The Zoo

One of the many reasons I liked Biology classes in college was the fact that almost everything (starting with the word Biology--study of life) had a Greek name. Taxonomy was no problem if you knew a little Greek; Ovid's Metamorphoses and Bulfinch's Mythology were surprisingly useful.

Here a bare 20 minutes from a major city, we have more animal visitors than you'd think, and the zoa and phyta (animals and plants) are a constant reminder of our cultural heritage as well as of the natural state of the land before we humans intruded.

From the bird kingdom, phoebes (for Phoebus Apollo) show up at dawn, competing with the robins (Erithacus) for the earthworms (Oligochaeta or hairless animals). The ravens (Corvus or korax, croaking) rule the roost, all black-feathered since Apollo took umbrage at one of their messages. At night, however, Athene's owl calls from the cypress trees. The trees themselves are named for Kyparissos, who accidentally killed his pet deer and was fated to weep throughout eternity.

Down in the corner, two Daphne trees, named for the maid fleeing some ancient god's advances, recall the oracle of Delphi, who reputedly chewed laurel leaves in order to enter a transcendent state. Many of the plants have descriptive names in Greek: Chrysanthe(mum) is Golden Flower; Pyrocanthus is Fire Thorn.

Though we have a renegade deer or fawn which comes in the night and eats the rosebuds, we haven't seen much of the raccoons and skunks since we stopped putting out the garbage at night. The opossums have stopped coming around, too, and it has been years since I saw a garter snake.

The spiders (Arachnids, for the master weaver who challenged Hera, the wife of Zeus) are still on duty, of course, and gophers, slugs and snails (from the family of Mixozoa, slime animals) make gardening a challenge.

Two wild visitors this week stared at me through the window: A hummingbird hovered on the other side of the glass, a foot from where I was munching my sandwich. And a grey squirrel who had a long, fearless drink from the basin I keep out front, then hopped on a log and looked at me long and hard. I felt exactly as if I were on the other side of the bars at the zoo.