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NEXT BLOG POST #22
MURDERS ON COBB CIRCLE
I began to hike the back road up the mountain behind my friend Connie’s house, where I was lucky to run into more guarded and difficult creatures to spot. Later, I would download the photos of these new subjects to my desktop computer as reference material for my paintings.
Throughout my long career as a painter, I have done numerous dog and cat portraits and had some experience painting wild animals. But this new line of mammals and Trout excited me. I was fortunate to photograph coyotes and foxes near our log home, as they were prevalent in our mountain terrain. Most were young, fidgety, and always seemed to be on the hunt for food. The older coyotes were a sad bunch, looked pathetically thin, and seemed pitiful to me. I never saw the same full-grown coyote for a second time; perhaps they moved on to greener pastures.
There were numerous foxes on our mountain. I knew I was correct in this assessment since they did not all look alike. Some had a reddish tone to their coats, some more white, and others grey. What surprised me was how close I could get to both animals to take a better photo. The foxes and coyotes seemed as interested in me and what I was doing … than worried that I’d harm them. I always moved ever so slowly, not to startle them, and to raise my camera inch by inch so they’d not run off. Sometimes they did, but most times, they watched on with interest. Some people disparage coyotes and foxes for various righteous reasons, but I admire their tenacity and resilience. Yes, they must be constantly looking for game, but that is the way of Nature. One animal lives off another to survive. I was never afraid in their presence.
During the colder months, when the trees had lost their leaves and ground cover had been killed by frost, it was easier to catch sight of an occasional Deer, Bear, Bobcat, or Beaver on my wildlife Nature hikes. They also had fewer places to hide. Even so, it was exciting to see them in their natural habitat.
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Early during our time in the North Carolina mountains, Murphy dog started growling one morning after Al left for his job in Georgia. She was in the living room with her nose pushed up against one of the French doors that looked out onto our rear-covered porch.
I immediately knew something was up since Murphy only growled when she was scared or trying to protect us. So, after telling her to sit, I carefully opened the French door to the outside deck and walked over to the railing. I heard a noise, looked down, and saw a bear cub climbing up one of the many posts that supported the porch. He’d made it about halfway when the cub looked up at me, unconcerned, and then he fixed his gaze to the right. I glanced in that direction and realized I was standing next to my largest bird feeder, filled to the brim with sunflower seeds.
That’s what the hungry bear cub was after, I quickly realized. Suddenly, Murphy pushed her way onto the deck and barked to high heaven. The bear lost his grasp, slid down the post, and hurried off into the woods on the far side of our property. I learned a lesson from my first close interaction with a bear. This bear sighting occurred in the fall, and bears must eat enormous amounts of food before hibernating to build up their body fat for the upcoming winter. Most importantly, hanging a huge bird feeder filled with sunflower seeds in the Fall was not a good idea in a wilderness area with many bears.
I took it down and waited until January to hang it back up, assuming the cub had hunkered down for the winter by then. When Al came home, he didn’t believe my story about the bear climbing our post… until he went downstairs, walked outside, and stared up at the claw marks left by the scared cub sliding down the post!
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At first, I didn’t see any Beaver on my treks. And I never saw Beaver swimming in the Nottley River, where they usually built their underwater huts. The reason was that the TVA controlled the river levels at a dam five miles upriver from our house. The daily changes in water levels would be a problem for the huts Beaver usually builds.
But a pair of Beaver had constructed their hut amid Cobb Creek. I discovered them by accident. I was out taking photos of the wildflowers growing on the banks of Cobb Creek for a painting I’d planned to do when I saw them. The female was knawing green shoots of bamboo that grew in large clumps along the banks of the creek. The male, a puny little critter, was busy carrying the female’s bamboo sticks in his mouth down into the water, where he disappeared under some rocks. During the rainy season, the creek is deeper in a few places and runs alongside the road on the north end of our community. Eventually, Cobb Creek does spill into the Nottley River.
After a while, I named the two Beaver: Chip for the male and Dale for the female. Beavers did no harm to our mountain environment, at least that I could discern. They did chew down overgrown green bamboo shoots for food and to make their huts, but on the whole, they are peaceful critters intent on finding food and creating safe huts for their young.
Sometimes, I’d sit still on the bank above their hut and take photos of them doing various tasks. They acted like I wasn’t there, which was fine with me. The male was attentive to the female, I noticed. He’d lick her face and whiskers, bring her food, and do impressive Beaver tricks and antics in the water. I assumed it was to impress her, but Dale seemed too busy to notice.
