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Birds of Prey: The Feathered Killing Machines

I heard the very loud call of kree!...kree! and then I looked down and saw the One-eyed Pirate. His face is covered with streams of blood and I can see he can't wipe it out of his eyes. He looks like someone shot him at close range in the head. It looks worse than it is.

"Gawd dammit Jaguar!" I heard Pirate yell. "Get 'er away from me!" he chuckled to himself.

Of course, there's no way I was able to keep her away from her territorial imperative.

Then...here came the call; kree...kree again. This time I heard AND saw her. She stoops, in a short but quick dive....And then suddenly...BAM! She screamed down and hammered the Pirate's head. More blood poured from One-eyed's scalp. Male prairie falcons are protective too but they are only 1/3rd the size of females. The females are killing machines, inherited from their ancient raptor ancestors; the dinosaurs.

"Yeow! Fuck that hurts!" One-eyed Pirate said as he rubbed his head. His hand is now slippery with his own blood.

I laughed and it echoed against the canyon walls, fading out somewhere into Purgatory Canyon.

One-eyed gives up and lowers himself down onto the talus slope in one of the "finger canyons", Poitrey Canyon and the screeching goes away. She was a very aggressive prairie falcon. I put on a climbing saddle and hook the rope on it. I lower myself as quickly as possible, down along the canyon wall to take a look at him. It was funny as hell and I was laughing all the way down.

"It ain't funny you fucker." he says as I look at the cuts which are now streaming blood and caking in his hair.

"I wonder where the male is?" One-eyed says looking up the canyon wall.

The males aren't nearly as big, but can be just as aggressive.

"Next time, I am bringing my hard hat." The Pirate swears.

Most falcons are very protective of their nests but not as much as this prairie falcon. Usually they would get upset, scream at you and fly around a lot. This one definitely wanted us to go away. I look up behind me and see them both fly into their nest on the ledge of the cliff.

Feathered Killing Machines: A Brief Introduction to Raptors
Not all birds of prey (raptors) are the same. There are falcons, buteos and accipiters. Loosely, they are classified and identified by their wing shapes. The largest bird of prey is the magnificent American Harpy Eagle. With a six foot (1.83 meters) wing span, this bird can seriously mess you up. Fortunately, they exist in the tropics of South America.

The ornithologists that study them wear hard hats and thick leather jackets, which ultimately get ripped to shreds. Otherwise their skin would be shredded by the Harpy's back talons. You could be seriously injured. A Harpy would easily make your dog or cat a lunch. I have seen films of them and they nab sloths and monkeys for breakfast. Here's an example from Google Video . Note the size of the legs and claws on this feathered beast.

In 1972 the pesticide DDT was banned in the U.S. We were in this canyon to see what affect, if any, the ban on DDT had made on breeding. DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) at one time was ubiquitous and it was thought that it made the shells of eggs of birds of prey very thin and then crushed by the parents in the nest. This caused the dramatic decline in raptors and peregrine falcons that once existed in New York City near Central Park and had all but vanished.

We found in only a few years that their numbers had increased dramatically. We were checking this by counting unbroken eggs in nests of prairie falcons that resided on ledges of canyon walls. This canyon in Colorado had prairie falcon nests every mile or two.

The Buteos
Ferruginous hawk - Buteo regalis
On our way to the canyons of the Eastern Colorado plains, we passed through the grasslands of the Southern Great Plains, in particular the Cimarron National Grassland. The grasslands were/are part of the habitat of the Ferruginous hawks; the largest of the hawks. They are a magnificent bird. Watching a Ferruginous hawk hunt is boring. They are a lazy hunter and they do a lot of ground hunting. In other words, they find a mammal hole in the ground and sit there and wait until their meal appears. They are quite successful and efficient at doing this.

Red-Tailed hawk - Buteo jamaicensis
These birds are everywhere and have benefited greatly from humans in terms of habitat. If you have spent any time on the Great Plains or Midwestern U.S. or just about anywhere in the U.S., you have probably seen them. The are the ones that are making "lazy circles in the sky". Like most buteos/hawks they are lazy fliers. The prefer soaring to flapping their wings and hover or "kite" above their prey. I have seen them carrying off jack rabbits and if they are really hungry they will eat fresh road kill.

The Golden eagle - Aquila chrysaetos
Golden eagles are magnificent as well. We are on the edge of their breeding range. The Kazakhs in the remote mountains of Western Mongolia hunt animals as large as wolves with these incredible birds. I have never seen this but I am sure it would be an incredible hunt to witness. Golden eagles hunt best in pairs, they work as partners. One Golden will flush the prey while the other comes in for the kill with its talons brandished and then WHAM, an explosion of fur. Eagles are the bombers in the world of raptors. They are big, deadly, precise and work well together.

