The Turquoise Ledge (19 page)

I
t crossed my mind that I might live on top of a turquoise ledge but I dismissed the thought and now here was evidence again. Recently there was the marble of turquoise where the hole for the power pole had been bored down, and then the sliver of calcite with a splash of turquoise from the ground in front of the gate to the front yard.

I was with Robert looking for possible locations for a house so I went into the old circular corral. At one time it was made the old-fashioned Sonoran way with long mesquite poles stacked and woven together as the ends. I noticed an outcrop of rock.

The rock outcrop must have been covered with dirt those years I kept horses in the round corral. I know I would have noticed the outcrop with the thin streak of turquoise across it. It took seventy or eighty years of horse and cattle hooves pounding the corral ground, which wore away the bluish gray basalt that surrounds the white layers of calcites, to expose the bright spot of turquoise. Here is another turquoise ledge.

By the end of the year I realized there were turquoise ledges right here on this hilltop—out back where I found the malachite or green chalcedony when we buried Dolly. All this time I was thinking about a great ledge of solid turquoise somewhere up the big arroyo in the mountains, while a ledge was here, right under my nose, right under my house.

On the eve of the winter solstice a magical thing: I found a small turquoise stone on the closet floor of my bedroom.

Not long afterward, I was walking down the west side slope below the house to check my trashmidden. I was looking down for trash when I spotted a caliche outcrop that was secreting turquoise of a bright deep blue—no green tones at all. The color was more pure bright blue than any of the turquoise rocks from the big arroyo. This is how the year of walks ends.

 

On New Year's Day 2008 I went for a walk to the big arroyo and found more boulders and sand removed with a great deal more damage done to the big arroyo by the man and his machine. Only now, eleven days later, do I feel like writing about it.

I regretted I had not reported the original incident in July—broken foot or no broken foot. The gray basalt and quartzite boulders might have been saved from destruction and the small creatures in underground nests—the lizards, snakes, tortoises and tiny owls—might not have been crushed under the wheels of the machine.

I kept thinking if only I had said something in July; instead I gave in to my misgivings about the indifference and ineptitude of the local county government. A special buffer zone which extended out a mile from the Saguaro National Park might have protected the boulders if I'd acted.

On January 3, I made the first call to report the new damage. The Pima County Environmental Protection Agency office is part of Pima County Development Services. This alone should have prepared me for what followed.

The Pima County EPA informed me they didn't have jurisdiction over the strip mining of desert arroyos for aggregates no matter how close to the buffer zone of Saguaro National Park. They directed me to the Floodplain Management Division.

Ah yes! I thought. Of course this damage affects the floodplain. The removal of the boulders, rocks and sand accelerated erosion—that lovely mesquite tree whose roots had helped stabilize the sides of the arroyo was about to topple in the next rainstorm because the man and machine had gouged out the rocks and sand at its base. Without the boulders, the runoff flowed faster and there was nothing to slow it—no sandbars to hold the precious rainwater so it could soak in.

A Floodplain Division hydrologist paid the arroyo a visit and reported the damage she found was “not significant.” Now I was beginning to understand why much of the landscape in Pima County looks the way it does—trashed and ruined.

As I was writing this and going about my routine on the morning of January 11, 2008, I had no idea that just outside three of my military macaws had been attacked by owls before dawn.

I had bought Sandino twenty years ago as a mate for my first military macaw, a hen named Paco. My other military macaws were birds I had rescued in one way or other. They are big wonderful birds but they are predominantly green and not as lucrative for sellers as the scarlet or blue and gold macaws. A few years ago breeders in the Tucson area had begun to get rid of them. I felt badly to see the birds go unwanted so in 2003, I bought a pair for $500, from a veteran with Gulf War illness who could no longer keep them. Prophecy Bird came with a mate but she later died.

