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Desert Ghost

A Queen Dethroned

By SJ HowePublished 3 years ago 10 min read
3
Desert Ghost
Photo by Rachel Coyne on Unsplash

Shane didn’t believe me. We had covered over 200 miles just since sunrise and the fact that he had run out of coffee didn’t make his surly disposition any more affable. Even if he had been in a better mood, it wouldn’t have mattered. I was the “FNG” as the others called me: Fucking New Guy. My opinion simply didn’t matter.

As environmental scientists doing pre-construction biological surveys for oil and gas companies, nest inspections were our company’s bread and butter. Migratory birds and their nests are federally protected so in the Spring—construction can be halted by even one inconveniently situated nest. Teams of two were sent out weekly from our home office in Central Texas to the Permian Basin: a field lead, which in this instance was Shane, and a field tech- me, a.k.a FNG. We spent hours driving to off-the-grid locations, weaving our way across chalky, caliche roads and cattle guards looking for brightly spray-painted land survey stakes marking “the” spot. Once there, we either hiked or rode the 4-wheeler, depending on the terrain. We took GPS coordinates at each of the stakes to use in our map-making and reporting, and surveyed for nests, cultural artifacts, and very rarely- endangered cacti. My job was to navigate while we were on the road, offload and reload the ATV, collect GPS data, and spot nests.

As an older woman who had been given a second shot at my dream of becoming a wildlife biologist, I took the nest spotter role very seriously. This was my very first week of field work so maybe it was beginner’s luck but I had found more nests that day than any field team had reported in weeks. The first time I spotted one while we were riding across the dunes, I patted Shane on the back and pointed. He grinned and we meandered over to a leafless mesquite to investigate a signature ball of dried up grass and mud with a hole at the top generally made by cactus wrens. “Check it out,” he said surprisingly congenial. I put on my Carhartt gloves and carefully pulled down a thorny branch so that the grass ball was eye level and then tiptoed so I could peer inside: 4 small speckled eggs. “Positive” I yelled back to him. “Times four.” Shane smiled, bits of Copenhagen bedazzling his gapped front teeth, and pulled out his orange field journal. He got off the ATV, looked around, and began making his notes. “Go ahead and mark it,” he said to me. My heart soared. I was doing it! I was making a difference! I grabbed the GPS and did my thing, just as I had been shown days prior. Shane seemed to linger so I felt comfortable enough to ask some questions. He identified plants for me and explained laws and ordinances. We were roughly the same age but he had been doing this job a long time, and I had spent years working as a science teacher. I was enjoying the reversal of me as the student but not so much the derision that came along with being the novice.

We had just unloaded the ATV on a God-forsaken oil lease road somewhere along the New Mexico/Texas border when I saw her. Shane was readying the field materials: water, a herp stick, his beloved field journal, and a beat up old yellow Garmin GPS unit. I stood face-flushed in the stifling April heat waiting for Shane to summon me to ride bitch on the ATV when I saw a flash of white zip over vegetation about 200 yards from us. “Hey”! “Did you see that?” Shane turned around and glared at me with a look that both questioned and dared me to explain. “Raptor”, I said. “200 yards—that way.” He returned his attention to the ATV, this time audibly slamming things around and mumbling to express his displeasure at my discovery. “Let’s GOOOO”, he said sarcastically as if I was the one holding things up.

Usually, we would travel from project to project with only negative findings. But that morning, when I yelled out “Raptor”—it was the 8th sighting on the same property and we still had 12 more surveys to complete, all miles apart, before we could call it a day. Each discovery I made after that first cactus wren nest seemed to kill Shane’s spirit. It was apparent that he just wanted to be finished. He traveled a lot and had a wife and young sons at home. He was obviously weary.

The metal burned the inside of my calves as I straddled the ATV seat, even through the ugly FR pants we had to wear to work on oil leases. I pointed to where I saw the flash and we came up on a section of ground that I can only describe as a mini Grand Canyon. A once forceful creek had carved a deep and wide gorge that was not even visible from where we just were 200 yards away. “Holy shit!” Shane said excitedly. He was more impressed with the land formations than with the bird I thought I saw, and he started to try to work his way to the bottom which was probably 25 feet down. He told me to stay put which was fine by me. I wasn’t about to rappel from that spot. He made it down after some careful maneuvering and then disappeared as he walked along the barren creek bed. I got nervous after about 20 minutes of silence and so I decided to ride the ATV along the edge of the gulch. Soon enough, I saw Shane precariously trying to climb back up the wall of the escarpment by grabbing roots and wedging his boots into rocks as footholds. I asked if he needed help. He was covered in sweat and his face was red from exertion. “Nah. I’m good. Just give me a second. By the way, I didn’t see YOUR raptor,” he said flippantly. I was questioning what I saw myself in that moment, as it didn’t seem plausible. What I saw was large and white and didn’t seem to fit the landscape of where we were. I began to feel badly. Shane looked beat and his face had a few cuts from what I could only assume were mesquite or acacia thorns slapping him as he tried to ascend. Just as he reached the surface and was hunched over the sand trying to catch his breath, there she was. “Shane, Look!”

