Random Acts of Cleanness

The damned souls of countless cows, chickens and even soles will tell you that I’m not a vegetarian. I am, sad to say, an omnivore. I’ve tried to wean myself off meat onto an all potato chip diet, to the lasting despair of my girth and to no real effect. I’m addicted, and animal like in my cravings.

Nevertheless, I admire those stalwart, sensitive guardians of animals and the environment (even if their preference for almond milk is destroying the water table of California and killing millions more animals due to the law of unintended consequences). So I was delighted to encounter a vegan group called “The March of Silence” who were on a cleanup mission in the Balboa Park Reserve where I had just come to hike. “Spontaneous ‘R’ Us” – or rather, me- so I asked to join, and they said “ok.”

Yeah. I know. Was a group dedicated to silent appreciation of nature really the right fit for the mouthiest woman you’ve ever met? Surprisingly, it turned out alright.

The leader, who had kept a vow of silence for over 20 years, was an extremely pleasant fellow and told me a lot using a sort of Harpo Marx combination of mouthing words, gesturing and nodding. No horn, unfortunately. He managed to explain that the ospreys I hadn’t seen since last year had moved south, that he had collected one of their feathers which was in his car and that he was disappointed to have missed seeing the yellow headed subspecies of red wing blackbirds that I had caught a glimpse of a month ago.

Damn, you get good at charades if you practice for 20 years! I wanted to ask him, “Isn’t this an act of futility not to speak if you’re communicating anyway?” but I just didn’t have the energy to try to puzzle out his response.

I met a few other interesting and kindly folks as we wandered down toward the stream, picking up refuse like the happiest work release crew you’ve ever seen. I ran into another group of boomers planting and watering native plants including poppies. Then I struck up a conversation with a handsome and humanitarian fellow from our own group but soon learned that he was such a strong anti-vaxxer he actually had the antivaccine code tattooed under his arm.

Rather than shaking him by the neck and screaming, “Science! Smallpox! Stupid!” in his face as I was tempted to do, I let the new more mellow me take over. I thought, well, I’m going to be moving to a place where nobody shares my worldview pretty soon, and if I want to have any friends at all, I should stop verbally assaulting people within the first hour of meeting them. I need to start appreciating it when we have common goals. So, much to his relief I think, I politely smiled and moved off to pick up trash on my own.

See? Mellow. Even when wrongheaded views threaten the lives and futures of an entire POPULATION OF ….!

Breathe. Breathe. Count 10. To continue…

Now, when picking up after that most filthy of species – us – you’d expect to find toilet paper and cigarette butts and beer bottles. But what you don’t expect is a bunch of hollowed out, perfectly preserved, rock hard fish carcasses. There were, like 5 of them. They weren’t rotten. They were light and totally dry like some kind of weird discarded piscine shoe, but in every case there was only one small hole under the mouth parts where the guts had been cleanly removed. What kind of can opener bird or sadistic human does something like this? And, why?

Yeah, I brought one home. It’s kinda cool, right? From what I can tell these foot long babies were a kind of non-native ornamental catfish that is highly prized for tanks, but whose sellers seldom explain that they get REALLY BIG.

These were REALLY BIG. Someone had obviously thought releasing them into the wild would be a kindness.

Apparently, not.

In my quest for garbage I covered way more territory than the March of Silence. Whenever I went back to get another trash bag, they were working in a cluster as they chatted and recorded video testimonials, apparently unaware of the concept of quiet. Maybe they should consider a rebranding.

In that 101 degree heat, and sans lunch (sorry, possibly with meat) I had to quit after about 3.5 hours. Still, I want to help out with cleaning up the sanctuary whenever possible. The March of Silence are good people doing a good thing for the environment, and I hope they invite me again and that they can take a little ribbing.

(PS. I didn’t show them the fish. If it looks a little scary to you, imagine how this prehistoric nightmare looks to vegans.)