Eating Stone (eBook)

THE BLUE DOOR BAND Homo sapiens have left themselves few places and scant ways to witness other species in their own world, an estrangement that leaves us hungry and lonely. In this famished state, it is no wonder that when we do finally encounter wild animals, we are quite surprised by the sheer truth of them. Nothing speaks the truth quite like a 220-pound desert bighorn ram mounted atop a standing female, thrusting his heavy pelvis back and forth like there was no tomorrow. It was the rut. Males, usually solo or in bachelor bands, had joined the females, which for the rest of the year lived separately with random groups of juveniles. The rams were glossy, fat, spirited. Their thick, curled horns and heavy testicles carried a few million years of evolutionary momentum. Here in the canyon, not much else mattered but the bone and muscle needed to transport these body parts. On four hooves rode massive sperm factories. I had put the river between myself and the rutting grounds, not that I was much more than wallpaper as the sheep copulated. I shared guilt over trespass with other voyeurs: the few subdominant rams, unlucky in love, six nearby ewes, a pair of lecherous ravens perched on a boulder. The mating unfolded quickly but with a ritualized certainty. Among a species with a complex repertoire of social behaviors, the penalty of ambiguity is reproductive failure. As the ram dropped off the mount, the other males brawled in rushes, kicks, and threat displays. One lunged toward the ewe, only to have his butt smashed by her guardian, a ram of spent force but fixed vigilance. The ewe ran off and disappeared from view, pursued by the younger suitors. The snoopy ravens left their perch and followed. The remaining ewes, already inseminated or not yet in estrus and therefore not ready to breed, moved about restlessly, then settled down to feed. The Colorado Plateau canyon country is one of several 'wilderness' holdouts of this subspecies of a North American bovid family, genus Ovis, commonly known as mountain sheep. Strict regulations prohibit the hunting of desert bighorns except by special permit. Compared to their sport-celebrity hulky northern cousin, the Rocky Mountain bighorn (Ovis canadensis canadensis) of the intermountain West and Canadian Rockies, desert bighorns are smaller, paler, and longer in ear. They are more isolated and fewer in number. In some places, they face extinction on their native range. Four races of desert bighorn sheep live in the arid wilds of the American Southwest and Mexico. Of these races, my momentarily sex-crazed sheep are Nelson's bighorns (Ovis canadensis nelsoni), occupants of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert. The ewes that fed quietly on the talus of a river canyon had slender, upright horns that escaped notice, while the horns of males dominated one's gaze. Ram horns flare and curl. Aboriginal southwesterners took their form and gave them to their gods. For modern humans, this headgear is an icon of blood sport. To other sheep, ram horns are social organs. Desert bighorns are blocky, long-necked ungulates, grayish brown in color, sometimes more gray than brown, or pale beige, or with a russet cast. Their noses are moist and their rumps are white. They eat dry, abrasive plants, digesting them with four-chambered stomachs and the help of protozoa and bacteria. The five gaits of bighorn sheep reflect their mental state, from a pompous, show-offy walk to an exuberant trot down a near-vertical rock face or a twenty-five-mile-per-hour escape run. Their hearts pump at a rate of eighty beats per minute....