From Hart to Hearts
A Message from Rev Linda Hart for the month of September 2009
We’ve had a wild summer around the manse this year. Not that it’s been crazy and overly busy, or that there were too many parties. It’s been wild, as in wildlife.
Mona the cat, you see, has discovered her hunting skills. She’s always been mostly an indoor cat, and with the cool summers since she came to live with us, the windows of the house have been mostly closed. Given the number of foxes around, we’ve tried to keep her indoors at night. With the warm nights this year, our windows have been open wider, and she has had easy access to the outdoors at night, and with the door to the back garden open to the breeze most days, she has run in and out with abandon.
First it was a frog.
I glanced over one night as we sat eating supper, to see Mona, her ears back, running into the kitchen. A quick second look confirmed what I had thought. She had something in her mouth. A frog. We captured her without much fuss, and gently extracted the frog from her mouth. It was stunned though essentially unharmed. We set it out in the front garden trusting that it would escape and not be recaptured immediately.
‘No frogs!’ Claire chided Mona.
A few weeks later, we found her with another frog in her mouth and went through a similar rescue mission. Not long after that, I came down the stairs one morning and spotted yet another frog stunned into passivity with Mona sitting happily next to it, waiting, no doubt for it to make a move, to become the plaything she had enjoyed the night before. Another night, Peter and I heard a high pitched squealing sound, and guessed that it was another frog. I didn’t know frogs could make such a noise. It was truly eerie. Once more we rescued the frog. So far no frogs have met their demise in the teeth or claws of our cat. Thank goodness.
Then came the butterflies. They’ve not been so lucky.
The large raised bed in our back garden is overrun again this year with volunteer nasturtiums, and as the vines spill out and around the patio, the bees and butterflies have come to sip the nectar, drawn by the vibrant colour. Mona sits patiently under a chair and watches them with keen intent. She’ll stalk and eventually strike, capturing one of the unsuspecting flutters of yellow in her teeth. More delicate than frogs, they have not survived her attention as well, though a few have been pulled from her mouth and gone flitting off.
As we continue to try to save the wild creatures near our house from Mona, we’ve been challenged by an invasion of another variety of creature: slugs. Not just out in the garden, but they’ve found a way to come into our kitchen. Peter has discovered three or four oozing their way across the kitchen floor, and I emptied our green bin of kitchen scraps one morning to find a fat gorged slug stuck to the side. I dropped the bin and left it outside certain that it would slither off. I collected it the next day.
It all has served to remind me – if I needed the reminder – of several things:
- » The world isn’t made for me. There are all sorts of creatures whose lives continue on and who contribute to the whole, no matter if they make me shriek a little more than is appropriate for a woman of my age and stature.
- » Nature isn’t all beauty and wonder. There is death aplenty, and fear beyond words, and hunters and prey.
- » It is too easy to forget that we are all related, and it is all interconnected.
I’m grudgingly thankful for the creatures and even the various invasions for bringing this all to my attention.
It’s been a wild summer, and I’m nearly ready for it to be over. I’m looking a forward – just a little right now – to a bit of a crisp freshness in the air, and the first scent of fallen leaves along the path by the river. I’m ready for the windows to be closed enough to keep the cat indoors overnight, and ready for the frogs to go into the mud until spring.
I am especially ready to get back into the rhythm of work and worship as we come back to one another and our community this autumn.
See you in church!
Linda