The courtship displays are an amazing characteristic of many eagles, especially Golden eagles. They perform on the wing, an amazing cartwheeling display. I have witnessed this several times and this cartwheeling behavior is truly breathtaking. Note: I have only been able to find this video in RealAudio format. It is worth viewing however.

The Accipiters
Cooper's hawk - Accipiter cooperii
Of the accipiters my favorite are the Cooper's hawk. Cooper's hawks are beautiful and they are incredible hunters. Like most accipiters their hunting abilities are specialized more in tactical hunting; darting in and out of the bush with great agility and quickness. Their stealthiness is uncanny and their prey never knows what hit them.

For me, a Cooper's hawk is nature's Apache helicopter. They see their prey off in the distance, lock in on that prey, then using vegetation and brush as their cover, they go in for the kill. Watching a Cooper's hawk hunt is an exciting sight to see. If they were a character in a video game, they would devastate their enemy.

The Falcons
American Kestrel (Sparrow hawk) falcon- Falco sparverius
The smallest of the North American falcons is the American kestrel. They are about the size of a robin or grackle of the Southwest U.S. American kestrel are also one of the most beautiful, in terms of their coloration.

They are fierce and fearless hunters. Lizards, mice and voles are their largest prey. But because of their size they are the only falcon preyed upon by other raptors; like Golden eagles, prairie and peregrine falcons.

The Fastest Animal on Earth: Peregrine falcon - Falco peregrinus
Easily, the fastest, most efficient animal on earth is the Peregrine falcon. They have been clocked at speeds approaching 200 mph (322 kph), in a full stoop. I have been witness to a number of hunts with a falconer that trained peregrine falcons.

The Peregrine is released and it then circles the field climbing to an altitude where she is completely out of sight high above the terrain and falconer. This is called "waiting on". The falconer then flushes the prey (a game bird) out from a bush. Next in a matter of seconds, out of a 180 mph (290 kph) stoop, there is an explosion of feathers, the Peregrine has made its kill, with the speed and agility like no other animal on earth. It would be unusual for its prey to survive. It happens so fast, with such speed and ferocity that you never see the bird in the stoop (dive). You only see the burst of feathers as the falcon strikes her prey with her back talons. There is no other sight quite like it.

Falconry: The Sport of Kings - A Very Brief Intro
The sport of falconry is a complete article in itself. However, very few people should practice falconry. It is all-consuming and must be an obsession. Falconry is demanding and the slightest neglect can end in tragedy for the bird. Falconry requires hours of care and training of the bird. Because the bird is dependent entirely on the falconer, it also means you have to have freshly killed wild meat available daily with no exceptions. This means absolutely no meat from a supermarket. Eventually, most falconers release their bird when they are of breeding age. Raptors cannot be kept as pets as one can with other types of birds.

If you would like to consider falconry you should spend at least a month with an experienced falconer. Only then can you decide if you can do it. If you want to read about the lore, training and practice of falconry, there is only one book to read, "A Hawk for the Bush", by J. P. Mavrogordato. This book is THE book on falconry.

"Which came first Jaguar, the chicken or the egg?" One-eyed asked me once.
"Dunno fuck face, I suppose the egg." I answer him trying to be sarcastic and waiting for his answer.
"When will you learn?...the dinosaur came first, you idiot." he laughs.

The Ancient Arachno-Terrorist Organization : AATO

The Arachno Terrorists
I dropped Rick off at his farm house. Being late summer he slept out on the back porch where it is nice and cool. I told him I would pick him up in the morning.

The next day I went to pick him up to take him to work. He greets me at the front door wearing cutoffs and a shirt.

"What the hell happened to you last night??" I asked looking at his legs.

His legs are covered with dozens of ugly tiny red marks about the size of an average zit.

"I need to go to the hospital. I am not feeling so good." he tells me.

"A nest of fiddlebacks got in bed with me last night. I was gangbanged."

"Oh my gawd..." I say in horror.

He was bitten in the classic way; in a bed, in a dark, dry area, in Oklahoma. Just over a week later those bites became large open sores, that if left untreated would look much like this. WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPH.

Fortunately, Rick was treated in time so that he only had open sores about the size of an American quarter. After it was all over with (six months later) he ended up with large "pits" on his legs where the bites healed and the flesh had rotted away. Because the bite does not heal properly, people get serious Staphylococcus infections, if left untreated.

Most of what follows is anecdotal and I am not an arachnologist but long before Google or Alta Vista started crawling the web, there were crawling Arachnida; eight legged creatures that many people fear. This fear is known as Arachnophobia.

