THE ECOLOGICAL NICHE OF TAMIAS STRIATUS IN THE BRONX FOOD WEB

THE ECOLOGICAL NICHE OF TAMIAS STRIATUS IN THE BRONX FOOD WEB

By Andrew Paul Grell

I find myself at the southwest entrance to Van Cortland Park, the entrance with the 1938 statue of the last coyote in New York City. There has been no update, yet, acknowledging the new crew of Canidae seeking balance in the current environmental conditions. How I came to be here, this bright day amidst joyful park visitors, somehow escapes me. Presumably, I took the #1 train to its terminal station, since the steps leading up to the iron horse were maybe 30 yards from the coyote. Entering the park, I encountered the last truly interesting thing I had seen on my last visit, a woman with an ingenious method of training her German Pinscher to climb trees. I noticed it was a different dog.

I could say “Bury my heart in Van Cortland Park,” but I’m sure the City of New York would have an issue with that. For me, all good childhood things happened in this Bronck’s Bauer. My parents would pay for me to take lessons in anything, which included horseback riding at the little stable and riding ring at the place Broadway begins its ascent to Yonkers. Years later, it was remote controlled model airplanes and model rocketry. Nick and I devised a method of aiming the rockets without the use of fins or swivels. It won the Daily News Science Fair in its category. Imagine that, children winning a prize for ballistic missile technology. That was the 70s, I guess. Shortly thereafter, my cred and my friends’ stunning lift-offs were enough to convince a girl onlooker to join me in finding a rocket that had strayed off course. We found it in a bald spot in the diminutive forest. We also found what turned out to be a cave entrance, which Meg and I explored. We were still young, and so there was only one cave I entered that day, although we did manage a fun and gratifying solid second base. The pleasant things of childhood.

It was my habit to stop by every few years, even for just a pee break on a long bike trip, a nostalgic look at Dyckman House, watching the track and field events, and my favorite, the debut show of Big Apple Circus in New York City.  What a thrill to see the pachyderms, pre-show, practice their moves, get scrubbed down, and entertain the early birds on the spot that gave me so much enjoyment. Next was when I put Carla, our new Rat Terrier puppy, in my bike basket and rode her up to the park. Carla was born with a full kit of hunting skills; track, flush, stalk, and presumably kill. Any new toy we gave her, she would sink her teeth into its neck and start shaking it, then ripped out its eyes. We decided not to let her loose on city rodents, so I took her to this rare vestige of near-wild ecology. I would have preferred the Hutchinson River, but the beavers there were bigger than Carla and our dog hated being in the water. We set out on the start of the trail which once had been New York Central’s Putnam line. A wild zone separating the public golf course from the private club. We hit paydirt right away, chipmunks. Carla would do birds; one time she had an epic battle with a mother duck protecting her children. Carla lost, but it was an education for all of us. Our little puppy would plan an attack for any bird or squirrel, but somehow, she never registered the little stripers as prey, they were just another datum to be filed away. My last visits to the park, and of course I can’t remember when they occurred, were to bike the trail, now completed, that had once been the Putnam Line right-of-way. I never made it to Brewster, but I seem to recall that I rode up one day headed for Irvington and wound up in Sleepy Hollow, which had been Irvington the day before. At least, that’s what the flags and banners said when I got there. And now I’m here at the trailhead, no dog, no bike, no horse, not even sure if I have a Metrocard for the ride home. Wait. I can check that. It was where it belonged, my right shirt pocket. Inside the little notebook I’m using to journal the trip. Now I can wonder about what I’ll find when I use the fare card and head to, hopefully, home. 

