I am here to report that
nature, though on the face of it vast, is content with the small. You find it where you find it, and it is not always large. It is, largely, content with it's place in the
universe.
I was reminded of this recently at the beach, and this was brought home more thoroughly in our own kitchen. Regarding the former I took my family, which consists of myself, my wife and our two small children, to
Baker Beach. This would be near the approach to the
Golden Gate Bridge in
San Francisco, the city where we live. Baker Beach is like any other, except that it is one of the beaches near our home, and therefore it is unique. There are rocks at Baker Beach, the large,
craggy sort that would dash ships into
splinters for the past amusement and certain profit of
the locals, and which also sport a
countless number and variety of
pools and
crannies within which sea life cling,
heroically, to life. Provided the rare wrecked ship doesn't scrape them off.
On Baker Beach I had the great pleasure of employing my many years of
graduate education in Biology to point out the things to be found there. We found beached
jellyfish, victims of cruel currents like the great ships before them, and marveled at their watery essence and wondered from whence they had come. I watched my children clamber over the rocks, heard them calling with excitement with every discovery, admonished them to take care of the
invertebrates helpless beneath their feet, and noticed once more for myself how small their world was. Not the children, the invertebrates. Well the children too, but they will get over that (sadly for their parents, but for the betterment of the
world as a whole, so we encourage it.)
The invertebrates, for the most part
limpets,
anemones and
barnacles with hardy
mussels at the lowest of tide lines, hardly get around if at all. They come to explore a tiny plot of
metamorphic stone before they give up such
adventures for a quiet life of sifting silt and scraping algae in the aquatic
suburbs such as are Baker Beach. It is charming to imagine the cold
Pacific currents later bringing them news of exciting, exotic mud flats off
Alaska, or the even more distant
oyster beds of
Japan, and how they thrill at the thought of going there on
safari while safe in the knowledge that they are in no danger of doing so, like old women
breathlessly reading the
National Geographic. But that would be
pure conjecture on my part.
Things are similar in our kitchen, but without nearly the amount of sand.
In our kitchen nature has become hopelessly
compressed. Over the refrigerator, commanding a view of the human activities below, is a large cage containing two tiny
Zebra Finches. These are about the only animals in our house that we have ever bought with any
forethought, the others being an assortment of rescued
scorpions,
reptiles,
toads, a kidnapped
banana slug and a tank of
guppies given us by the local pet store because they were
sickly (though they were not a tank-full at the start, you understand, and certainly turned out not to be so sickly, as their
innumerable progeny would attest.) I bought the finches to keep my wife company in the kitchen. Which they do, with their flitting about the cage, and the male
singing, and what have you. They never rest it seems. My wife has complained that they are
exhausting simply to be around, with which I sympathize but only to a point. They are, after all,
family.
These birds live what I would have called a miserable life, in their cage (though it is huge) with nothing to do but eat and drink and fly in a limited way and groom one another. Well on reflection that's
not so bad I suppose, and not many of us can claim to do better. My sympathy did not extend to not purchasing them in the first place, you will note, but I figured that if they were to be caged it might as well be with a nice family with lots of other animals. They would have interesting neighbors, I figured, so long as I kept them from becoming intimate with the snake.
My one deliberate contribution to raise some of the tedium of their otherwise
dreary existence (other than providing plenty of food and fresh water) was to purchase for them a nesting box. And therein lay the tale.
For you see, if you are at all kind to animals then when you buy a Zebra Finch you must buy a finch owners manual, so as to grok their finchness. You would of course read it and will note toward the end, where they talk about breeding, that finches in general and Zebra Finches in particular are eager breeders, even frustratingly so (which is not the usual situation with captive animals, other than guppies, so this is intriguing.) You might note in your reading that you are encouraged to deprive the randy little beasts of a
nest box and even
nesting materials, at least until you think you are up to the challenge of what are promised to be enormous flocks of finches, darkening the skies like your own personal
Biblical plague (and since we already have the toads, scorpions and snakes you can imagine that I am sensitive to these kinds of issues.)
Being kind-hearted, I figured a nesting box was was the very least I could do for the little things.
They showed little interest in the box for some time, or at least any that I could discern. Perhaps they were still young. One day I tossed in some fresh grass, as I am wont to do to provide them something to play with. This became an immediate toy, and they were delightful with their hopping around with the bits of grass. Then, some of the grass went into the nesting box. Being the observant biologist I pointed this out to my family, and went about finding other materials they might like. There was some dried
sphagnum moss, normally reserved for the snake cage, and I went out and pulled some more fresh grass. I also found some carpet bits from the torn edge of the rug we had been pulling out of the house lately, and it looked like something they would enjoy.
They did, and it vanished into the box.
As I write this there are three
eggs that I know of in the nest. The mother seems to be
brooding them so I can't tell if there are more. She sticks her head up over the lower edge of the hole in the nesting box and watches us watching her. We are informed that "sitting" is a sure sign that the
Blessed Event is near. To our familial joy the father bird seems determined to
support his family, and is frequently to be found sprucing up the nest, bringing in choice materials to make obscure
home improvements, and not infrequently sitting himself. I understand his sense of purpose.
All this, in a cage of moderate size atop a refrigerator in a kitchen in
The City not far from Baker Beach. For the finch family we humans are the life-giving current, bringing food, nest materials and fresh water and taking away waste products. The sun rises and sets, they fall in love, make do with a small cottage and a bit of fodder and start their family. And if the
Goddess smiles upon their humble beginnings they will be
fruitful. Their world is small, microscopic even. But it is enough, and they will try to be happy.
Just like the rest of us.
We hear stories about the vast forces of nature. Nature's ability to come back after disaster, nature's fecundity, nature's creativity. That nature, indeed,
abides. But that is not very inspiring, you understand. It is grand and sweeping and it can be
terrifying, if you let yourself dwell on it. We are so small in the face of nature. Nature is no doubt part of the reason why some of us require
God as some sort of counter balance. What is inspiring is not the whole of nature but the little triumphs, the barnacle clinging to a cleft in a stone, jellyfish helplessly adrift in the sea. The finches. Even ourselves. We are inspired and we inspire others in our turn, doing the best we can to succeed. From simple success are plagues born, of course, but that's another matter.