I never fed them. To survive, I’d read that they need to find their own food: mostly the inner bark of trees, leaves, and roots of aquatic plants like bamboo. That pertains to most wildlife. If you feed and tame them, you create a situation where they are no longer suspicious of humans. They could then approach the wrong kind of person and lose their life. And if they count on the food humans offer, they might starve when the humans are no longer around.
Our community is called Cobb Circle because Cobb Creek runs alongside one section of the road. I was told by a local historian that Beaver has lived on Cobb Creek for scores of years. The famous baseball player Ty Cobb’s family lived in a homestead on Cobb Circle ages ago, thus the community and creek's name. There is a fairly popular book about Ty Cobb’s young life, and it mentions the Beaver living on that same creek. So it became a cause I dedicated myself to advocating, that Beaver should be able to continue to live on Cobb Creek without fear… since they did no real harm and it was their ‘right.’
Early in our time there, I heard that the wicked witch of the west and former nurse I told you about had hired a trapper to kill Beaver. Supposedly, she worried the Beaver would cut down small trees along the river bank behind her cabin. Al often walked Murphy dog past her home to make the witch mad since she was not fond of dogs. I figured she would be the sort of horrible person who would hire someone to kill defenseless animals so she wouldn’t get her hands dirty.
Once, when I heard she was out of town, I impulsively walked Murphy dog down to her dock on the river. Someone had attached a metal trap with a long, heavy chain to one of the dock’s upright posts. I quickly realized that the same person had probably installed the trap to kill Beaver and maybe even Otter. All they had to do was set the trap and drop it into the river. I looked at the trap closely and realized it had a heavy spring mechanism that reminded me of a bear trap I’d seen once. If the bear stepped into that trap, it would trip the spring, and the clamp would slam down on the animal’s paw, trapping it. Those types of traps do not usually kill the animal immediately. Sometimes, they die slowly from loss of blood and injury or starvation. If a Beaver or Otter accidentally stepped into that trap while underwater, the animal would surely drown. So you can understand how it still makes me angry to think about that dreadful woman.
I suddenly noticed the screw holding the trap to the deck post looked very loose. I wiggled and wiggled it, and eventually, the screw fell out, and the trap was free from the post. I looked at it again for a minute, then … accidentally knocked the trap off the post, and it fell into the river. I looked down, but there was no trap visible. At that moment, the river was running fast, so I hoped it carried the nasty trap downstream and away from the wicked witch’s domain.
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I am very sad to say that during the last year we lived in our log house, someone shot the male and female Beaver I had photographed for years. I sat by the banks of Cobb Creek, looked down at the two dead Beaver, and cried. They’d been killed with a pistol, I guessed, and relatively recently, since their blood was still fresh. They had been killed for no reason that I could determine.
Eventually, I asked various neighbors about it to find out who might have killed them. Finally, I heard that a local man who lived in a compound near the top of our mountain thought their huts would cause flooding during the rainy season, so he shot them. We had lived there for years, and Cobb Creek had never flooded to the point where it could harm the only house near the creek. A couple of times, I’d even checked on the huts when the creek was high. Most of their bamboo sticks seemed to have washed away, but the creek did not flood the banks. So, perhaps the reason the man claimed for killing the Beaver….was invented to cover his murders.
I decided to go home and get a shovel, then go back and bury them. But the Beaver's bodies were gone when I returned to the creek the next morning. Maybe a coyote or fox drug them off, I thought. Or maybe the killer returned to claim them. Then, he probably skinned them and mounted their heads and pelt above his fireplace. Later, I heard from a neighbor that is what happened.
Those two Beaver had lived there longer than we had. Someone just wanted to kill something. It was the first real negative I had acknowledged about living in a wilderness area. I realized that some people kill animals for amusement or out of boredom. The murder of the two Beaver caused me to begin to think about leaving the community. What if that shooter turned his gun…or a trap…. on our Murphy dog for whatever reason. I could not countenance that thought.
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THE DEER
About ten days after I found the two dead Beaver, I decided to hike the back road and up the mountain behind my friend Connie’s property to clear my head. It was an often rugged trail that animals most likely created long ago. However, I could see recent tire tracks. They looked like ones on heavy-duty trucks, but I’d never noticed that vehicles had used the trail this far up the mountain. I was still upset over the Beaver killings, so I needed fresh air and a challenging hike.