Arachnids are not insects (which are six legged). Of all the bugs, they are the most ancient and the most primitive. The main way to identify arachnids are their eight legs and two body segments, though there are some that appear to have only six legs. Most other bugs you will see are six-legged and 3 visible body segments, otherwise known as insects. Other than spiders, other arachnids are scorpions, mites, ticks and false scorpions to name just a few. Have you ever had the "crabs" or scabies? Been bitten by blood sucking ticks or have Lyme Disease? Have you had a near death experience from a Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever? All of these diseases are caused by arachnids.

Brown recluse (Loxosceles reclusa)
The venom from a brown recluse spider (Loxosceles reclusa, AKA fiddleback spider) is extremely toxic to humans and includes the following enzymes: a protease, an esterase, and a hyaluronidase, all three enzymes cause complete breakdown of human flesh; a necrotic ulcer. In other words, it rots your flesh and heals extremely slow. However, the venom is not fatal and rarely if ever causes death. Consider this though: What would happen to you if a snake injected this type of venom? Their venom when injected into their natural prey almost instantly liquefies the victim's insides so that the fiddleback can suck them out, rather like sucking a chocolate malt out through a straw. Yummy...

Fiddlebacks inhabit about 1/3 of the U.S. and more southern climates. There is a species that is slightly different that inhabits the Southwestern U.S. Where I live in West Texas, I have known a number of people that have been bit by the Southwestern version of these nasty little beasts and the bite has caused considerable problems. One man I know had recurring problems for several years. These vicious beasts are not aggressive and only bite if their primitive brains feel quite threatened. The best way to avoid these little shops of horror is to know their habitat.

Most fiddlebacks love dark, dry places like closets, garages and crawl spaces in attics. I have found them in my closets that I don't use much. Hint: if you need to go into one of these areas, place a bright light where you will be, for about 30-60 minutes. This should clear them into areas you will most likely will not intrude. For the extreme arachnophobe, completely cover your body with clothing and cover your face. I had a female friend rush into an old closet to find a stored blanket and she was bit on the face. She eventually had to have plastic surgery. I have never heard of Arachniphilia but just in case guys...don't shake it at a fiddleback, use your imagination instead.

Black Widows (Latrodectus mactans)
There is considerable lore about this orb spider and this is the time of year they are quite visible (late summer and early fall).

I have kept a number of spiders as pets in an aquarium. The most scary spiders are the most docile...tarantulas and wolf spiders. If you see these in the wild or your house, leave them alone. They will devour other pests in your house namely cockroaches. Both tarantulas and wolf spiders like human companionship. The reason, I am told, is because of our body heat.

Black Widows on the other hand scare me to death and are the most venomous spider in North America. They are an orb spider that many times will be outside spinning webs this time of the year. Being bit by one of these sweethearts (always a female) injects a neurotoxin into your skin that is 15 times more powerful than the bite of a prairie rattlesnake (also a neurotoxin) per volume. You will not feel the bite. Luckily for humans, it injects a minute amount of venom.

By the way, black widows rarely eat the males they mate with as is commonly thought.

Black Widow venom starts to act rather quickly. First, you begin to have abdominal pains, gastrointestinal pains, muscular pains and pain on the soles of your feet. Paralysis of your diaphragm can occur and your eyelids can swell up. If you let the bite go up to this point, you're going to feel rather fucked up. If you have heart or lung problems, you could die from either a heart attack or from suffocation because of paralysis of your diaphragm. Lovely, isn't it?

Safe insecticides are not effective against spiders. The best way to control them is to not create habitats for them in the first place and to be careful when you are around them outside in their habitat. Keep them out of your house by keeping it clean and being careful when you do spring cleaning and wear gloves.

The Arachno-Terrorists' Minions: Ticks
If certain spiders are the field generals, then ticks are their minions...by the bazillions. When I lived in the forests of the Pacific Northwest years ago, at least once a month the subject of ticks would come up. Strangely, most incidents of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever occur in South Carolina and Oklahoma.

Black Legged Tick, Deer Tick, American Dog Tick, Rocky Mountain Wood Tick...scary shit
If you go out in the woods much then you will run into ticks. Their ability to inflict disease is related to their one purpose; to suck your blood. You can get infested with ticks in a matter of seconds and feel them crawling about but not see them, unless they have stopped and have started engorging themselves with your blood. I have seen ticks so big from sucking on a host animal that they look like they would explode from the blood sucking orgy.

One time in Mexico, I made the mistake of taking a piss stop in the middle of a field of dead palmeto trees. Before I could zip up my pants, I felt this crawling itching feeling on my legs. When I got back in the car I realized what had happened. It wasn't until later that my girlfriend spent 2 hours picking them off one by one from my genital area. Luckily, I was not infected with a disease.