My nickname for Prophecy Bird was the “Hello Bird” because he was able to say “hello” a dozen different ways in higher or lower tones, faster or slower. Sometimes he allowed me to touch his head or wings—he'd been a pet at one time—he could be quick with his beak but he never behaved aggressively when I went inside his cage. I called him Prophecy Bird because often I heard him talk a great deal; sometimes he conducted both sides of a conversation but I was seldom able to hear clearly what he said.

I bought the other macaws—Bolee and her three chicks—in the spring of 2004 from a local parrot breeder. Bolee's mate had died the previous year. I really only wanted the hen, Bolee, as a companion for my military macaw Sandino, but the breeder would only sell them as a “package.” Sandino had been without a mate much longer than Prophecy Bird had. I planned to get him a new mate next.

I put Bolee in the six foot by twelve foot aviary with Sandino; and the three youngest birds, Tony, Binny and Sugar, I put in the biggest aviary, the fourteen foot octagon, to be nearby their mother, Bolee. The diameter and height of the aviary saved the lives of the three young macaws the night the owls came.

During the cool weather months I sometimes delayed feeding and watering the birds until the afternoon so I might have the morning hours to write. I went from writing and working on this manuscript to binding a copy of my new novella,
Ocean Story
, for my sister Wendy on her upcoming birthday January 18.

Finally at around four-thirty that afternoon of January 11, I went out to the aviaries. I noticed something was wrong right away because Prophecy Bird wasn't there to greet me. I walked over to his aviary and the first thing I saw was a severed foot in the middle of the floor of the cage and a pool of blood. I knew at once it was an owl attack. I was heartsick.

I expected to find him dead in the nest box, but he was still alive. I tried to get him out of the box but he turned away to a corner to let me know he just wanted to be left as he was. The sun was behind the mountains. I had to think what to do. I left Prophecy Bird in his nest box and went to feed and water the other macaws in their aviaries.

I saw Bolee, the military macaw hen, at the back of the cage on the floor. That was unusual for her to be standing on the floor, but when I looked more closely I was horrified to see that Bolee was dead but not lying down. She had spread wide her lovely wings a last time for balance because both her legs were gone; she held the cage wire in her beak to steady herself as she died. It took me awhile to loosen her beak from the wire so I could bury her.

I think Bolee fought to her death to keep the owls away from her three offspring in the octagon aviary next to hers. All my attention was on her so I didn't notice Sandino had lost a leg.

I was in shock. I had to take care of Prophecy Bird, but I already had a sad feeling that he was dying. I went and got a ladder and a towel to wrap around him to catch him. I saw he was in the corner of the barrel, his back to me, and when I made an attempt to put the towel around him to pick him up he turned back twice as if to beg me please to let him be, to let him go in peace.

Sandino seemed o.k. Healthy parrots perch on one leg—in the twilight I couldn't see his injury. I set up a light near the octagon aviary to discourage owls that night. I had a feeling Prophecy Bird would die that night.

The next morning I found poor Prophecy Bird dead in his oak box and buried him. I loved him dearly and even now I miss him. As I walked back from the grave, I took a look at Sandino in the aviary and it was then I finally saw the jagged ends of the leg bone, and realized he had lost a leg in the owl attack.

Sandino had pretended to be o.k. and had fooled me as he hoped to fool predators. I don't know why Sandino didn't die of shock as Bolee and Prophecy Bird had. I felt so badly I had overlooked the terrible injury; but maybe it was good that Sandino had the night to stabilize before he faced the vet office and the surgery.

The orthopedic vet who amputated the remains of the leg was experienced with large birds. He'd seen similar injuries in the Harris hawks and red-tail hawks the State Fish and Game officers brought for treatment. Great horned owls tore the wings off red-tail hawks and falcons, and sometimes their feet.

Twenty-four hours later I brought Sandino home to a different life. I put a macaw cage in my bedroom because it was the warmest room in the house; I wanted Sandino nearby so he knew how much I loved him—I was determined that he survive.

I called my son Caz, who helped me fortify the octagon aviary with hardware cloth and layers of shade cloth to further protect the three young macaws in case the owls returned. I hooked up a light and left on a radio tuned to a talk show station to discourage the owls at night.

