Blog #10: Look Up For All Things Red

6:40 pm

As I write out here in my backyard, I immediately notice several new things.  Sunshine, a rarity in Pittsburgh, finally makes its way out to my humble abode, and I can sense the beginnings of spring.  Our fountain, which I can finally see because it is no longer covered in snow, is filled with soggy leaves and twigs. I hear several bird calls, which I can't identify.

I look up into the trees, hoping to see the crest of a red cardinal, but to no avail.  When I direct my eyes downward again, two birds that look like turtle doves fly up from the fountain, startling me, as I had not even been aware of their presence before.   Of course, as I am hopeless at identifying most birds, they were in all likelihood not turtle doves at all. I'm not even sure what a real turtle dove looks like, or whether they are native to this area.  (Though I do know most of the lyrics to "The Twelve Days of Christmas!")  As I can hardly even tell the difference between a hawk and an eagle, this should come as no surprise, but my terrible memory is certainly inconvenient for the purposes of writing a nature blog.

The birds I do know, however, I am quite partial to.  I can identify precisely four kinds: a blue jay, a hummingbird, a cardinal, and a red-winged blackbird.  (Apparently, I am only impressed by bright, immediately recognizable colors when it comes to our feathered friends.)  On occasion, I will note the obnoxious squawk of the blue jay before I spot him, but more often than not it is the cardinal that will stop me in my tracks without even a visual confirmation of his red crest and black eyeliner.  On my way to class, I will drop my rucksack on the ground, halting wherever I happen to be--whether perched at the bus stop, strolling along the sidewalk, or speed-walking down the lane toward class--and crane my neck upward, staring intently at treetops for as long as it takes to find the source of the music.

This stillness and focus is an impulse that is difficult for me to control.  Surely, if Big Brother made a law against stopping suddenly on a path to seek out one particular bird or another, I would have a bad time of it.  I am sure I would accrue many, many fines.

In my backyard at this moment, a blaring car alarm coexists with the bird calls.  The cacophany disappoints me, making it hard to focus.  The sound is as repetitive and loud as a blue jay's fighting words aimed at his brothers, and yet it is more offensive, somehow.  I curse the car under my breath, then recall that this mixture of noises is a reminder of the close proximity nature and humankind share.  Right on top of one another in my senses, they seem to be duking it out for my attention:  Bird call. Alarm.  Bird call. Alarm.  And so forth.  Of course, the soundtrack of humankind always seems a little more demanding than the other, and this irritates me to no end. 

           
                                                                  *

I used to be big on totems.  Proof of this: Once, when I spotted a snake on the sidewalk in Kansas--a rare occurrence for me--I ran immediately to the bookstore to see what Ted Andrews, animal symbologist and author of Animal Speak, had to say about it.  The man researches this stuff for a living, after all. 

One day, several years back, I saw at least a hundred ladybugs on the steps of the Budig computer lab at KU (my alma mater).  I was speaking with my mother on the phone shortly after I spotted them, and told her that they reminded me of her mother, who had passed away when I was six.  I did not tell her that this reminder was due to a personal recollection of having watched a ladybug die, slowly, on the edge of Gramma's bathtub once when I was a child, though my grandmother was not even in the room when this happened.  I did not tell her that this experience came back to me while witnessing a massive group of ladybugs, twenty years later, crawling around the steps of KU.  Yet, my mother shared my ladybug run-in with my sister, who started noticing ladybugs everywhere, too, and claiming that her ladybugs were also a sign, a hello, from our Gramma.  (Apparently, I was not the only one who was big on totems.)  How was this possible, I wondered, since I was the one who'd had the original experience with these insects?  Could this whole totem thing be contagious, somehow?Could one person "catch" another's faith in ancestor worship, in some kind of higher power?

Instead of feeling supported in my obsession with ladybug symbolism, I felt as though my spiritual vision had been co-opted.  I wanted my own connection with the spirits of the earth and sky--a symbol that I would always know belonged to me alone.  But nature doesn't work this way.  It is there for all to share, and any feeling that we are the only ones who can take pleasure in it at any given moment is a mere illusion.   
     
                                                                     *

The arrival of ladybugs heralds the start of spring, as they are some of the first insects to return to their warm-weather routines. In the autumn, they will seek shelter indoors, and when temperatures become warmer following a spurt of cool weather, they may converge on sun-warmed buildings, which may be why I encountered them on the steps that day. At the time, their presence seemed magical to me, an unexpected encounter with a strange kind of power and intensity that reminded me of things past. Perhaps it would have disappointed me, then, to know these tiny creatures were just doing what ladybugs do. Today, as I research their species and their habits, I am okay with this. I am disappointed only to learn that as a species they may aggravate my asthma.

In a garden, ladybugs are considered among the most useful of creatures, as they voraciously consume aphids, a common garden pest.  Among humans, therefore, they are well-liked. The most beautiful ladybugs, in my opinion, are those of the darkest shades of red--the darker color indicates that they are older (and perhaps wiser in the ways of the ladybug world) than their lighter-shelled counterparts.  