You don't get one tick bite, you get dozens and they feast on you like you were their last meal. Some sources say that you only get an infection if you pull them out by grabbing their bellies which have your blood in them. This injects any of the diseases they carry. I've tried many non-squeezing methods of getting them off of me and the only way is using tweezers and pulling them out by their little heads.

Scorpions and Whip Scorpions: I hate 'em, I love 'em
My favorite of all arachnids are scorpions and especially the vinegaroons or whip scorpions. Nothing scares people more than these two creatures. Vinegaroons are especially scary.

Scorpions are generally thought of as desert creatures; they're not. Scorpions like the warmer climates and are also distributed all over the earth. One year in Oklahoma I lived in a ranch house and when I moved in I noticed there were no cockroaches. Two nights later I found out why. The place was overrun with scorpions. At the time I was working in a greenhouse so I brought home from work a 1 quart fruit jar 3/4th full of formaldehyde. Each time I saw one scatter across the floor I grabbed it with a pair of 18 inch long forceps. By the end of the summer the fruit jar was stuffed full of scorpions and I now had a cockroach problem...nature's way.

Scorpion venom is also a neurotoxin. Not only that, but unlike other arachnida they can control how much venom they can inject. If they fully inject their victim with all their venom it takes several days for them to refill their venom sacs. Though not usually fatal, their sting is very painful. Most species of scorpions are NOT poisonous but this depends on what habitat you live in. In the U.S. very few people are killed by scorpion stings. This is due to the fact that most poisonous scorpions live in remote Southwestern U.S. deserts.

Of all the arachids, vinegaroons are indeed the most benign. They look like the beast from hell but the ones in North and Central America are harmless as they have no venom gland. They make good if not ugly pets. The beast looks as though it would rip you a new one but their only defense is a strong vinegar smell they squirt you with when startled or threatened.

The Return of the Monster King
Vinegaroons used to be real common where I live. I never saw many scorpions here and five years ago was the last time I had seen a vinegaroon. Early one morning in the middle of the night I was startled awake by thunder. I walked into the kitchen to make some coffee. I was very startled when I turned on the light and saw by the back door a huge vinegaroon who had come in from the rain. I picked him up and let him warm up on my arm before I turned him loose outside in the ivy.

I was thankful that the rain had brought them out, so I turned off the coffee and went back to bed...for dreams of vinegaroons, the king of arachnids.

The Celtic Wench

The Dream
"God damn it! I had that fuckin' dream again last night!" the Wench tells me.

Surprised at her outburst, I ask calmly, "Which dream?"

"Oh, it's the one where I am giving my cousin a blow job, you know...when I was six-years-old."

It's a dream where she is in a bedroom with her cousin. Behind her in the living room her mother is vacuuming. The bedroom door is open. The first time the Wench tells me the dream, I make light of it.

"Really...?" I ask her, not giving it much thought.

We all know how dreams are. Dreams play with our minds, tickle our thoughts and sometimes puzzle us.

We both laugh and have sex.

wench: Pronunciation (wnch) n. 1. A young woman or girl, especially a peasant girl. 2. A woman servant. 3. A wanton woman.

The Wench was all three.

My freshman English Lit class is my favorite. We read stories, write stories and study the masters. I am unlike most students in class and my appearance sticks out. My usual attire is a flannel shirt, Levi button-up blue jeans and my hair goes to my shoulders. At age 24, in 1975 I am older than most of the students in class. This also means I get to live in the foreign students dorm. It is quiet there, I can study AND I can have girlfriends over.

The first few weeks of class, I notice interesting people. But there is one student that sticks out above all others. It's not only her looks but her contributions, what she writes, her observations and how she carries herself. Her frizzy, orange-red hair falls to just below her shoulders. She wears a plaster cast on her right ankle and tells me she injured her foot playing touch football. I learn that the Wench is nineteen-years-old. I tell myself "Don't do it!" but I fall for her.

It amazes me how far I fall too. I am reeled in to the point that I am mystified. It is a grip that I can't shake, even though I know better. The Wench is like a single flower surrounded by bee hives and constantly being pollinated.

Her first tryst is the day after my father passed away. At 4:00 AM the phone rings she wakes up, answers it and hands the phone to me. Pre-dawn phone calls are never good. I hear my mother telling me my father has passed away. My friend Ram is spending the night with us, he's sleeping on the couch in the other room. I leave for home that morning on a bus to be with my mom and Grandparents. Not 10 minutes after I have left, she is in bed with him.

