Encounters

Carol and I went for walks in two wildlife sanctuaries today: the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary and the North River Wildlife Sanctuary, both in Marshfield, Mass. Usually when we walk in wildlife sanctuaries I spend most of my time looking at plants, especially flowering plants. But today, without trying at all, we wound up seeing a quite a few animals. Here are three of them:

Two raptors in a nest built of sticks.
Adult and juvenile Osprey (Pandion haliaetus)
A beetle on a leaf. The leaf has pieces gone from it, perhaps eatne by the beetle. possibly
Red Milkweed Beetle (Tetraopes tetrophthalmus) on Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
Turtle mostly submerged in water.
Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta)

Each of these three animals is what I’d call charismatic. I’m not quite sure what makes some animals more charismatic than others. Animal charisma is not a matter of being cuddly — none of these three animals could be considered cuddly. Nor is animal charisma a matter of being cute — a baby Osprey might be cute, in a fierce flesh-tearing-beak sort of way, but a Red Milkweed Beetle is not what most people would consider cute. In fact, being cute and cuddly is almost the opposite of being charismatic. Cuteness and cuddliness feel controllable; charisma does not.

Humans remain my favorite animal. At the same time, I think it’s good for us humans to encounter non-human animals. After all, for most of human existence, we lived in close-knit human communities while being surrounded by non-human animals — a distinct contrast to our current existence, where we are alienated both from other humans, and from non-human organisms.

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