A grey-purple stem stands solid in the cool breeze, connected leaves fluttering. Overhead, the sun darts behind a cloud, then peeks out, half hiding like a shy child behind his mother’s legs.
The leaves of the Nettle are elongated hearts, cut with pinking shears. Even it’s hearts wear teeth.
I can just about see the stingers, fine hairs that look soft, but experience tells me they are deceptive. They are the sharp pins from the same sewing kit that held the shears.
As I sit with the Nettle, the air brustles around us and it seems to wave to me. Or is it pushing me away? It feels like it’s leaves are frantically ushering me to go.
I heed it’s advice and scurry inside, out the wind, but shortly after I wonder, should I have stayed? Was it pushing me away as a self-protective measure? An extension of the boundaries the stings set? I wonder if I should have stayed, earnt it’s trust, pushed through the harsh outer layers?
And I wonder, what would I have found under it’s tough armour?
A nursery for caterpillars? A buffet for insectivores? An all-inclusive resort for bugs?
Or all of the above.
Butterflies and moths lay their eggs on the Nettle’s leaves; Small Tortoiseshell Butterflies, Peacock Butterflies and Burnished Brass Moths.
Once hatched, the caterpillars feed on the leaves as they grow, protected from predators whilst they make their magical transformation.
Carrot Flies, Black Flies and Aphids eat the Nettle, then in turn, they become food for Ladybirds, Blue Tits and other birds.
It’s thought that more than 40 kinds of insect shelter on and around the Nettle, enjoying protection from grazing animals. These insects in turn draw insectivores such as Hedgehogs, Shrews, Frogs and Toads, turning a nettle patch into a food court.
It’s flowers offer pollen and nectar for butterflies and the seeds offer autumn food for Chaffinches, Bullfinches and House Sparrows.
The nettle is also home to Jumping Plant Lice, Tarnished Plant Bugs and more. These creatures are not put off by the Nettle’s sting, they welcome it, they embrace it. They see beyond the defensive bristling, the measures the Nettle employs in order to avoid being vulnerable. Where so many others see malice, they see potential.
***
A day later and I pull a few of the more unwieldly plants from my patch of ground. I would rather I tamed them gently and sparingly than the council tried, with brutal force and unrefined machinery.
Despite two pairs of gloves and knowledge of how to approach a nettle, I still get stung. A grey pin prick amongst the whorls and swirls of my fingertip.
When the tiny hypodermic needle brushed against me, the tip broke off and the remaining hair pierced my skin, injecting an elegant cocktail of irritants. This included histamine which I am especially sensitive to, and is likely why my one single nettle sting was still throbbing and swollen hours later.
I can’t think of another plant whose identity is so wrapped up in it’s sting, in it’s self-defence. Other plant protections are utilised, taken for human use – whether it’s the nicotine that protects the Tobacco plant or salicylic acid produced when herbivores bite Willow or the Cinchona trees which use the bitter taste of quinine to repel predators.
***
There is an old belief that a nettle in your pocket will keep you safe from lightning and give you courage. Perhaps this is a self fulfilling prophecy, not everyone would pick the nettle in the first place…
Or, perhaps it is the gift that comes from knowing the Nettle. Of knowing there is more to a book that it’s cover, more to a nettle than it’s sting. Of knowing the Nettle is more about protection than defence.
It’s 4.15am and I am in so much pain that I am nearly in tears – something that takes a lot for a pro like me. As I’m slowly breathing in and out, I hear a bird. Closing my eyes against the pain, I focus on the melody. Phrases repeat and change and reappear making a tune that feels slightly off familiar.
This time of morning is one I know well. It is my secret segment of the day. A rare alone time. Often, I read to distract from the pain, or listen to an audiobook but now, as dawn edges into the night, I find myself smiling. This in-between becomes my own special moment, a time when the birds are serenading me alone. Sharing their wisdom for the day ahead. In those notes, I hear hope, even knowing that they may well be territorial shouts from male to male.
Another morning, another 4am, another bird call; a song thrush this time. A song, then a space. A space filled with hope. Another call, another wait, no reply. But it’s early in the season, there’s still time for a female to hear and accept the invitation.
I wonder who else hears the songs, perhaps a fox, or a hedgehog? I know there are bats nearby. I have seen them at dusk swooping under a bridge and diving for insects over the lake in the park. They are most likely Pipistrelles; flitting across grey-black night. Perhaps other creatures stir in the night with me, eyes half open, ears filling with the music of the dawn.
