Peromyscus maniculatus

I had to look that up on Wikipedia. Who wouldn't? A mouse is a mouse. After all there are 66 species of peromyscus maniculatus, the Deer Mouse. I had a book as a child about 'Whitefoot the Wood Mouse,' a cousin of the ubiquitous Deer Mouse. That was my early introduction to the fact a mouse is not just a mouse but that there are all kinds of the rodents.

 When we first moved in, here at the staff housing at Castolon District of Big Bend National Park, evidence of their broad ranging around our living space took us a day to clean up. They are cute little creatures as pictured above but the ones we have encountered are not frolicking among red-berried plants in the clutter of the forest floor ... they are sneakily traipsing around our apartment all through the night.

 One of the sounds we look forward to being awakened by in the middle of the night is the loud snap and the softer thump that is the sound a Victor Trap makes when it is triggered by a nose touching the tiny chunk of cheddar and then flipping itself and its victim upside down. Some nights we sleep right through the event and discover only by 'running our trap line' that we've been successful.

One morning we had one in the trap in the closet and one behind the stool in the bathroom. And that is one of the curiosities of our Deer Mouse population. They don't touch the bait in the wide open territory of the living room/kitchen, they seem to favor the bathroom and a closet to which there seems no entrance except under the door.

With the 'double' that day, we have averaged one less Deer Mouse for each week of our residence here since the last week of October. Since the Deer Mouse, after leaving the nest, establishes a territory within 500 feet of the nest site, our building must be sitting atop an unusual density of the tiny pests. Or when these apartments were erected 40 years ago, a couple of them thought they had been the beneficiaries of the Great Mouse who gifted them with a housing boom.

Wikipedia says that while each mouse establishes its own territory, these territories do overlap. Studies also indicate that Deer Mice from overlapping territories do interact with one another. My study indicates that one of the things that they do not interact about is the dangers upstairs from which tempting cheese aromas waft. They keep coming back to the same traps, set in the same spots and baited with the same Safeway cheese.

We take little satisfaction from decimating populations of fellow creatures, but since these guys are vectors and carriers of hantaviruses and Lyme disease neither do we hesitate to exterminate a few. Maybe we will have served to protect the health of the Volunteers who will move in here next week when we vacate.

Yes, it is time for us to return to Ohio. We'll leave here sometime around Feb. 5th and wander home so as not to get there while it is still bitter cold. Since this may be our last year to volunteer at Big Bend, we will miss this fierce landscape and the fine community here. We won't miss peromyscus maniculatus.

It is enough.

As I have done every day here at the Visitor Center for six years, I've re-loaded the printer with sheets already printed on one side. Of course, every once in a while, fresh paper goes into the printer. How else would the 'reusable paper' box get replenished?

So really, half the paper we use to print off hard copy of daily weather reports and road condition reports so that we can post on bulletin boards is recycled paper. Since the remainder of my time I spend answering questions with information I've already stored in my brain and operating two cash registers using procedures I've memorized, you could say that I spend all my time recycling something or other.

That's not a bad way to describe a preacher who re-invents himself to become a kind of Interpretive Ranger - a Recycled Reverend.

Truth is that being recycled is more than enough, as Anne Alexander Bingham says in her poem -

 "It Is Enough"

To know that the atoms
of my body
will remain

to think of them rising
through the roots of a great oak
to live in
leaves, branches, twigs

perhaps to feed the
crimson peony
the blue iris
the broccoli

or rest on water
freeze and thaw
with the seasons

some atoms might become a
bit of fluff on the wing
of a chickadee
to feel the breeze
know the support of air

and some might drift
up and up into space
star dust returning from

whence it came
it is enough to know that
as long as there is a universe
I am a part of it.

Best View of the Sunset

There is one question at the Visitor Center at Big Bend National Park to which I try not to show my impatience. "Where is the best view of the sunset?"

So far, the sun has proven to be reliable in setting in approximately the same place each day ... in the west. Of course, the precise location on the horizon varies by a few degrees each day over months, but one would have to be here plotting the spot to recognize the variations.

So, I'm tempted to say, "Look West, young man, look West!" Except that it isn't always or even usually a 'young man.' The question though, almost always comes from a person whom I assume plans to use the camera dangling from the strap around his/her neck to capture the lovely pastels on cloud and cliff of post card fame. An accompanying hunch has me thinking: you'll only get home and have to say in a tone dripping with disappointment, "Well it doesn't do justice to the actual sunset, I guess you have to be there."

My answer, filtered through my best 'Friendly Ranger' smile is, "Well, I think the best view of the sunset is to stand with your back to the setting sun and marvel at the color shifts on the hills and mountains that will unfold like a kaleidoscope every few minutes.

They often return my answer with a look that says, "Old man, are there any real Rangers here?"

Why is it that people do not realize that the sun is not something you look at, it is something you see by.