The Monsters We Can't Do Without

Under an ivory slice of autumn moon, a congress of coyotes and a lone screech owl have found their voice. Both sound larger than life. The owl's eerie tremolo fills the little woods across the road with a dark foreboding. And tonight, the coyotes seems unusually bent on mayhem; they yip and yammer like a gang of slathering jackals. I can picture their bony snouts thrust skyward, white throats aglow in the pure country moonlight.

It's enough to give me the willies. But why? I'm safe in the bedroom of a sturdy brick farmhouse. My black lab probably weighs more than any two neighborhood coyotes put together. And just last weekend, I saw a screech owl during a raptor demonstration at a local orchard. Its body was the size and shape of a beer can, with fluffy grey feathers and a Disney-cute swivel head. Why should its harmless night music evoke such a primal shiver?

Maybe it's because we want and even need the wild places around us to harbor a resident monster or two. Yes, we can invent vampire love stories and Bigfoot sightings to serve the same psychological purpose. But breathless teen fiction and blurred photos (how come Bigfoot only appears to people with lousy cameras?) can't substitute for the musk-in-the-nostril kick of the genuine article.

And for good reason. For most of the 120,000 years of human history, people have lived in places where, on any given day, a carnivorous creature could and would eat them for dinner. Such perils improved our game considerably. They drove us to create the first tools -- spears, bows, axes -- and to unite as clans and communities.

As white settlers tamed North America, one of the first things they did was extirpate predators: wolves, mountain lions and grizzly bears. True, these creatures posed a threat to livestock, and to a far lesser degree, people. Yet to track and kill toothsome beasts also became the legendary measure of a pioneer's courage and prowess. Then, curiously, as soon as they were gone we began to lament their demise. As early as 1872 (four years before the death of Custer at Little Bighorn) Buffalo Bill created his first Wild West show, complete with cowboys, Indian warriors and captive widlife from the just-vanquished frontier.

But as if to spite civilization, the monsters have staged a comeback. There's now nearly 700 wolves in the Upper Peninsula (up from 80 in 1995). Black bears have moved down in the Lower Peninsula as far south as Grand Rapids and Jackson. Still, the age-old ambivalence remains. Ask a U.P. hunter who didn't bag a buck last year if he thinks the estimated 25,000 deer killed by wolves hurt his chances for success. It's not likely he'll wax poetic about the feral beauty of a wolf pack's howl. Or imagine if the first bruin in 150 years should raid a dumpster in the parking lot of an elementary school in Kalamazoo. Will new age eco-tolerance or SWAT team histrionics rule the day?

Whatever your take on these encounters, they offer a valid, hopeful measure of nature's health and resilience. They bestow an imprimatur of wildness returned, a sense that the center still holds. And as the screech owl suggests, they don't have to be big and bad-breathed furry. I include in their number a fearsome pike that I hooked and lost twice (!) last May in the dark waters under a bridge near my home. Then there's the peregrine falcon outside my office in downtown Battle Creek. It hunts from concrete cliffs and adorns the sidewalks below with the heads and carcasses of hapless starlings and pigeons. Good for you, my brother. It's a comfort to know that noble monsters still lurk where we need them the most.