Peterson - Build me an ark: a life with animals

BUILD

ME

AN

ARK

A LIFE WITH ANIMALS

BRENDA PETERSON

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

NEW YORK LONDON

For Susan Biskeborn
Astute friend and first reader for two decades

For Linda Hogan,
Whose own work with wildlife inspires my own

In memory of Ivan Louis III; in playful celebration of Isabel

For all the animals

And God told Noah, Build me an ark!

From the old spiritual Well, Well, Well

Until one has loved an animal, a part of ones
soul remains unawakened.

Anatole France

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A MEMOIR IS one of the most challenging and mysterious of all writing projects. I could not have finished this book without help from true allies, readers, and friends. Thanks to Christine Lamb for her artistic alliance, for close and insightful readings by my agent Elizabeth Wales, and for her assistant Nancy Shawns remarkably competent advice. Weekly dialogues on the natural world with my wonderful students, many of whom are fine nature writers, continue to enhance my own work. Vanessa Adams, Bill McHallfey, Tara Kolden, and Rebekka Stahl lent me invaluable editorial assistance in bringing this book to press. Many thanks to James Vesely, my editor at the Seattle Times , for believing in my work and to Louise Bode, my old-growth elder, for listening to my life. And my discerning editor, Jill Bialosky, has helped shape and focus this book during the long years of its gestation.

Of the many conservation and animal advocates well met in this book, Id like to especially thank marine mammal biologists Dr. Toni Frohoff of Terra-Mar, Dr. Naomi Rose of HSUS, Cathy Kinsman of the Canadian Whale Sterwardship Project, naturalist Leigh Calvez, Dr. Marsha Green of Ocean Mammal Institute, and Howard Garrett and Susan Berta of Orca Conservancy. Id also like to acknowledge the fine advocacy of Natural Resources Defense Council International Fund for Animal Welfare, and Ellen Beard and Sue Bennett at B&B Media.

The pack of wolf researchers and advocates who have helped me immensely in this book are Rick McIntyre of the Yellowstone Park Service; wolf specialist Diane Boyd of Glacier and now Yellowstone Park; the wolf champions at Defenders of Wildlife, Ken Goldman, Nina Facione, and Gerry Hamilton; and Joan Moody at Department of Interior. Also Bobbie Haliday of PAW (Protect Arizonas Wolves) and Kent Weber of Colorados Mission Wolf are models of citizen activists and animal advocates.

I am grateful to my parents for always keeping our family close to the wild and to my siblings, my first small pack and pod. Most of all, thanks to all the animal people who are building a bridge between species.

PART ONE

ANIMAL

APPRENTICE

Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty
to them, but to stop there is not enough.
We have a higher missionto be of service
to them wherever they require it.

Saint Francis of Assisi

ONE

SLIPSTREAM

THE FLORIDA KEYS, 1993

O N THIS FAMILIAR, floating wooden dock, my feet are strong and secure in sleek black flippers, my snorkel mask adjusted like a transparent Cyclops eye, my wet suit tight against my body like a second skin. In my stomach, that familiar fluttering, my heart beating excitedly as I prepare to plunge into the chilly saltwater lagoon. It is my winter pilgrimage to a research center in Key Largo, Florida. I visit here, traveling cross-continent from my home in Seattle to meet both my human family and the dolphins we have come to call our other relatives.

I can name all these dolphins, adolescent females who swim by, dorsal fins rising and falling in an arc that my eyes take in gratefully. Dinghy, Jessica, Samantha of the crooked jaw, and Dreamer glide by and then execute acrobatic leaps and spins in perfect sync. Dreamer is my favorite, with her half-lidded sleepy brown eyes and intimate scrutiny. She cruises up and with a graceful, glossy snout, or rostrum, gently lifts my flippers and legs so I fall backwards on the dock, laughing.

Now theyre ready to play with you, land-lubbers! the researcher calls down from his perch above the lagoon. He is studying dolphin-human interaction for his doctoral thesis in marine mammal biology and has spent the summer here at Dolphins Plus Marine Mammal Research and Education Center gathering material on the dolphins altruistic behavior toward children with life-threatening diseases.

In the next lagoon over a little girl with leukemia, so terribly thin her wet suit hangs on her like a sagging blue slicker, floats in the lagoon with a bouncy yellow life preserver. She is all elbows and arms, but no fear. Even through her mask, her astonishingly pale face reveals the wasting disease that will kill her. This time next month she will be dead, but for now all she knows is that this is her hearts desireto be in the water with a dolphin. And though very weak, she is thrilled, giggling shyly as a dolphin circles, taking her in with a calm, contemplative eye. This twelve-year-old girl is participating in the Make a Wish Foundation, one of several therapeutic programs at this research center. I gaze at her surrounded by dorsal fins, dolphins tenderly lifting her above the water to carry her slowly around the lagoon, as if she were drowning and they her funeral bearers. In ancient Greece it was believed that dolphins carried human souls between our world and the watery realm of the dead. Dolphins were recognized as creatures who go between the worlds, as guides not only of the shipwrecked and drowning but of the living as well.

As I at last slip into the next cold winter lagoon, catching my breath, my chest heaving until the wet suit warms the saltwater against my skin, I feel as if I am also going between two worlds: between the exuberance of the past seven years, in which Ive made this Key Largo trip to swim with these dolphins, and my present, conflicted emotions over continuing this bond when it means captivity for the dolphins I have come to love. This swim I must make a decision that weighs on my heart like the pressure of a fathoms-deep dive. But for now I cant bear to think that this might be my last swim with these sister creatures.