give them those freedoms I risk the safety they would enjoy living in pens on a porch. But would they enjoy the safety when living in a pen?

So there you go.

It’s timely, then, that my father sent an article just two days ago about a true story of two little goats that wandered out of their pasture and onto the edge of a bridge, were stuck there for 18 hours before the city employed all of its fanciest equipment to rescue them. The author, Marc Silver, invoked a proverb from a Rabbi Nachman, “The whole world is a very narrow bridge, the important thing is to not be afraid.” Tonight I’m sending that message into the universe to anyone trying new things or, in the case of Filipa, leaving her comfortable home and yard for land too expansive to fence completely, for property too wild to ever totally tame. The risks are expansive too, the tragedies splash into our reality in vivid technicolor, but so do the sunsets, the fields of wildflowers, the deafening silence and all the very best parts that come only from trying and living without the fear of, you know, falling.

Tonight I’m still waiting to feel the shock and awe that would have rocked my world momentarily under similar circumstances just a few years ago. But instead I’m shrugging my shoulders, acknowledging that the loss comes with the life comes with the death comes with the birth comes with the season comes with the fact that we can’t have all the good things come easy. Goodnight sweet Bowie, our little prince who spent his days on green pastures with his friends. That’s just about the best life any of us could hope for.