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Please keep to the path

3 June 2016 by Simon Barnes 7 Comments

If you make a path through thick or even thickish vegetation you make it look a bit less wild… as if the wildness has now been given your permission to flourish. But at least you can now get through. So we try to keep a mown path across our bit of marsh.

Paths are helpful things to humans who want the easy option… and they change the landscape for other mammals, who seldom turn down an easy option when it’s presented to them. So the path has become a highway to the other inhabitants of the marsh.

Eddie and I walked it yesterday, as Day Two of our Wild June: our resolution to do a wild thing every day of the month. And we found we were not the first, not by any means. The path was copiously decorated with turds: by my reckoning three species had dropped them.

It was one of those revelations of the hidden world that give so much pleasure to anyone with wildness in the veins… but I’ll leave the rest to Eddie; he’ll get round to blogging the turds in this space soon enough. With pictures too, so there’s something to look forward to.

Sometimes others roads through other bits of bush have yielded a surprise to me… none better than the road that led through a tract of rainforest in Belize. Why fag through the bush when there’s a road? That’s what the jaguar thought… and I can still see him to this day. Well spotted, I think you’ll agree.

I checked the marsh for jag scats, but nothing today. I expect my neighbour has been spreading jaguar repellent again…

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Comments

  1. Christopher Baker says

    3 June 2016 at 9:31 pm

    Dear Simon, I am off to Belize tomorrow to do some work. I am going to Punta Gorda so what should I look out for. I am one of your Bad Bird Watchers!!

    Reply
  2. Angela Pavitt says

    3 June 2016 at 10:12 pm

    Just love the idea of Wild June. Will try to adopt it myself.

    Reply
  3. Sue Tracey says

    4 June 2016 at 12:26 am

    I really enjoyed your and Eddie’s Wild June words and photos last year, looking forward again.

    Reply
  4. Gareth Morris says

    4 June 2016 at 2:29 pm

    I know the very road in Belize, just south of Belmopan. I even saw a Jaguar

    Reply
  5. Pam Shortis says

    5 June 2016 at 3:43 pm

    Wonderful – thanks Simon. Looking forward to Eddie’s turd post – can’t imagine why more people don’t find these things interesting; I think it’s great to know what has been around after the humans have passed by.

    Reply
  6. Chrissie W says

    7 June 2016 at 3:42 pm

    Did you achieve a photographic image of the jaguar striding along a roadway or is it just a picture locked in your head? Never mind … I await Eddie’s turd pix with anticipation instead.

    Reply
  7. Anthony Bird says

    8 June 2016 at 5:16 pm

    In the middle of trying to make sense of the EU referendum up pops Simon with a breath of fresh air, and very thankful for it am I, looking forward to Ed’s blog as a follow up!

    Reply

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