She carries on with Ram for another year, until he can no longer bear to keep the secret from me. On my trips back home to help my mother, she invites him over and they spend the weekend together. I suspect lots but say nothing. She was with me not them. I come home one day from out of town. Sitting on the couch I can see her in the bathroom. I notice that she is cleaning her diaphragm in the sink. If she didn't want me to know anything about it, she would have shut the door.

"What are you doing? Who have you been screwing?"

I question her a little shocked at her blatancy. Time to bring all of out.

"OK OK" she admits.

"Ram spent the weekend here; while you were away."

Amazed that she told me, I keep telling her that if she wants to have affairs just tell me, but don't be sneaky about them. However, for some reason she is compelled to taste them all. I suppose it was the thrill of it all. I am not sure why we didn't leave each other.

It doesn't run through the family, it GALLOPS...
It isn't just the Wench either, it's her whole family that's wacko, including both sides. Going to a family gathering is like going to a carnival complete with freak shows, tumbling midgets and evil clowns. I should have gotten the hint.

Then, there is the weekend at her parents.

We drive to her parents on a Saturday morning. They live on the plains in the middle of farmland, in a small rural town. The Wench and I aren't married yet and it was a pain in the butt not being able to sleep together. But this time it is different. Her parents let us sleep together and the idea of it doesn't seem to bother them. It's Saturday evening. Her mom is parading around the house excited that her sister is coming to visit the next day. Wine has filled up the refrigerator, the house has been practically remodeled with the cleaning she has done.

But I notice something very curious, almost out of place.

In the den amongst knick-knacks, pictures are scattered here and there in plain view...Polaroids. I notice this and pick one up laying on a stack of five or six. To my amazement there are various nudes and sex acts of her parents! The strange part is someone has taped paper over various parts of the photographs so that only the faces can be seen. If that was all anyone could see, it would be innocent enough...but I peeked.

I didn't say anything to the Wench about this. I figured that discretion was the better part of valor and kept my mouth shut. If the Wench stumbles across the photos that is one thing, but for me to go around to everyone asking about the photographs is quite another. Dinnertime conversation is the next interesting event of the evening.

"I can't wait for my sister to get here." her mother blurts out as I cut off a piece of charbroiled steak.

"When she does get here I am going to have her get rid of this boil on my butt. It really hurts too!"

She says this as I am about to take a bite of this luscious, blood-dripping and rare piece of meat.

At the very second after she said that, I fake a sneeze, kick the Wench under the table and stifle a laugh. This could get interesting.

"It's been bothering me for two weeks. I can't reach it either."

I almost gag...a "boil"?, at the dinner table? I don't believe what I am hearing. The possibilities that run through my mind are endless.

The next day, Sunday, starts out as a normal day, then the unbelievable gets weirder. Everyone goes to church except me and the Wench. I also notice that the Polaroids are put away as they are now nowhere to be found. I fix us breakfast, go to the den, turn on the TV and read a book. Around noon everyone returns from church and the Wench's aunt shows up.

There is Sunday lunch with lots of sandwiches, wine and talk among the women. I go back to the den to watch football with the Wench's father and brother. We laugh and joke and yell at the game on the TV screen.

The next thing I know her mother announces, "Me and Missy are going back to the bedroom and get rid of this boil on my butt. We'll be out in a little while."

This time I laugh out loud but no one laughs with me. My imagination gets a grip on me and doesn't easily let go.

The Wench's father grabs his son, "Let's go outside and finish cleaning the yard and haul it off to the landfill." This all seems to be quite normal around here.

Over an hour passes and I am the only one left in the house except the two sisters doing gawd-knows-what in the bedroom. I strain my ears to hear anything. I am even tempted to walk back to the bedroom and press my ear to the door. But of course I chicken out. The Wench, her brother and father are all outside doing yard work. After another hour, everyone appears in the house as if out of nowhere. I never talk to the Wench about what I thought was really going on in the bedroom. A boil...my ass!

"If you kiss me I will turn into a pumpkin"
I should have taken the hint. Why didn't someone hit me with a two by four and knock some sense into my pinhead?

The rest of my college years with the Wench are like that and worse. But I am busy with my studies and finishing my honors classes. In our Senior year we decide one night, after being blasted on mushrooms, to get married. There is only one place in the state that one can get married on a fluke and it is an all day trip to the corner of the state. After sleeping little that night we get up early and head out.

The town we get married in is notorious for getting blood work done, the marriage certificate signed and getting married at a preacher's house all in one day. We arrive just before noon and make our first stop at the courthouse. They tell us we have to find a minister to marry us first, then get a blood test, bring all that back and then pay a number of bucks at the courthouse and it's done. The clerk at the courthouse gives us addresses and a map to help us find a preacher. We pull up to one church and the minister is at lunch. The secretary makes a call to his house and we are told to go on over; he'll marry us right away.