She was soaring right above the perimeter of the creek appearing to survey where my partner had just been. “What the hell?” “Do you know owls? What kind is that?” Shane barked. I recognized the shape of her face and her coloration instantly. “I’m pretty sure it’s a Barn Owl. But what’s she doing here?” “Nest?” I questioned as we re-boarded the ATV and tried to follow her. We had to go all the way around the ravine that Shane had been in to try and track her but we were not prepared for what we found next. About 300 yards away from the banks of the first canyon, sat the remnants of an even deeper, even wider channel that someone standing just a few yards out in the desert would never see. This is where the barn owl had disappeared. “Let’s try to flush her out and get a better look” Shane said as he started scrambling down like a commando again. Not wanting to miss out on the excitement this time, I found a safer way to the bottom by scooting down on my butt. Shane instructed me to walk one end while he walked the other and to “holler” if I saw something. It was amazing down there. It was like a lost world and I was in awe. Not a single footprint to be seen in the dried-up clay! I wondered how long it had been since another human had seen this place. I was observing everything like a nerdy scientist. “What’s this?” I picked up what looked to be the jawbone of a rodent. Then a leg bone. Then a skull. I walked a little further and then hollered. “Uhhh, Shane! Check this out!!” Right at the base of one of the steepest canyon faces was a pile of bones about 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall. It was made up entirely of the skeletons of small desert creatures: mainly birds, mice, and lizards. Some of them were bleached from the sun and some still contained bits of dried up flesh, fur, or even feathers. I heard Shane’s footsteps against the gravelly ground crunching nearer but I felt like I was being observed. I looked up instinctively and there sat the most magnificent owl I had ever seen. She was sitting inside a hollow in the canyon wall staring right at me, her white feathers gleaming against the brown backdrop. She looked like a desert ghost. The wall beneath her was streaked white with droppings and on the canyon floor sat the pellet graveyard of what must have been many years of her kills. This was her roost. Her home. Her kingdom. How long had she lived here? How many young had she reared? She stared at me and I stared at her and for a second it felt as though our souls were intertwined. Her piercing eyes saw through me like no other wild creature ever had. The impending doom struck me as soon as I saw Shane’s shadow turn the corner. The desert ghost took flight, her silent wings flapping forcefully in Shane’s direction. The surprise of it literally knocked him down and we both watched her fly away until she was nothing but a speck in the distance. Shane pulled out his notebook and I took the GPS coordinate. I took pictures of the graveyard and started firing desperate questions at him even though I already knew the answer: No nest, no protection. “But there could be nestlings in there, right Shane? Can’t we say we saw eggs? Look at this bone pile! Do you know how long she’s lived here?” My eyes teared up behind my Ray-bans as Shane slammed his field journal shut with finality. “There is no way for us to look inside that hollow. It's inaccessible. She’s got wings. She will find a new place.” I didn’t say a word for the rest of the day. We went through 11 more project sites and I found 8 more nests. I robotically did my job with the understanding that anything we found would only be “saved” for a few more weeks until the eggs hatched and the young fledged. After that, the oil companies have free reign to clear everything and get to drilling. They have wings they will find another place.

I told my boss everything when we returned. I pleaded with him about what could be done. He looked me squarely in the eye and said “nothing”. A few weeks later, I was sent out for my second field work rotation. I was still the FNG tech but this time Zach was the lead. We pulled into a run- down convenience store so that Zach could buy his mid-day Diet Dr. Pepper. I got out of the truck, sore and sunburned and as I headed towards the entrance, I once again felt like I was being watched. I froze when I looked up to find her, the desert ghost. This time she was perched atop the splintered remains of a telephone pole in the dilapidated parking lot. She looked at me with the same soul-piercing intensity as before but now with an unrelenting sadness that haunts me still. “Sweet. Barn Owl!” Zach called out as he cracked open his soda and spit out the truck window. “You don’t see tho se round' here much anymore."

wild animals
3

About the Creator

SJ Howe

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