There have been so many early mornings when the birds have been my comfort, my companions. Unable to sleep, I’ve had the pleasure of hearing tweets and calls and song, and they have, and continue, to offer me solace in my pain.
Whilst I have a long practice of connecting to nature from my home, and even from my bed, I have found connecting to nature during lockdown has brought further opportunities.
One of the fantastic things about everyone else being stuck at home is the number of events that have gone online. As such I’ve been able to ‘attend’ so many talks and conferences that would have been impossible for me otherwise.
Urban Tree Festival – This was held in May and had offerings including talks, workshops and book clubs.
Hay Festival – The Hay Festival also went online during May but don’t worry if you missed it, you can watch a free offering of the week or sign up for the Hay Player to catch up.
Other online offerings I’ve attended have included… a talk about peacemaking circles in Native American communities, a workshop about nature and resilience and a virtual foraging walk. I’ve found these searching and browsing EventBrite.
One of the most amazing lockdown offerings I’ve found has come from America, from Emergence Magazine who have beautifully written articles, and that’s a wonderful way of connecting with nature in itself. But they have also gathered together a host of community offerings including book clubs, talks, seminars and a fantastic nature writing course which I have been part of for the last few months.
But of course connecting with nature isn’t just about courses and learning. It’s about experiencing. It’s about noticing. It’s about connecting.
We’ve been lucky in the UK over the last couple of weeks and have had some incredibly nice weather and I have managed to get out into my yard which isn’t the nicest place but is outside and safe right now. Normally I would be in the park with lots of nature and people and things going on around me. But instead, I was in a small space, no one but my carer visible and not as much nature. Or at least not as much obvious nature. The longer we were there, the more I tuned into the bird songs and what they were ‘saying’. I saw the ants erratically wandering over the paving slabs. I spent time looking at the greenfly that landed on my leg.
This is the perfect time to focus on place, on the small and slower things that are happening right now. Notice the fluffs of dandelions on the breeze and let your mind wonder where they are headed and what life lies ahead for them.
Point out nature, to yourself or to another being. Doing this helps you to connect for a moment rather than see something fleetingly and then move on. I’ve been doing this with my carers for ages now and I know that they now notice nature more as well which is fantastic! Or take a picture or make a note of how it made you feel to hear or see or smell that thing. Acting on it helps you to connect to that part of nature.
If you know people who are able to go out for walks safely, enlist their help! Get them to take you with them via video call. This is much more fun that pre-recorded virtual walks because you are in real time. And it gives you something to talk about other than the state of the world right now. I’ve also found it helps you get to know the place your friend lives in. If you were visiting in person, you probably wouldn’t see the local park or field, especially if you have mobility issues and said area is inaccessible.
Get yourself feeders, find blogs and books that inspire you to look closer and, most importantly, look out of your window!
I have loved hearing and watching the house sparrows that visit my feeder and obviously it’s the time of year for chicks. I have been trying to get pictures of them, and the starlings, feeding their young but every time something has interfered. I had pretty much given up when I got these images! These are just a select few, if you are as sparrow obsessed as I am, check out my flickr album for more!
The first few pictures are of a male House Sparrow feeding his fledglings and then a couple of him all fluffed up, which is so cute!
“In order to harness the energy of inspiration, you need to connect to your creative centre. This in turn will spark the flame inside of you that is just waiting to burn brightly. Now is not the time for mastery, however; it is a time of experimentation and fun. Learn as much as you can while you can and don’t worry about doing it the wrong or right way.” – Message from Salamander, Animal Totem Tarot
Salamanders are amphibians that look a lot like lizards- slim bodies, short legs and blunt snouts – but they have permeable skin that means they need to live in cool, damp places. As they breathe through their skin, it is hard for them to filter out toxins in the environment and so they can be used as an indicator species; their presence or lack of, reflects pollution levels.
As I write this, I am having an allergic reaction to something in my environment. I am exceptionally sensitive to changes in my environment and so I am alert to any changes, whether that’s consciously or through the rash on my cheek. But you should also be sensitive to energy vampires and toxic people. Especially as salamanders have skin glands which excrete poisons, in some cases powerful neurotoxins.