I guess the mushroom effect really starts to wear off as I start thinking about the last couple of hours. I freak out and start to panic. I think the Wench does too. It's hard to tell what we both are thinking right now. I look at the Wench and realize that I might have to spend the rest of my life with her. With all the hints I have been given the last four years, I start to think about driving off a bridge somewhere.

We arrive at the preacher's residence and enter. We are greeted by a gentleman that I could swear just stepped out of a KKK costume. He looks at us like we are carnival workers just passing through. We chit-chat, laugh nervously and I then notice that the Wench hasn't said much at all in the past hour. My hands sweat, my feet sweat and my stomach is in knots. I feel like I have just swallowed a bottle of ipecac. The preacher goes through the ceremony. It is short an' sweet.

"I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."

It sounds reasonable to me. To my surprise, she has to make a big scene out of it. As I turn to kiss her, she turns her face away from me. I control my impulse to slap her, pay the preacher $25 and quickly get the hell out of there. I shoulda taken the hint...long before now.

The beginning of the end, the Dream
Having hitch-hiked across the Western U.S. for our graduation gift to ourselves, I leave Oklahoma for the last time. I occasionally return for visits. We have to decide what to do with ourselves and whatever we decide, we decide we don't want to do it where we are living. We pick New Mexico as our destination.

We hadn't been there for more than a week and we are sitting around in the trailer we are renting until we get jobs and get on our feet. We both look for jobs during the day and at night we are left to entertain ourselves. We have no cable and no phone, just books to read and a sad portable TV with aluminum foil on the antennae.

One evening, for entertainment, we decide to describe and analyze the dreams we remember. We talk about the dreams we have which seem to recur from time to time. Everyone has them and everyone ponders their meanings.

"You remember that Dream I have every now and then? The one that haunts me, the one that is like a nightmare, you know, the one about my cousin?" she asks me.

"Yeah, I remember, how does it go again?"

She retells the dream she has about the sordid intimacy with her cousin and her, with her mom vacuuming in the other room.

"I had it again the other night. It gives me the creeps."

Then...it all makes sense to me.

There is a long pause and the feeling of crystal clear realization hits me. It's as if someone came up behind me and hit me in the back of the head. I shudder for a moment. Then chills and goose bumps erupt over my body like a wave of electricity in slow motion. The feeling is not pleasant and my stomach is instantly in a knot.

"Whats wrong? you're white as a sheet." she observes.

I start to speak but the words won't come out.

"Are you OK?" she asks still puzzled.

"The man is not your cousin and it's no dream."

"The man is your father."

With that, her mouth drops open and she does not breathe nor moves a muscle. The inside of the trailer seems to be frozen in time. She turns pale and stiff as the words that came from my mouth echoes through her thoughts.

Some time later, long after we are divorced, her father is seated on a lawn chair. He is staring at his fence where he has lined up three empty beer bottles.

He aims his revolver. ONE...he shoots the first bottle, TWO...he shoots the second bottle, THREE...he blasts the third bottle. He then places the revolver to his temple......FOUR......

She tells me a few years later. "My only regret is that he didn't go see my mom and shoot her first."

The Magician, The Chasm and the Jaguar Priest

"You were gonna do what?" I asked in total amazement. The Magician stares through me.

"Oh yeah, you see, I came home from college one day, and I woke up, sittin' in the car, in the garage, with the garage door shut and the engine running." The Magician tells me this as if he is repeating this story for the one millionth time.

We sit in the room and for five minutes there is...total...silence. The Magician does not twitch a muscle and I stare down at the sunlight hitting the floor in the room. My throat is thick, I can't swallow and I can't talk. I feel like weeping.

Thus begins my spiral down into the chaos, enlightenment, darkness and knowledge of The Magician. The depths of his plunge are infinite, twisted and broken. His soul is stretched with pain, brightness and horror. I know he lives where there are jagged edges constantly; it never leaves him. The terror is unrelenting and like a vicious junkyard dog it snarls and bites him every day of his life. The wretchedness flashes like lightning and rips his inner fabric to shreds.

The Magician's own existence is magic of the spirit, it is soul-wrenching, and it is powerful. It has a name and it's name is schizophrenia.

"Cat's foot iron claw"

During my student internship, I arrive at the clearest moment of realization; I can never fully know my own follies. They are the follies that wake me up in the middle of the night. I can only recognize their presence and I quickly learn this.

