by aramatzne@gmail.com | 26 May 2025 | Musing
…about birds on a larger scale
I recently discovered that, depending on the brand, the first or second ingredient in the suet I’ve been providing for the birds is corn (peanuts occupy the alternate place in each case). I have more than a few qualms about supporting the commercial beef industry, of which suet is a by-product, but it seemed like helping the birds on the small scale that I can was worth it.
Now, seeing that more corn fills the suet cage than suet, I wonder. I worry. I’m researching. What I know is this: 100% of non-organic seed corn in the US is treated with neonicotinoids, a neurotoxin. In addition to that, most crops are sprayed with the same class of pesticide later in the season. Neonics are water soluble and as much 95% of the seed coating is lost to the soil and water. As the plant grows, every cell is infused with the neonic as it is taken up through roots. Every leaf and stem is lethal; pollen and nectar are cocktails of death, and seeds are laden. Intended to target insect pests, poision is poison is poison and it is indiscriminate. Anything that eats the seed or an afflicted insect is also affected.
Neonicotinoid use in the US increased from about 330,000 pounds per year in the late 1990s and early 2000s to 5.9 million pounds in 2012 – the last year for which I found statistics – with no indication of the increase subsiding. It is commonly used in lawn and garden sprays, and for a time, was found in what were sold as pollinator-friendly plants at national garden stores in quantities high enough to directly kill most pollinators. A highly mobile substance, neonics move in rain and irrigation runoff. Everywhere researchers have looked for neonics across the country, in soil, surface and ground water, on produce (even organic produce), in pregnant humans (especially Hispanic women), they found them.
Is the non-organic corn in the suet that’s not suet laden with neonicitinoids? Am I feeding birds living far from the corn production hub with a substance that is making them unfit to produce eggs and chicks, and unfit to migrate? Do I stop feeding the birds and watch the few remaining birds on this landscape potentially succomb to starvation or do I poison them? And, more importantly, how many people across the country are buying this same suet for their birds? Are suet-producing companies regularly testing for residual neonics? Are they blythely, knowingly, slowly causing a decline in bird populations for short-term economic gain? Surely, I’m not the only person who made this connection, but I found nothing indicating suet was of concern.
This morning, I watched a female house finch die on my porch. She didn’t hit the window. She looked like she was resting, but that is an impossibility for a house finch. As she became more prone, I could see her tail twitching like it was pulsing with her heartbeat. Her breathing was labored. A male finch came to visit her, called to her, hopped close and away. She slowly leaned to her left side, feet ticking, tailing thrumming, and closed her eyes permanently. A male visited her several times over the next hour, until I picked her up.
I don’t know what killed her, but this episode doesn’t settle well on top of the line of thinking I was pursuing over the last few weeks. I kept the carcass, of course. If I find anyone who can determine cause of death, I’ll let you know.
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by aramatzne@gmail.com | 15 Jul 2024 | Musing, Roads Taken
Last week, I was in Joseph, Oregon, for a writing workshop. Writers and readers from around the West came to connect and learn, explore, and expand. I dusted off this piece and read it at open-mic. I trust it will carry weight again—for the first reading or the tenth.
Full of snowmelt and spring rain, the Imnaha River squeezes through Blue Hole.
The Imnaha Dreams
Last summer camping on the Imnaha River, I had a dream. It was August, but on the river in the bottom of a forested canyon and at elevation in the Wallowa Mountains, it was cold. I slept in the bed of the pickup, curled into my down sleeping bag, with multiple layers of clothing and a hat. I don’t remember much about the dream except that it terrified me, and I awoke as I was about to be decapitated.
Startled awake with the sound of water rushing downstream to join the Snake River, the trees crowding in above me, and the stars brilliantly clear in the gaps between the branches far above, I wondered what had occurred on this site. I lay awake a long time thinking about the dream and whatever energy I had tapped into.
As happens, the year waned. The dream, all but forgotten, left my conscious memory.
Last week, I was camping on the Imnaha. I had a dream. It was June, but in the river bottom, in an open ponderosa pine park and in the spring rain at elevation in the Wallowa Mountains, it was cold. I was a few miles above the previous campsite; I slept in the camper in the bed of the pickup. Big Cat was with me. I don’t remember much about the dream except that it terrified me, and I awoke when every hair on the back of my neck and head was standing on end, both in the dream and not.