Cherokee County’s climate is a bit of a conundrum. Yes, it lies in the mountainous areas of Western North Carolina. We were surrounded by mountain ranges that are stunning in their majesty. Our county's weather is usually mild year-round, which is different than I had originally assumed. We sometimes got a couple of snowy days during the winter, but rarely anything substantial that would hinder us from doing our tasks. That said, the county got tons of rain… inches and inches of water each month. It seemed to us that it rained buckets of water all the time. I’d often sit in our living room in the early evening and watch through a large window over the front door while torrents of rain pelted our log home. Sometimes, I found the sights and sounds disturbing, for I feared we’d get water in the house somehow. That never happened, thank goodness.
I read a story in the local paper about a man who’d lived in the county all his life. He was asked by a newspaper reporter how he’d describe the weather in Cherokee County. The man claimed this area was more like a rainforest than a mountain town with lots of snow. I agreed!
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It had rained for several days straight, and the ground was muddy. Wearing my rugged hiking boots, I continued trudging up the steep back road. As I began to breathe harder, I stopped for a second to catch my breath and looked at the ground. In front of me, I saw hoof prints of at least two deer; one set was larger, and the other was quite small. Deer prints are easy to identify as they have been described as heart-shaped, with an open space in the middle of two oval indentations. I reached down and gingerly touched one of the prints with my fingers. It felt slightly warm to the touch, meaning the deer had probably passed this way recently. I looked up and realized that a large tan boulder blocked part of the trail.
Following the truck’s tracks, I walked around the boulder and suddenly came to a complete halt. I almost screamed but hurried to cover my mouth. In front of me were two deer heads, one of an adult deer and one of a fawn. Both deer heads had obviously been severed from their bodies, most likely by the hunter who’d shot them recently. Blood was everywhere: on the road, in the grasses, and spattered all over the back of the tan boulder. I quickly closed my eyes, trying to prevent the horrible scene from forever imprinting itself onto my consciousness. I felt suddenly sick, turned away, and threw up in the tall grasses along the path. I squatted down and hung my head, ashamed of what the hunter had done.
I’d read a lot about hunting for a novel I was still writing at the time. From my research, a reputable hunter sometimes has to leave certain remains in order to transport the animal’s body. However, most dig a hole in the ground to bury the head and maybe the entrails. But not this one; he was obviously a disgraceful hunter who’d leave the heads of his kills without burying them. Perhaps it was his idea of a trophy. That way, those who happened upon the scene, like me, would be impressed with his accomplishment. Or perhaps he was simply lazy, but a terrible thought almost made me vomit again. Maybe he was the hunter who killed my two Beaver not that long ago.
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My as-yet-unpublished novel, A Legend in Her Time, is set in the 1780s post-Revolutionary War Massachusets and tells the story of an eighteen-year-old girl who eventually fights the devil in a man for a holy prize. Her parents send her to live with good friends for several months, a Native couple and their grown children. There, she learns that God the Great Spirit has an important mission for her but does not learn what that mission might be. So, her new friends teach her the beliefs of their people, how to hunt, how to live off the land, how to survive in the wilderness, and how to defend herself. It was their way of preparing the girl for a mighty battle with a Devil of a man, which they believed would happen soon.
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During my research for the novel, I learned that Native People usually transport the animals they kill back to their camp, where they utilize them for various needs. The meat became food, the skins were tanned for blankets, the sinew was used for fishing lines and sewing, and the bones they carved into tools, weapons, and hooks. They taught the girl that as a hunter, she should always be honorable and respect the animals who gave their lives so the People could live.
The hunter who killed the two deer did not have that same laudatory creed. He just left their heads on the ground, lying in their own blood. To me, it was truly a disgusting act of violence and disrespect.
I swallowed down the bile in my throat, turned around, and headed home. I could not tell my husband what I saw on the back road then. It was too upsetting, and I knew he’d get angry. After Al left for work the next day, I put on plastic gloves and a scarf over my face, then took our shovel up the back road and buried the remains of the two deer. Then I bowed my head and said my simple prayer to send their spirits home.
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Back at our cabin, I hooked Murphy dog up to her leash and took her to our dock on the river. I fed her fish food until I thought she’d had enough. Murphy quickly got comfortable on the dock near my feet, and I watched as she fell asleep.
The murders of animals in our community upset me more than I can say and were heavy on my mind. I am not a Pollyanna; I understand hunting and respect those who do it with honor. But I will never understand the total violence and disrespect of hunters like the person or persons who killed my Beaver and the Deer. Was I being too sensitive, a HOSP (high order sensitive person) in a non-HOSP environment, maybe. Or was my anger over the killings rightfully justified?
Check back again in about two weeks for the next post from Guardians of the Road by Kathryn Lehotsky.
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