Ducks, Newburyport, page 14
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Mountain lions, being stealthy, see more people than people see lions. The lioness would not retreat in honor of a man, but nor did she seek them out. They were a threat and a nuisance merely, like fire or flood.
In search of a new den, she escorted her zigzagging cubs across a smooth black highway, the province of men and cars. A jeep roared towards them but she stared it down, with that wrinkle in the middle of her forehead that meant business. The car slowed, then came to a stop. She and her cubs proceeded into the woods on the other side at a leisurely pace, without a backward glance.
But men were all around them in the forest, trespassing continually on lion territories that had long been demarcated. Such invasions were an affront. They stole the deer too, or scared them away with their stink and their squawks and the snapping of their guns. They left behind them injured, poisoned animals, and long unnatural deaths.
Deep snow is the quietest time. Now and then the air rang with the noise of gunfire, the human clatter of clicks, rumbles and beeps, and the distracting blasts of men’s voices and those of the callow dogs that shadow them wherever they go. Evidence of their incursions was everywhere, in all sorts of unburied human belongings – glass bottles, metal cans, shreds of paper and plastic – of no use to anyone but a jackdaw.