Lady bugs, interestingly, are also known as "ladybirds" in the U.K. and elsewhere (so perhaps I can now say that I know how to recognize five kinds of birds, and not four).  They share this nickname with Lady Bird Johnson, wife of Lyndon B. Johnson and First Lady in the U.S. in the 1960's, who famously worked to beautify numerous trails and parks, as well as cities and roads.  The name "ladybird" itself comes from the term "Our Lady's Bird," a reference to Jesus' mother Mary, who wore a red garment in early artistic renderings, and whose seven woes and joys are said to be represented by the most common European verison of this insect, the seven spot ladybird.  (Fun fact: In German, she is called a Marybeetle.)

I think about the worldwide influence of ladybugs, in learning that they have moonlighted as the logo for a London publishing company, a line of children's clothing, a ski resort in the Pyrenees, and the Swedish People's Party of Finland, not to mention standing in as a Dutch symbol for peace in the face of senseless violence and as a major character in British author Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach--one of the first books my sister read to me when I was a child.  In Turkey, ladybugs are known as good luck bugs, and Irish, Polish, and Romanian people refer to them as "God's...cow."  There is even a German version of a popular ladybird-themed nursery rhyme, titled "Marienwürmchen," set to music by the incomparable Robert Schumann (Opus 79, No. 14).  I listen to the beautiful singer's voice on You Tube; if we take her words and translate them back into English, we would hear:

Ladybird, sit on my hand -
I will do you no harm.
No harm shall come to you;
I only wish to see your colorful wings:
your colorful wings are my joy. 

I see my own thoughts echoed in these words and in the beliefs of many cultures regarding ladybugs.  There are so many variations of ladybug lore across the centuries; how could I ever have thought these delicate insects belonged to me alone?  And yet...

And yet, I needed a new totem.

                                                                       *

When winter drags on interminably, as it has of late, I seem to forget the the call of the redbird.  Though there are many birds I might like to see, his is the only song I miss.  I have read that his singing is a territorial thing, that he carves out his space with song; his voice is the most recognizable, and therefore the most beautiful to me.  I don't mind his motives in the slightest, as long as I can listen to him. 

They say that he is a bird who stays around all year, but he never seems to visit my home in the winter months.  When I do forget his voice, I try to hear it in every bird's song, try to compare their notes with my memory of his tones.  My heart lightens for a moment or two whenever I think it is him calling to me, only to be dashed when I realize it is an imposter I hear--until one spring day, I think to myself decisively, "There it is!" and I scold myself for ever forgetting his melody.

Two mornings ago, the sudden movement of a redbird startled me.  She was mostly brown, as the females are, offering only a slight flash of red as she flew from a low lying tree nearby into a much higher canopy.  I did a quick double-take, thinking I may have imagined that flash of red, in a bout of wishful thinking.  I had not yet seen a cardinal this year, though I had been looking.  Had I only imagined that bit of scarlet?  Lo and behold, a second bird sprung up a  moment later, the same telltale flash of red rising up from the low tree.  If I had any lingering doubt that the first was a cardinal--the very bird named for the scarlet garments of the other Cardinal, the religious kind--the partnership of these two seemed to confirm it.  One redbird was good luck.  But two!  Two redbirds meant, in my mind at least, that the tides of the natural world were changing with the arrival of a new season.  That something in me was changing, too. 

I have found their guidance to be relevant in my life.  A single flash of red as I walked home through the woods in Kansas after volunteering on KU's campus was enough to inspire me for the rest of the day, enough to make me thoughtful.  Ever since that time, the call of the redbird has never let me go. 

I still recall the books I used to consult several years back on the subject of animal totems, shortly after I adopted the redbird as my new totem.  How useful are they, as guides? According to the musings of animal symbologist Ted Andrews, redbirds remind us about "responsibility and the recognition of the importance of the task at hand."  Check.  They tell us, Andrews says, "that we should be listening to the inner voice... more closely for our own health and well-being," that when we spot a redbird, the occasion "reflects a need to assert the feminine aspects of creativity and intuition" in our lives.  Check.  Perhaps these will remain powerful lessons in my life, whether or not a comrade adopts my totem of choice, once again.  (Though I suppose I will keep a deer or a turtle or something in mind, just in case.)

Even if totemic thinking can sometimes offer us the illusion of specialness through giving us a distinctive connection with the animal world, it surely possesses some meditative value as well.  The redbird might say, if only we could translate his song as we do the lyrics of the German ladybird:
"Add color to your life, and remember that everything you do is of importance."


      
See these pages more more information on ladybugs, ladybug lyrics, Lady Bird Johnson, and the naming of cardinals, their symbology, and their habits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccinellidae
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070405155814AAMXEm0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Bird_Johnson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_(bird)
http://www.birdclan.org/cardinal.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cardinal