Some salamanders live in caves, others in moist crevices but most species live in humid forests. They are generally more active during the cooler parts of the day, and wait until night to eat. In the warmer parts of the day, they hide under rocks or in shadowy areas to stay cool.
“To a salamander beneath a log, the first heavy raindrops must sound like the knuckles of spring knocking on the door overhead. After six months of torpor, stiff limbs slowly flex, tails wiggle out of winter immobility, and within minutes, snouts nose upward and legs push away cold earth as the salamanders crawl up into the night.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer
Once out, they head towards water where they will mate and breed. Like salmon, they return to the same waters that they were born in. Perhaps this is a nudge telling you to return home, to visit your birth place or to spend time with your ancestors.
“Part of their direction-finding ability relies on a precise reading of the lines in the earth’s magnetic field. A small organ in the brain processes magnetic data and guides the salamander to its pond… Following the earth’s magnetic gets them to the neighbourhood and then scent takes over to guide them home.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer
The amazing way they find their destination makes me think we should all be listening to our intuition when it comes to travel. Perhaps there is a reason why you are drawn to that particular place over and over again.
Once they reach their destination, the male deposits a spermatophore (a packet of sperm) on the ground or in the water and the female picks this up with her cloaca. Here the sperm fertilises her eggs and they are then laid in water. NB some species do give birth to live young.
During the larval stage, the young live in the water, breathing through gills and resembling tadpoles. By the end of this stage, they have limbs and metamorphosis normally takes place, with lungs replacing gills.
Their reproductive cycle echoes that of life overall – larvae are born in water with gills and grow up into adults with lungs that live on land, like how life developed lungs and stepped onto land. Or most salamanders do. The axolotl provides a striking exception.
Axolotls were revered by Aztecs and get their name from an Aztec deity called Xolotl who was associated with death and lightning. They are strange creatures who never grow out of the larval form, and yet still reach sexual maturity, an odd paradox. In labs, they can be ‘turned’ into land animals through the use of hormones suggesting the potential is there and yet as a species they choose not to take this final metamorphosis. Those that do go through this process have a shorter lifespan.
All salamanders engage in autotomy, or self amputation, to escape predators, and the acolotyl raises the bar incredibly. They can regenerate limbs, tails, jaw, skin and even their spinal cord without scarring.
“You can cut the spinal cord, crush it, remove a segment, and it will regenerate. You can cut the limbs at any level – the wrist, the elbow, the upper arm – and it will regenerate, and it’s perfect. There is nothing missing, there’s no scarring on the skin at the site of amputation, every tissue is replaced. They can regenerate the same limb 50, 60, 100 times. And every time: perfect.” – Prof. Stephane Roy
They can also accept limbs from other axolotls; in a questionable experiment, scientists gave an axolotl a second head… Research into this creature could help people with severe burns, transplant recipients and even cancer as they are more resistant to it than any mammals. They are true survivors but I wonder how we would feel if we came out of a traumatic experience unscarred. Scars can be hard to bear but they show us that we have been hurt and that we have survived, they also prove that the painful thing was real.
“Some people see scars, and it is wounding they remember. To me they are proof of the fact that there is healing.” ― Linda Hogan
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.” ― Cormac McCarthy
“My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.” ― Steve Goodier
The axolotl brings messages around healing oneself and the power we have within. I am not suggesting we can cure illness with the power of our mind, rather that we can use tools such as meditation to reduce stress and that in turn can help us live healthier lives. It might be time for you to think about your health or to seek out help from experts.
The ability of the salamander, and especially the axolotl, to regenerate is ripe for metaphor. With this card, we are reminded that we have the power to change our lives, to transform ourselves to go into the fire and come out alive like the phoenix.
The axolotl isn’t the only wonder salamander, the Eastern Hellbender – a fantastic name but as if that wasn’t enough, they are also known as Devil Dogs, Lasagne Lizards and Snot Otters – is a large kind of Salamander found in America. They are being studied as they seem to be resistant to BD, a deadly disease which is killing amphibians around the world. They test positive for it and yet show no symptoms so it is possible they can bring hope to frogs, toads, newts and other salamanders everywhere!
In my notes, I have written that the salamander is the spirit of fire in animal form but I have not said where I got that from. Thinking in terms of tarot and elements, we have in the salamander, a creature that combines fire and water. Fire can be destructive and water can balance it, in the same way that the creative energy of the fire element can be intense, overwhelming and destructive and need some balancing out if you want to avoid burn out.