Just for appearance’s sake, no matter where or when I was, or what I was supposed to be doing, I looked for the path that would take me to “my” cave. I could have found it blindfolded. There was an outcropping of good Bronx Gneiss, after all, The Bronx is Gneiss and Manhattan is Schist, striation and coloration approximately matching the chipmunks from my visit with Carla. I could imagine a person so bereft in Karma as to return as a chipmunk, and mess that life up badly enough to merit a few thousand years as a chipmunk-patterned rock. I shined my bike light into the narrow opening and saw that it was now empty. Why I had a bike light with me when I had no bike was yet another mystery. My dugouts and hidey-holes for towels, hooch, condoms, and unctions were gone. I pressed on, downward, inward, upward and finally all the way in where the LED revealed wall of brush, likely dropped from a surface aperture now filled in. It was a back exit, one I never knew existed. It looked like a comfortable crawl to get to wherever it would lead. My left hand drew itself to a cargo pocket and came back with a bottle of protective gel. I put it on and spread apart the brush wall. The tunnel behind the brush was far larger than the narrow channel I had crawled through to reach this point. It was another few yards until I reached evidence of anthropogenic modifications to this portion of the cave. I saw a door, an actual door with a knob. A railing overlooked an elliptical pit. I scented it and heard it before I reached the railing and looked down. There were seven cages, each with a cat, a full water bowl, an empty food dish, and a toy. They all looked well cared-for but unloved. The scene was a cryptical envelopment, a mystery just below the skin of the world. I had to watch; I couldn’t help myself. Eventually, I saw a chipmunk stick her head out of what could only be the terminus of a burrow. She had a golf ball in her mouth, which she dropped into a Rube Goldberg-style contraption. Once the device came to rest, a generous portion of food was dolloped into the big, orange tabby’s bowl. I couldn’t tear myself away. I saw the identical scene play out five more times: a Persian, a Siamese, a Munchkin, a Maine Coon, and another Tabby. The last cat, a right proper Scottish Fold, didn’t get fed. I could hear the sound of an industrial tumbler. I didn’t know how I knew what an industrial tumble sounded like; I don’t believe I had ever been involved in physical industry. After another ten minutes of watching, the Scotty’s rear cage door opened, and the perfect devil-eared cat took off. I waited for the next thing to happen. And waited. And waited. Finally, Scotty came back to her cage. It was hard to tell, since the cat was virtually all black, but her whiskers were definitely blood-stained. For the first time today, I was able to fit the pieces together, especially since I found myself humming a tune from the show 1776.  But today, the lyrics were “gophers to golf balls to cats.” The tumbler must be washing the balls for resale to the public course players, and the ball recovery racket was likely billing both the private club and the public course for vermin control. As if Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, at one time the number one act in America, could ever be considered vermin. I’d have to see if Dave Seville could be contacted for a little chat.  Numbers came into my head, from where I couldn’t say, but the number was $239 per day. I congratulated myself on my ability to extrude a touch of logic to the day’s events. I crawled out of the “new” tunnel mole-fashion, backwards, feeling with my toes. 

When I got back to the coyote, my pants were buzzing. In yet another of my cargo pockets, there was what looked like one of those take-it-to-the park TVs you used to get for going through a time share tour. A little bell went off in my head at the words “Time Share.” The box had an image of an old Bell Telephone style handset. I touched the icon and a woman’s face appeared. She asked me If I was coming home. I told her I was at the steps to the train station. The woman disappeared.

I recall New York Transit as IRT, BMT, IND, NYTA, MABSTOA. It was NYTA on the ride up to New York’s Gaelic heart. On the way down, not only were the uniforms now labeled Yo-Yo-Dyne, there was a brand-new stop right near my Minuet City apartment. I didn’t have to be confused or surprised at that; there was an ongoing renaissance of the “L” train to banish the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Portals were opening and closing on a daily basis, passengers and workers in a choo-choo tango.

My address was familiar, a little card around my neck opened a door, an elevator effected my ascent to the 12^th floor, and I opened the apartment door with the key on the same lanyard as the card. Meg greeted me warmly. Apparently, this time I had married Meg instead of Liz. A memory surfaced about a lunch 50 years ago and a fight with Liz about a ham sandwich.

I blinked in the light of the unfamiliar LED. My dog was now a Bedlington. I could have used her in the events of the morning, since the breed was designed specifically for tunnel work. Looking at the wall, I saw a diploma with my name on it. So I’m now PhD in Actuarial Science. Good, I recall that the occupation is so boring that they have to pay people ridiculous amounts of money to do it. And family photo on the wall revealed that we have a child, Ifoma, a rescue adoption from.. yes, Ethiopia. Good kid. Great at math. Takes after her dad.

“How long?” I asked my family.

Ifoma held up one finger-spread hand and a peace sign on her other hand.

“Seven days, Paul. About normal.”

I emptied the contents of the Gaelic Athletic Association shopping bag on our antique dining table: Guinness cheese, pub sausage, and shepherd’s pie. The tableware was where I recalled it to be; no problem setting the table. My family and I had a great Irish late brunch, and Beddy, too, had his pie.