The class is a group therapy session with a psychiatric social worker. The class is developed by my boss, a psychologist. I live outside of town on her brood mare ranch with the Celtic Wench, where I work as a ranch hand. I shovel horse shit, dog shit, mend fence, and pick wild persimmons.

Two weeks into the class, we are assigned clients to talk with and help. The Magician is assigned to me along with a woman. The first questions that come to my mind are; what is he like? Who is the Magician? Of course, the psychiatric social worker doesn't tell us. We are left to figure out who they are. It doesn't take long for the class to realize we are working with people we won't be able to help. Discovering who the Magician is becomes easy. What to do with the discovery is difficult.

After a few weeks of talking with the Magician, I realize that I am face to face with a schizophrenic mind. This discovery is crystal clear. He goes into a reality that is unfathomable. Yet one lucid day I find out more. He sometimes mentions suicide.

"Magician, do you remember becoming this way?" I asked in one of the first times I met him. "Why did you want to kill yourself?" I sit and listen after asking the question. I expect to hear a nonsensical answer.

"I got a scholarship to go to Boston College." he starts out. "I received a bachelor's degree in Philosophy." he tells me. "Where did this come from?" I quiz myself not expecting his answer. I can see part of his soul bleeding through now. Is the Magician that educated? "I then graduated and received a scholarship to go to seminary at Southern Methodist University." He tells me this while lucidness is still with him. "I was home for Thanksgiving and I was depressed and wanted to kill myself. I tried to kill myself sitting in the car, you know, I've already told you about that time."

I can only imagine what his family and local authorities thought about his strange new behavior. "And then during that Christmas I found myself on top of the water tower. I want to jump off of it." He goes on to tell me how the police of the small farm town where he grew up, tried successfully to talk him out of it; that is when he first knew something was really wrong. He met with the doctors and they sent him to the state hospital.

I am taking Intro to Logic, so I ask him about the Informal Fallacies. To my amazement, he rattles them off with a description for each one. He does so in lightning fashion while staring into space. I come to learn that this indicates that he is partially off his medications and that he will shortly plunge into the depths of his own hellish realm.

The slide into oblivion begins when the Magician starts taking "walks". As the slide from our reality and into his secret reality deepens, he withdraws from everyone that knows him, until he no longer recognizes or acknowledges anyone. The slide is slippery and the line separating our two realities is a punctured hole and the puncture is growing ever wider.

There is no surprise for me when after meeting with the Magician for 3 months, he now slips away from my grasp. I am unable to see him until the following February. The Magician is hidden away from us all. The mental health center is the place where he feels safe and secure from our reality. The world we know does not shatter his world. He battles with his torments deep within The Chasm.

"Neuro-surgeons scream for more..."

Describing the descent into the hell of schizophrenia, is not easy. It is rather like this. Imagine taking every conscious thought, every memory and put them in a bucket, like multi-colored confetti and in a precise order. Shake the bucket up. Next throw it as high in the air as possible, from the edge of an infinite pit, with a strong wind at your back. Now, somehow go to the bottom of The Chasm and make sure you gather everything you had in the bucket. Put it all back in the same order you had it when you first started.

The drug Haloperidol (AKA haldol) is the Magician's transport to the bottom of The Chasm and back. The Magician is always running up and down the canyon of despair. While inside the mental health center three months he wanders, for three months, lost at the bottom. The Magician is searching for the confetti that is the structure of his existence. I am not allowed to see him or help him and I am assigned a new client.

Eventually, the Magician emerges from the depths of the spiraling hole. In February he is allowed to go home. I go to see him once again and to help him. I find out from him that the holidays were too much for him to deal with. The mental health center always becomes full during the holidays. The Magician stopped taking his medications during that time and doing so took him to the bottom.

I take him to lunch and we talk about him being inside the mental health center. He doesn't say much about it, so we talk about philosophers I am studying and logic. He enjoys those discussions and I revel in his knowledge of the subject.

"At paranoia's poison door."

Now, having emerged from The Chasm yet again, he once more has hope. This hope infects me as well. Yet for the Magician, hope is a Trickster in disguise. Hope is always there for the Magician but nothing about it can be achieved. Hope is another torn and punctured line between him and I. Hope is so thin, and so transparent for him. Hope is always just beyond his grasp. Spring arrives and with it comes new life and hope is renewed.

The Magician wants to work, to support himself and he's given the opportunity. I am encouraged and think that maybe a corner is somehow turned. But the Trickster called hope is never far away from the Magician. It's only a matter of time before hope fades away and the Trickster overcomes him.

He has a chance to clean yards with a crew and he gets picked up by the crew chief every morning. This works out for awhile. But one day I find out that he does not show up at the curb to be picked up by the crew chief. I am supposed to meet with him the next day.

"No...I am not here..."