Many beliefs and myths around salamanders relate them to fire. It is thought this is because they hang out inside rotting logs and when these are burn, the salamander would try to escape, leading to the belief that they were created from the flames.
In ancient Rome it was said that salamanders could spit fire and burn water, and that if you touched them you would be poisoned but if you put one in honey it would create an aphrodisiac. These tie in nicely with the elemental ideas above – power and passion.
In ancient Greece, Pliny the Elder wrote:
“A salamander is so cold that it puts out fire on contact. It vomits from its mouth a milky liquid; if this liquid touches any part of the human body it causes all the hair to fall off, and the skin to change colour and break out in a rash.”
In later times, Leonardo da Vinci wrote:
“[The salamander] has no digestive organs, and gets no food but from the fire, in which it constantly renews its scaly skin.”
In France, the folkloric salamander brings poison; simply by falling into a well, all the water would be poisoned, and by climbing a tree, all the fruits would be poisoned.
“Salamanders were used as symbols in heraldry representing mastery of passion passing through its fires unblemished. They represent the virtues of courage, loyalty, chastity, virginity, impartiality. They are symbolic of Jesus, who baptised with the fire of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary, and the devotion of Christians who keep the faith.” – zteve t evans
The salamander is a very interesting creature, both scientifically and in terms of symbolism. Healing, regeneration, sensitivity and homing are themes at play, along with the element of fire, especially in combination with water. I hope you have enjoyed this wander through the salamander, are there any animals you’d like me to look at next?
Some evenings the bird chatter – the kaa ka kas, the pep pip pips, the alarm calls- grate on me. During the day I love hearing them and it grates on me that it grates on me and thus a vicious cycle spins on.
This is a new thing. Normally I love hearing the birds as I settle into bed so I wanted to interrogate this, to try and understand what is going on.
My initial thoughts were about time of day; come evening, I am much more tired, and right now I am more likely to be fed up and despondent by the time I get into bed. This is also the first time I am really alone in the day and I sink into my subconscious whirlings. I don’t feel naturally aligned with appreciation, appreciation of anything, at this time of day.
I spend the day noticing and loving but by night I need distraction – tv, film, reading – something I can escape into. And whilst the birds are incredible, they are inevitably out there in the world, right now. And my mind will not let me forget that I am not, and will not let me forget that I am hearing them so much clearer because of the global pandemic.
The birds do not give me the escape I need in this phase of my daily cycle. Their caws and cacks instead pull me away from the fantasy world I plunge into and remind me that my escape is just an illusion. That however hard I try, I am still living in a world with a virus that could kill me and the people I love. A virus that has already killed.
I am still living in a world where the reckless acts of strangers ignoring the rules could turn out to kill. They could be carrying it, walking bombs waiting to be detonated. I am still living in a world where disabled people are being devalued repeatedly in clumsy attempts to get through this crisis, where we are told we may not get the care we need to stay alive (1). And that now that able bodied people are stuck home too, suddenly technology can be used to meet up, to do courses. to offer talks online. And suddenly working from home is perfectly possible.
The calls of the blackbird on the roof pulls me back into a world where people with a week or two of being stuck home under their belt, are suddenly experts on loving nature from home. Despite their daily walks, possibly through countryside and woodland, and their good sized garden, they speak with the authority of a housebound disabled person who has lived this for years. Our voices, those with lived experiences and expertise, are still not heard. We are shouting and going unnoticed because we are disposable, literally right now. Worthless. Valueless. (2)
I have shed many shackles since becoming disabled; the idea that my value is about my economic contribution and my productivity; that my self worth is tied to doing… Is the evening bird song grating against another shackle? One where I cannot be a nature lover, or a nature writer, if I cannot always appreciate it and embrace it?(3)
The nightly scrabble and scramble of starlings on the feeder doesn’t seem as endearing as it did hours before. And all that has changed is me. I have moved through my day, and now I want to tune out the world, and all the noise that tries to tell me I am unimportant. When the messages scream so loudly, so constantly, they cannot help but echo and reverberate around my soul.
By the time I get into bed, I need to escape. I need to live in a different world or a different time. And those birds that I love so deeply and dearly, peck through the bubble I am trying to build.
Come the dawn chorus, I am back to noticing, caring, loving and appreciating.
This is a fragment of my writing from the Emergence nature writing course I am currently doing.
