This summer day, last Tuesday, was the first day of summer, though I call it the first day of winter as I sadly note that daylight wanes. The day before Tuesday, I sat on our porch and listened to the birds - the loud, proud cardinals, the melodic robins, and the chatty catbirds…and the persistent and pleasant house wrens that have taken up residence in the various wren houses around our yard. The wren as you may recall if you read my entry here of January 25, 2021, is the king of birds or at least to the Greeks and the Celts and the brothers Grimm in The Willow Wren and the Bear. In that story, the bear, the wolf, and the fox are defeated by King Wren through some tricky stinging of the fox by the wren’s ally, the wasp.

But not so on Tuesday, this summer day, this first day of summer. Wren families are well into nesting and incubating in the row of wren houses at the rear edge of our property. Even the house recently vacated by the blue birds has a wren family in residence. I don’t know in what stage of family life these wrens found themselves on Tuesday morning, because I generally keep clear and watch from a distance.

As I sat at my usual coffee perch on our porch, our two small dogs suddenly went wild and shot through their doggie door into the backyard. This was not the usual mild clamor when a squirrel or a turkey turns up. It was loud, intense barking marking the intrusion of something large. Soon, sweet, timid Lucy was back by my side shivering in fear while her brave older (12 pound) brother, Frankie, continued his tirade.

Inspecting the remains of the wren house - note the two blue tags in the bear’s ears

When I stepped out to look for the intruder, I found a large black bear standing over the remains of one of our wren houses. He or she then strode across the rear edge of our yard. He ignored Frankie and the chicken coop and beehives both of which are protected by electric fencing, and walked away into the field behind our yard. Everything’s a metaphor for something, I guess, so I was reminded of Russia (the bear) and Ukraine (the wren), but from the precious precarious safety of our porch.

When I later looked more closely at the photos I had managed to capture, I noticed that the bear had a blue tag in each of her/his ears. That meant that at some point someone had anesthetized and tagged this bear. A call to NH Fish and Game revealed that 1) “we don’t use blue tags generally” and 2) the Massachusetts Wildlife Division of Fisheries and Wildlife does use blue tags and puts one in each ear of yearling bears as part of a four decades-long study of female bears’ numbers and movements. This wren-eating beast was a flatlander having found his/her way to Concord NH. I don’t suppose it matters to the poor wren family where the invading terror had come from, but I thought Mass Wildlife might want to know. So far they have not returned my call.

Besides the Grimms’ fairy tale highlighted earlier, I chose to add this lovely poem by Mary Oliver and thought the swan could as easily be the wren:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?