I discover he is nowhere to be found and no one has seen him. I decide for the first time, to go to where he lives and ask around. As I approach the old two-story house where he lives, I feel my heart quickening. I don't know what to expect. In a way I am scared of what I will find. I enter and start asking people where his room is.

Approaching his room, I see that his door is open. Looking in, I notice the room is a total wreck and to my left is the Magician. He is laying on his back, and staring straight up into the universe past the ceiling. At first I suspect the worst. "Magician!, it's me Jaguar, I came to see how you are doing." I am uncertain what, if anything, will happen next. The Magician is straight and stiff on his bed; he does not answer me; his eyes do not blink. Dusting off a chair, I pull it up and sit down. Long moments pass. I watch him carefully and hopefully. Finally, I notice that he is taking shallow breaths.

"Huh?" I hear him say. Maybe he's coming back. Maybe I am the bit of reality that he needs to re-enter what we call normalcy. "No, I am not here." he tells me, still staring straight up. For a brief moment, the Magician recoils back to reality, from the thin thread he is treading on; then he is gone again back to The Chasm. My heart sinks as he re-enters his despair. I sit there for a bit longer, trying to contact him. It is as if I am Mission Control trying to reach a wayfaring space traveler.

Then all of a sudden, he raises up, barefoot and walks out of his room, as if I am not there. The Magician quickly leaves, as I follow walking behind him, I call out to him. He cannot hear me. He walks around the house a few times and then he is gone. I go to the center and tell them. "Oh yes, we will find him and have him picked up. Thanks". The lady at the front desk says this so matter-of-factually. "Shit! doesn't she know how important this is?" I think to myself. She doesn't care, Magician is just one of many.

"Twenty first century schizoid man."

Again, days go by and he is gone. I wonder about what will happen to him. I finish my student internship not seeing him again in a professional setting. I find out from people that he has been "walking" lately. He walks barefoot, on the streets until his feet bleed and are a mess. Upon hearing this, on nights when I can't sleep, I drive around the small town to see if I can find him; I drive and search and drive and search.

The police see him occasionally at nights, during their patrols and when they do, they pick him up and take him to the mental health center. Hearing this relieves me a little. But the loneliness he must have, the constant fear he must confront, at times overwhelms me. I ask around at the center about him. One of the psychiatric social workers tells me he is not doing well and won't take his medications. I remember a conversation I had with him once. "Would you ever consider taking your life again?" I asked him then. I remember the Magician telling me, "If I became myself again, if I became what I was ... I might." I am such a neophyte, an idiot. The insight he gives me is astounding, yet simple.

There are times during the summer that the Magician occupies my thoughts. The thoughts are not good and are burdensome. They are like copperhead snakes in my mind, always there hiding, ready to strike and easily provoked. I envision him swirling around deep within The Chasm, furiously grasping at each tidbit of his spirit. Yet with each step he must be tumbling further downward into deeper depths. There is no magic wand nor a silver bullet to save him the misery and despair he must constantly live with. No matter what, I cannot save him. I have no secret spells nor magic potions.

Then on a hot summer afternoon the Wench and I go to get an ice cream at the drive-in. As usual, I keep one eye to the road and one on the lookout, for the Magician. There on the side of the road, walking barefoot, is the Magician. I stop the car and yell at him as loud as I can. He whips back to my reality briefly and sees me motioning him over to get into the car. I run over and help him into the car. I tell the Wench to get in the back seat and when he gets in to lock the door and make sure he does not unlock it.

He is wearing a heavy leather jacket in the incredible summer heat. He has sweat so much that he is totally dehydrated. I look at his bare feet and they are bleeding and raw-looking. "Magician, let's get you a lemonade, OK?" He stares straight ahead and says nothing. "Then I will take you to the mental health center so you can take care of your feet." Magician must have been walking all night and into the afternoon.

At the drive-in I order two large lemonade drinks for him. He quickly drinks them down, realizing his own thirst. I order one more. But before it comes he crawls out the window of my Corvair. He did it so fast I couldn't stop him. My mind is racing about what to do. I decide that if I get him back in the car that I would be unable to keep him there and he might jump out while I am driving down the road. I call the MHC and they tell me they will get the police to pick him up. Maybe that is what he wanted. I ask myself what are the police to him?

"I talk to the wind, my words are all carried away"

I go on with my life and I suppose the Magician does too. He taught me many things. I often see people in the city where I live, walking and talking incoherently. I am briefly reminded of the Magician and his hopelessness. I try not to think about it too much. I look at them briefly...and then...I look away.

NOTES: I should note that the section headings are from lyrics of the first King Crimson album. The lyricist is Peter Sinfield.