The thick taste of petrichor
Microorganisms in the soil – actinobacteria – decompose dead and decaying matter, turning the no longer living into nutrients and life – the fantastic, eternal, circle of life.
And as they do this, they create a kind of alcohol called geosmin, to which our noses are very sensitive. This is one of the compounds that creates the smell of rain, earthy and nostalgic.
When it is dry, they are less active, when the air is humid and the ground is moist they speed up, releasing more geosmin. So what we are breathing in is the recycling of life, the cycle of life and death and rebirth, the cycle of ransformation. We are smelling the process by which a tree becomes food for a daffodil and the bones of a rabbit become a nutrients for a carrot.
It is also a signal, a sign of a symbiotic partnership that has played out over and over for almost 500 million years.
The bacteria release the odour to attract a specific arthropod, a Springtail, which responds by eating it. This is less suicidal than it appears. Bacteria spores stick to the Springtail and get relocated, as do those excreted in faeces. This helps the bacteria to spread and create new colonies.
Next time you smell the lush, slightly salty, tang of rain, spare a moment for the minute lives whose drama is plays out beneath our feet.
At the moment, I am finding it hard to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. I have many fragments of writing, notes scribbled on scraps of paper but I find myself unable to connect them cohesively. I know this will pass but in the meantime I thought an easy to write post would be a list of nature writing books and articles.
I am currently doing an online course with Emergence Magazine about nature writing and last week we were thinking about place, specifically relationship to place. Normally on sunny, warm days I would be found in the local park which I treat like my garden. If I need to stay home for a delivery or whatever, I might sit out the front of my flat on the pavement. Neither park nor pavement are options right now. What follows is what I wrote about my only option, the back yard.
The back yard is not a space I am intimate with. It isn’t a space I have made familiar. I have avoided it as much as possible. It comes with fear, anxiety and an unwarranted sense of trespass.
When I first saw my flat had a yard, I filled my imagination with dreams and plans, I designed the space in my head. And then I met the neighbours I share it with, and their two untrained dogs which bark and leap and scratch all over my allergic legs. And I saw the dog poo that wasn’t picked up and the dryer fluff that comes out of their window and sticks to the floor. And I got yelled at and threatened for things I hadn’t done.
And those dreams and plans were lost.
Four years later. We can’t spend this sunny afternoon in the park, or sit out the front by the street. Regular habits have been put on pause by coronavirus so, instead, we snatched at a chance when my neighbours went out. We sit in the yard. It is lovely feeling sun on my skin and air outdoors feels twice as fresh. But a bitter buzz deep in me can’t shake the anxiety and fear that my neighbours, or their dogs, will appear.
The self I see out here is one who gives copious amounts of space to others, who makes herself incredibly small so they can stamp all over her more easily.
The front of my flat goes straight onto pavement, but there is a small square where the council planted a bush. I claimed this as my garden. A bird feeder clings to my window above it, visible from the riser recliner I reside in most of the time.
I have built a relationship with this space. Watching sparrows and starlings on the feeder, blackbirds on the bush and pigeons on the floor hoping for scraps of seed. I track the light of the sky slice I can see. Weather permitting I keep my windows open, if only a crack, so I can hear the life outside.
Overtime I’ve ‘trained’ my carers to tell me about birds on the feeder out back that I can’t see from my chair. They send me photos of nature they encounter on their days off; trees abundant with blossom, daffodils singing about the sun and shells seen on a beach. These love notes, for that’s how I think of these pictures, always make me smile. Snapshots of nature in the wider world, sent back to me in this flat, in this chair.
From this chair, I have learnt the names of species but I’ve also got to know the individuals; my friends. The baby sparrow who could feed itself but convinced mum to feed him (and even though you couldn’t yet tell, it had to have been a boy, a mummy’s boy). I watched a lone starling grow up and gain his or her starspots. I have seen a blackbird courting a female and heard his songs from my bed. I have seen bees and butterflies, wagtails and magpies, pigeons and gulls.
This small slice of nature, fills my world and feels so much bigger the more intimately I know it. A fraction of the size of the yard, yet this is mine. This is where I grow and glow and beam so brightly that I seem bigger, not smaller.
Before I delve into the world of the bobcat, I wanted to say that with coronavirus and lock downs and self isolation, it is a strange time. If you would like me to look at an animal that has come into your life recently, please drop me and email and I will see what I can do. Sometimes we need to hear the teachings of our fellow creatures and right now feels especially like one of those times.
