700 word Free Write

Inspired by:
"A Cry for the Tiger" by Caroline Alexander http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/12/tigers/alexander-text

"The Living Dinosaur: Peter Del Tredici's search for the wild ginko" by Jill Jones http://harvardmagazine.com/print/33356?page=all

Modeled after:
"Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist" by Paul Kingsnorth http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6599

Endangered Curiosity

Uproar, once upon…

How old was I when I heard The Sound? Or, how old was I when I imagined the sound, and reinforced the trembling phantasm of that sound, recording it in my psyche out of such desire to hear it, and fear it?

The day was clouded, but bright, a sky of general whiteness. I was seated at my grandparent’s laminate kitchen table, rimmed in tarnished brass grooves. In front of me could have been any miasma of meals my grandmother prepared for me as a child; simple, crisp things, like cucumber and onion salads, or buttered egg noodles. I faced the window, staring past the rolling lawn to the tree line, like up-ended black roots silhouetting the sky, the borderline where the wild things hung on.

Then the sound. The rasp. There was no echo; there was instead a ricochet, an auditory after-shock. The throatiness, the wheezing expulsion knew no proper metaphor in my mind, then or now.

I remember the presence of my grandparents in the kitchen; both standing, my grandfather walking about, somewhere in the peripheral. Did he have the shotgun? Did he step outside? I remember him astute, and assured, as always. Maybe it was my grandmother who answered that guttural call with the recognition, under her breath.

“Cougar.”

Miniature Uproar, for sure…

I had the dusty red lead wrapped in my grasp, holding it close to the silver ring of the halter. His nostrils began to flare and contract dramatically, like a fish’s mouth at the water’s surface. He was an Arabian horse, and those nostrils had served an ancient hot bloodline of some sheik’s steeds, suffering valiantly through sandstorms, sucking copious amounts of air in, shutting stinging sand out.

There was certainly no blowing sand or even fowl weather that evening outside of the Burgettstown stables. The snuffling was a fright (and subsequently flight) response from Sattann. That is pronounced “sa” “tawn”, an Arabic name whose meaning I don’t think I ever discovered. Most people were put off by it, looking as it did like a typo version of Satan, penned in thick black calligraphy on his registration papers. He was a dream come true to 11 year old me; oh, how many chores and years of riding lessons I had to have under my belt before we culled Sattann from the herd as my own.

While there was nothing Satanic about Sattann, he and I were not a match made in equestrian heaven either. Since he had arrived at the stable where I was to board him, Sattann’s ears were permanently pinned back; in horse language, like a perpetual “fuck you, I don’t like it here and I don’t like you so much either”. Beyond generally orneriness, we discovered Sattann had an intense phobia. Sattann was terrified to enter the door to his stall. He would freeze up, plant his hooves in the mud, try to back away. With more encouragement, he would begin to rear up, side step (often meaning 900 lbs plopping on my own foot), and commence an overall snorting, eye-rolling frenzy.

Did I mention yet that his stall overlooked an embankment and the footpath to said stall was barely wide enough for Sattann (who, while of a lithe, 15.1 hands in height, was still a 900 lb. horse) and my scrawny 11 year old self?

On this particular evening, I led Sattann from the dark, soft peat surfaced arena to the outside world, towards that precipice and the walk of terror. My father was there, tight-lipped, supervising as usual, finding it hard not to interfere. How far we were in that short walk I cannot recollect, when there was another sound.

Eerie, and right there, right over the lip of that hillside. Higher pitched, not quite as drawn, but oh so vicious still. Mean, mean meow.

Did we look to Sattann? Did we dare? I know we were plunged into dread, all three (or four) of us. I believe my father took the lead, literally; but while we both expected total ballistics from Sattann, falling to an awful fate finally, eaten even…he walked placidly into his stall. Perhaps that was his reaction to an all too realistic threat.

Down below, deep in the steaming pits where manure from twenty-some horses was always pitched, a bobcat lurked. My father identified it as such, but I can’t remember if he really peered down to see it with his own eyes.