Jolted awake by the dream, I heard the river and the rain on the roof of the camper, I had the sense that I was in the wrong place. Lying awake, I remembered last year’s dream.
The Imnaha was home to the Niimíipu, the Nez Perce. These were the last grazing lands of Chief Joseph’s band. They lived in these canyons, in the mountains, and on the grassy slopes. They grazed their horses and lived their lives here, on a shrinking allotment of land “given” to them by the US government in this far-flung corner of Oregon and then slowly taken away again as white settlers discovered its value. There were promises and skirmishes and then Chief Joseph fled with other Nez Perce who would not agree to forced relocation to a reservation.
Most of us have heard some piece of this story. Pursued by numerous factions of the U.S. military, they crossed the Snake River, the mountains of Idaho, and The Big Hole in Montana. They wove their way through Yellowstone, the Sunshine Valley, the Absaroka Mountains, and north again to the Bear Paw Mountains of central Montana. Finally, after 1,170 miles and multiple battles, they surrendered. They were 40 miles from the Canadian border. They were relocated to Kansas, and Chief Joseph was never allowed to return to the Imnaha.
I don’t claim to have any connections to the past, no clairvoyance; I don’t channel spirits. But, I believe that the land remembers a lot of things we choose to forget. There was peace and there was some type of balance. Then, there was not. Everything has energy; we all come from entropy, take shape, and then return to entropy. Blood that soaks into the soil, flesh, and bone scattered by scavengers and decay doesn’t cease to exist; it takes a new form.
Maybe the dreams were just dreams, my subconscious pushing me into places I don’t want to go or reminding me of things I have not fully processed. Despite the terror that woke me, I don’t think the violence was directed at me. I think it was a reminder.
The river, the forest, and people, both Native American and, at this point, of European descent too, have flowed through this place for generations. Today, we often camp in remote places and feel some sense that we have discovered them for the first time, no matter the fire ring, the litter, or the road. We read the roadside signs about what was, who was, and when it was. We snap a photo. We move on.
We forget that there were others in this place long before any of us discovered it. Not just people passing through on a summer trip but those who lived and died here, sometimes violently, sometimes unjustly.
The next night before sleeping, I smudged the camper, the truck, and myself, burning sage as an offering to the people who came before us and in their memory. Water, trees, people will continue to flow through this land. May it be a more peaceful journey for us all.
Early summer wildflowers spread across the open ridge line.
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by aramatzne@gmail.com | 1 Jul 2024 | Musing
Upstairs neighbors
Perhaps you’ve lived with upstairs neighbors. My experience is that they are always The Elephant People, heavy-footed and awake at awkward times that I am not.
This spring, a nice young couple moved in above my bedroom. They were a bit flighty, clearly making efforts to avoid me. I can be scary, I admit, so I don’t blame them. I was pleased to have quiet and considerate neighbors.
As the spring wore on to summer, I heard a few scramblings and some muffled discussion, an occasional screech, the things of long summer days. Then, last week, there was a tussle. I don’t know the circumstances, but I heard a commotion, and seconds later, there was one unhappy mama bird screaming outside my bedroom window and three chicks on the ground, not quite ready for primetime.
They fussed and fluttered, finally making their way to fence posts next to calling mama. One female and the male climbed the posts, hopped about, fluttered down, tried again. The male finally walked across the pasture to a juniper and disappeared into the branches. It was getting dark by then, and the female was tentative, dropped to the ground, took a step, climbed back up on the post. I wanted her to snuggle with her brother and sister (whom I can only think already made it to the tree), but she spent the night on the wooden crossbar tucked against the upright. I saw her at first light and then not again.
That afternoon, I heard mama screaming, screaming, screaming. When I investigated, a Cooper’s hawk came out of the nearest tree, and the kestrel parents zoomed after it, diving and strafing. Lots of aerial maneuvering before the Cooper’s dropped into the draw and shook the following kestrels. The next day, the kestrels had a pair of ravens pinned in a juniper.
The chicks are out there, the parents are still hunting and feeding and protecting. I bet I feel more like the empty nester than they do.
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