But back to the bobcat…
“Vision is fluid and the eyes tend to lie. This means that what some see as restrictive and abusive, others see as liberating and freeing. It really does depend on whose eyes you are looking through” – Animal totem tarot
In the Animal Totem Tarot deck, the bobcat features on the devil card which also ties into the idea of perspective. Depending on how you see things, the devil can be shackling, or liberating and further, it can represent someone who is unshackled and yet is chained because they think they are.
They are obviously feline creatures, and they have – as you’d expect – a short bobbed tail. This has a white end with a black tip and is held up in the dark so that kits can follow mum. They also have tufts of hair on their ears that are used like whiskers, and ruffs of fur on the side of the face akin to sideburns!
Bobcats are found in south eastern USA and whilst they are rural creatures, they are becoming more habituated to urban and suburban landscapes. They tend to be found in areas with cover for them to slip through, such as forests and brushland, and will sleep in hidden dens, often made in hollow trees, thickets and rocky crevices.
Some people see them as invading the urban landscape, but in reality, we invaded their homeland – there are multiple versions of truth, again we still the theme of perspective. Sticking with this, bobcats are nocturnal which brings in ideas about night and the moon and they in turn give us mystery and things not being very clear. The darkness can trick you, making you think you see things that aren’t there and hiding the things that are. The moon in tarot is all about the subconscious, illusions and dreams. There is distortion and magic and mystery.
However, as bobcats have excellent hearing and vision, we could read this as a creature who can help us see into and navigate through the confusion of the darkness and the night. Perhaps the bobcat is here to be a guide for you.
Bobcats are solitary cats, that only really interact for mating. They want to be left to do their own thing and to enjoy their own company and are here to remind you that sometimes, you need this time and space too. When it comes to reproducing, males and females come together for a brief time, just long enough for courtship and copulation. The female will then be left alone to raise the young. It takes almost a year to get them to the point where they can go off on their own, and a key part of being able to leave the nest is about being able to hunt successfully.
Bobcats are well camouflaged and this helps them to slip through the environment unseen, further they are quiet, near silent as they stealthily hunt out prey. One way they reduce noise is by putting their back feet in the footprints of the front paws, apparently all cats do this, cat owners let me know! They are known to perch in rocky alcoves waiting for the right moment to pounce and have been described as spring loaded predators. This puts me in mind of seizing the opportunity. Related to this, they are what are called opportunists when it comes to diet. But as well as jumping on opportunities, they are patient, waiting for the right opportunity, not just grabbing at whatever comes to hand. Be selective, be patient and then go for it.
When I was researching the bobcat, the idea of secrets came up repeatedly with the view that they are inscrutable and cannot be coerced into revealing their secrets. They are sometimes considered to be keepers of occult knowledge and guardians of secrets. Perhaps because of the solitary lifestyle, people feel that they can share this information with the bobcat and it will not be shared with anyone else.
Their night vision means they are said to be able to see into the future, to have profound insight and are able to look within people to their souls. This may be a time when you can see what others are trying to keep hidden from you. Trust your gut right now if secrets are involved. Also remember that with the night comes our subconscious and sometimes we are hiding secrets from ourselves. If that might be the case right now, it might be time to try and uncover them, you are allowed to know these secrets and sometimes, not always, it can be helpful to tap into our inner world.
Naturally, a lot of folklore around the bobcat comes from Native Americans.
“The Lakota held cats in fear and awe. They believed that to kill or mutilate any kind of cat – mountain lion, bobcat or even the plain old domestic tabby – carried a curse. The culprit would have terrible things happen to him. Therefore, they avoided cats.” – Jessica Dawn Palmer
In some mythology, the bobcat is twinned with the coyote to represent duality. Another tale explains how the bobcat got its spots. After getting trapped in a tree rabbit persuades bobcat to build a fire but the embers end up scattered on the bobcat’s fur and the spots it wears today are the singe marks. Another story explains the bobbed tail.
Their excellent hunting skills are admired by some groups but for others, the bobcat plays a negative role, being cast as greedy, selfish and disregarding social rules.
Ultimately, it feels as though the bobcat is here to help us see into the darkness and the night, and to remind us that there are many perspectives and truths and to look at things from all angles.