For eighteen years I had kept macaws in aviaries outside without any trouble. The great horned owls often came around my house at night, and I loved to hear their HOOO! HOOO! Sometimes I found an owl feather at the water dish near the aviaries, but they never bothered the macaws. Not long before the attack, I'd seen a large handsome horned owl on the top of the utility pole near the big arroyo. There were so many rodents at night for the owls to eat, I didn't worry, I never dreamed the owls would choose the macaws instead. But in those eighteen years a great deal had changed as the city sprawled across the desert.

That the owls attacked not one but two aviaries in the same night seemed excessive until I thought about it. I recalled the strange uncomfortable energy in the atmosphere here in the hills in the days after I had found the new damage in the arroyo and made the phone calls to the local authorities.

The big arroyo itself is an ecosystem. The animals and humans use the arroyo as a way to traverse the steep rough terrain of the cerros and basalt ridges. Large arroyos may cross private property but the wildlife and pedestrians and equestrians have a right of way to pass through the arroyo; no fences or dams or other obstructions are permitted. Because runoff water concentrates in the arroyo, the wildlife of the desert gravitate there to feed or hunt. The excavating machine not only tore up the boulders, it disrupted the entire area, and left many creatures homeless as well as hungry and thirsty.

The suffering and distress of so many living beings from the same location of the desert created an anxious angry energy of conflict that permeated the area. I felt it strongly; the disturbance was real and pervasive, even on a psychic level. The fury of the owls was powerful, but the man with the machine was full of fury as well.

January is the month the birds and animals give birth and raise their young ahead of the brutal summer heat. The pair of owls killed my macaws to feed their owlets. If the owls had been able to find game elsewhere they would have done so, but the big construction boom with cheap mortgage money had brought the bulldozers to the desert hills to crush and scrape the earth for grotesque mansions where the owls once hunted.

The machines dug up the earth and destroyed the nests of rodents and birds in the owls' habitat, and disrupted hunting and water sources. The bulldozers sent the hungry owls to find food for their nestlings in my aviaries. I love the great horned owls; I don't blame the owls for the attack on my macaws, I blame the men in the bulldozers who crush the desert. I blame the imbeciles in Pima County government who fail at everything except collecting taxes and bribes.

The strange angry energy loose in the Tucson Mountains in early January was also fed by the machine man's anger at the visits from the county authorities. He tolerated no interference from any government; he was a law unto himself.

Six or seven days after the owl attack, Bill and I were awakened one night by a loud sound that shook the bedroom. It felt and sounded as if some large object had hit the wall outside the east-facing window. Whatever it was struck the wall about seven feet above the ground.

Bill went back to sleep, and it was then I realized something strange was going on—not of this world because the four mastiffs outside the bedroom door had slept through the loud thud of the object that hit the side of the house. The dogs' self-preservation instincts kept them safely asleep as the wild violent force raged outside the house.

I got up and in the bathroom I was able to hear a sound from outside the east-facing wall but as if no interior walls or exterior wall existed. It seemed like the low guttural canine sound of a growl just before it turned into a howl. The word “werewolf” at once came to mind.

The odd energy came in a straight line from the site of destruction in the big arroyo east of my house.

The four dogs remained asleep. I went back to bed. I wasn't afraid because all nine of the Star Being portraits were facing the east that night, and protected the house from the “werewolf energy” sent my way by the machine man.

After the owl attack I was too sick over the loss of Prophecy Bird and Bolee, and too anxious about Sandino's survival, to think about writing. I had to give Sandino antibiotics twice a day so I stopped my walk so I'd be there at the right times. I wasn't able to write or paint or do anything but check on the remaining macaws and watch television, which served as a kind of narcotic.

The owls attacked the macaws on January 11 but I wasn't able to bring myself to write about it for months. When my beloved grandpa Hank died, it took more than ten years before I was able to write about the morning he passed away, in the poem titled “Deer Dance/For Your Return.”