“Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;”
---‘Pied Beauty’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins
I generally romanticize nature. Much like Hopkins I praise its beauty and use it as a source of inspiration. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” (God’s Grandeur by Hopkins X164) But this idealistic approach is far from an accurate depiction of nature. Nature is not only lush and beautiful, but also cruel and harsh. Plants and animals are in a constant Darwainian battle for survival and often nature is an indifferent parent who takes no empathy or compassion on her children. I don’t normally like discussing this part of nature, I would much rather focus on its pied beauty, but this past winter break; I had a vivid encounter with nature’s ferocity.
La Vernia becoming stark and barren...
La Vernia has been in a serious drought. We haven’t had a good rain in over a year and as a result the landscape has become crumpled and brown. Black mesquite trees stand gnarled glaring over ailing fields that shrivel from the indifferent sky. Home was not the lush Serengeti of my childhood, but rather a painting of dehydration and exhaustion. Winter emphasized the stark realities with a bleak, gray sky and an incessant howling wind.
I try everyday to take our two dogs, Chandler and Avalanche on a walk down to the Cibolo Creek, which borders our property. Both dogs are your classic family pets. Chandler is a wired-haired fox terrier, spoiled, spunky, and extremely lovable. Avalanche is a Great Pyrenees, I often feel pity for her, she never gets her just reward, totally loyal and brilliant, but left outside in the cold. When I returned home I was in major trouble, because the dogs had to go almost the entire semester without a proper pastoral patrol. So of course that was one of my first priorities upon my return.
Chandler and Avalanche
The walk went as usual, I philosophizing about the world’s problems and the dogs scouring the brush. Normally the dogs don’t find anything, occasionally they will scare up an armadillo or spot a lone coyote, but rarely do they have face-face encounters with La Vernian wildlife. We were poking around the creek when we met perhaps the most vicious animal in Texas. When one thinks of dangerous Texan critters rattlesnakes or coyotes are the first images, but I would assert that the most aggressive and dangerous animal on the Texas prairie is in fact the wild pig. Many of you may be laughing, but feral pigs are shameless. In La Vernia Junior High, kids didn’t tell ghost stories, they told epics of their fathers, brothers and cousins, driving out at midnight to wrestle with these fierce beasts. The jr. high had a teacher named Mr. Land, who was the utter embodiment of a hog hunt. He in many ways resembled a hog, he was short and squatty, but his skin was tough and leathery and his squinty, little eyes made every student on campus’ blood freeze. He would come to school often with the remnants of a dead hog in his pick up, and spend half the class describing his near death experiences. In La Vernia, hog hunting was the most respected way to prove manliness, because hogs were the Grendels of Wilson County.
This guy would fit in, in La Vernia
I had not had much exposure to wild pigs before, but as the dogs and I were walking around the pecan orchard a huge heard of the beasts came storming through the trees. It was clear that the hogs were as scared of me as I was of them. They didn’t run towards us, but away as fast as they could. I counted about forty of them, untamed and wild. They were barging towards the other side of the creek when Chandler decided he should prove his manliness and took off after the heard. I was horrified. “Chandler!” I yelled. “Come here! Bad Dog!” But it was too late, Chandler went tearing of through the brush, determined to catch a hog. Avalanche is normally reasonable, but she succumbed to pack mentality and followed the charge with a bombardment of barks and growls. Growing up on Hog Stories I new what a full-grown hog could do to a dog, there were tales of people losing their best hounds to a mother pig protecting her young. I had to stop them. I ran after them, through the brush calling out hoping they would stop long enough for me to catch up.
I climbed up a hill to an oak grove, where I saw most of the pigs squealing in fright as they disappeared on the other side of the pasture, but one loan pig was struggling behind. In a second Avalanche and Chandler leaped into the air and brought the pig crashing down. Dust obfuscated the scene. A combination of growls and squeals clashed in the air. I ran over pleading for the dogs to stop. When I reached the pig the dogs stepped back, letting their alpha survey the spoils. I stared down at the “beast” gasping for air. That noise still haunts me to this day. That awful, desperate gasp for air. Saying “Please end this pain, take me to my family, I don’t want to die.” I remember the crimson. That grey landscape of a winter drought was stained with that vivid crimson oozing from the gasping lungs. I looked disappointedly at the dogs. How could they do this, we were not in serious danger, they were well fed, what motivation would drive them to kill this innocent being? I stared into Avalanche’s eyes, normally so quiet and reasonable; they had the same crimson glistening in them, but not a crimson of pain, a crimson of victory. She was panting excited for the hunt. Her eyes possessed this wild, glint or wicked joy.
The dogs had become Harrigan's and Blake's ferocious tigers
In the end I couldn’t really blame the dogs. They were, at their core just like the tiger Stephen Harrigan writes about in his book Commanche Midnight. In the end “a tiger is a predator, its mission on the earth is to kill, and in doing so it often displays awesome strength and dexterity….Even a well-fed tiger in a zoo keeps his vestigial repertoire of hunting behaviors intact.” (X153-4) This is what was so haunting, though, no matter how trained and disciplined I thought my dogs were, they still possessed that primitive instinct to kill. They didn’t kill out of hunger, or protection, they killed because it was this natural instinct they had no control over. When they saw those pigs they became savage and no amount of coaxing or treats would keep them from their dirty business. They “had a predators indifference to tragedy; they had killed without culpability.” (X155) I guess what makes this more eerie is not that a dog will resort to its basic instincts, but that all animal will do so, including people. Whether it be Mr. Land barreling down a boar or David Lee Powell gunning down a police officer, it seems like humans too can succumb to this uncontrollable savage reality of nature.
“And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?”
--William Blake, “The Tiger”(X146)
And so I reach this awful since of terror, expressed in Blake’s poem “The Tiger.” How is it that the creator who could make the peaceful lamb also create the vicious, snarling Tiger? How can humanity be so loving and compassionate and yet possess these wild uncontrollable capabilities. I have no resolve to this question, but I fear the day that I meet my symbolic wild pigs, will I heal to my master of ethics, or partake in the hunt?
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” (X146)
Will I become a Tiger?
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