I’m a kinesthetic learner. It just means i’m not learning well unless i’m moving. Whether i’m walking, pacing, doing something with my hands, or chewing gum, if i’m not moving, my brain’s not on. That means, to memorize my exam material, in rain or shine, wind or frost, i walk the road with my notebook. It confuses people and they constantly stop to ask me if i’m a runaway or if i need help. They’re very suspicious of what i’m doing. But it’s a free country, people can walk, and i don’t need everyone to understand me all the time. On my walks i always encounter animals, scat, and sometimes carcasses. It’s always an interesting walk and there is a pull to focus more on what’s around me than what’s on the page but once i get in my groove everything else melts away and the memorization begins. My universe becomes the page and my world becomes the information written on it. But enough of the boring bits, here’s a list of things that i’ve encountered on my study walks:
I thought this guy was impressively colorful. I coaxed him onto a leaf and gave him a lift to the side of the road where he wouldn’t be smooshed under a car or truck tire. It’s funny, if i had a garden he’d be the enemy but i dont have any veggie plants so he’s just another fellow animal to me.
This deer carcass made me so sad. Her foot wasn’t caught on the string of barbed wire. Her back leg had actually gone through a square of the bent fence and then through another square as well and at the height she would have been standing, the only way to get her leg unhung from the fence would be to lift it up, back through the squares in the fence that she had sunk down into. She wouldn’t have been tall enough to do it. So her leg remained hopelessly threaded through the squares in the fence. This was a road that led to so many ranchers’ properties. I hoped to God that this deer had hung herself on the fence at night with coyotes hot on her heels and by sunrise a carcass was all that could be seen, because if i had to know that my neighbors drove past this deer hung in the fence while it was still alive and didnt stop to lift her leg out of there before coyotes or a mountain lion learned of her predicament, i’ll just lose even more respect for humans. Yes, they hunt these creatures and know them as food, but that is sport. There’s no sport in a sitting duck. She ought to have been freed if there were an opportunity. For whatever reason, the coyotes ate what they wanted and didnt return. The buzzards wouldn’t touch her. I am not sure why, but she’s still out there rotting as i type this. Her guts sunk down in her rib cage and its all just mush now. The fur is starting to deteriorate and the skin shrink and turn a strange brown color. She smells of death. Not even the flies are interested. I’m intrigued as to why all the normal animals that would aid in the breakdown process won’t touch her. She’s just there and nothing will disturb her. She remains in the position the coyotes left her strewn in and every time i walk the road to study, the mandible is in the same place and nothing has been disturbed or moved at all. I wonder if one of the sheep farmers would have poisoned the corpse to try to kill the coyotes. I wonder if they would be smart enough to know to stay away or they’d be fooled and fall victim to such a scheme. I have no idea why the buzzards and the flies and the coyotes want nothing to do with her now but its unsettling.
I could be wrong but i am going to guess this is raccoon scat. Feel free to correct if someone knows better.
