ENCOUNTERS WITH THE NATURAL WORLD

Some recollections of small wildlife encounters.

I remember when I saw a flying fish whilst on a boat. I instantly burst into giggles. Reality is ridiculous. If you get upset about anything in life you’ve obviously never looked at your hands whilst drunk and seen the disconnect between you and what you think is you.

The best thing that ever happened to me was giving a Monster Munch crisp to a hedgehog that appeared outside our house when I was eleven. When it ate the Monster Munch it sounded just like when I ate a Monster Munch. All the magic of our planet right there nestled in the Milky Way.

In my twenties I stopped my car late at night in the road as a hedgehog was just sat in the way waiting to be splatted. I went over a nudged it with my foot - then it lifted up its body like a petticoat and ran with its long slender, dainty, little legs. That was a great night.

When I was very young being walked to school by my mum I saw a dead bird on the pavement and touched it. My mum knocked on the door of someone we knew and made me wash my hand.

As an adult I once saw the skull of a muntjac deer with the spine attached whilst walking on a heath. It was bone dry. I wanted to take it but would have had to walk through the streets carrying a skull. Shame. It was kind of a cool object. In this regard, serial killers have made it tough to be a naturalist. Can’t even walk through the suburb carrying a skull and spine without people thinking you’re weird.

A woodpecker is rarer to see than your average bird and so they inherently have more mystique. But this is instantly broken when you see them fly. They lollop up and down. They really are goofy. They’re like fat-bottomed world war one planes plopping up and down like their engine keeps cutting out.

Saw tons of stag beetles flying down the street once in Lewisham. On the ground they’re like spartan warriors with their weaponry. But in the sky they’re like schmucks. Travelling tinkers flying with napsacks of pots and pans and their legs dangling.

I have a really nice memory of eating a pear in the kitchen. It was quiet and I stood there eating it and I could hear myself and I felt like a horse. It was a really good day. I wish I could have more like them.

Not all horses are zen. I once saw a horse that had more hate inside than any creature I’ve encountered. It was in a field I had to cross. The horse was enclosed behind a fence I had to climb over. The horse was filled with all the bile of the devil. I’ve never seen such hatred. I think it wanted to fuck. Its brain had been hijacked by evolution that’s only purpose was to pass on its seed. The horse didn’t want to fuck me - it wanted to kill me as it’s brain was so spunk-addled it thought I was a competitor. I managed to trick it by luring it to one end of the field then snuck back on myself and ran across the terrain. My heart was pounding in my ears.

The most stupid thing that has ever happened in nature was when me and a duck startled each other after I stumbled into it walking through long grass. We both ran and flapped off, honking and shrieking.

I was once by a lake and then out of the blue something burst out of the water. It was a carp. Time froze as rivulets of water dripped down its scales, each drop encasing the sun. We made eye contact. Then time sped up again as it slapped its body against the water and returned beneath the surface.

Travelling in America I saw a few animals for the first time. I saw a chipmunk. I don’t think I’d ever seen video or photos of a chipmunk and I was able to identify it entirely because of Alvin and the Chipmunks. I saw a coyote. You can understand why they’re depicted as trouble - it had a surly strut and looked like it smoked thirty a day. And I saw a hummingbird: like a small thimble with a trumpet for a nose, snorting pollen from slack-jawed flowers as if they were buckets of bird cocaine.

I once watched a spider on the ceiling whilst I was in the bath. I watched it walk all the way around the perimiter until it was above my head. “There’s no way that’s gonna drop on my head, is it?” I thought. The spider dropped down and I shot out of the bath in a splashing panic. What the hell?

I once saw an owl. I walked into a clearing and then this smooth feathery body flew between a hollow opening in the tree canopy. It was immediately obvious that this wasn't a regular bird. It was majestic. I suddenly saw a mediaeval secret seen only by peasants or penitents or hermits or maids drawing water from a pebble-clunking brook. It was amazing. Beyond awesome. Yet at the same time I can only describe it as an elegantly flying loaf of bread - or like a flying tin of beans.

Ever seen a brown rat? Genuinely handsome animal. I saw one scuttling near a tree by the road and which ran into a bush on a pink evening. It looked as at home in the foliage as Robin Hood or any other folk hero amidst ivy and leaves. I know rats have got a reputation and that a town rat looks like it would eat the eyes of babies. But if you see a rat in its natural setting it make sense. It’s just a mammal like any other. Making a living. Using its finnicky fingers to do what it needs to do.

I love wood pigeons. They’re absolute tranquility. The way they bobble about in the evening sun. Eating seeds. Nature has made them skittish. They will clamour into branches at the slightest movement, frantically flapping like trying to flap two ironing boards in an enclosed space. But give them a moment and they will return again and crown the last golden light of the day. A wood pigeon once landed with a thud on the flat roof near my bedroom when I was on a call. I watched it take its last breath. I buried it in the garden.

Back in the day when I’d have a late night poo and the world was peaceful and quiet, I’d see silverfish scuttle across the toilet floor. These days I’m taken into a trance if I ever see one and I’m a child again in a world of lullabies and calm. The universe is so vast, and this little thing is just working a night shift in the solar system.

Our garden was small, but in scale to my child size it was a fantastic place that popped and bubbled with stagnant pools of colour and light. Wildly overgrown at the best of times, with the arrival of summer it suddenly bloated out into a luscious, green jungle crowded with jagged blades of razor-sharp grass and thick juicy fern leaves. After a warm summer nights rain, flowers red, blue and yellow sprouted up out of nowhere. Caterpillars squelched like mucus on the water-clogged leaves, plump bulging sacks of water. Spider webs glistened and sparkled in the morning sun, drops of sugary water clinging to their silk, whilst birds ruffled their feathers in the damp morning sweat. By the muddy banks of the trickling stream, hoverflies gathered silently in the air like deadly assassions. At night moths banged their bodies against my window like a mummy in bandages. Everywhere is somewhere brilliant and there are places we haven’t looked.