Stalking the Wild Gerbil

From Menletter August 2003

By Tim Baehr

"When they get loose, rodents tend to go down and cats tend to go up. I'd check the basement." I thanked the animal control officer and hung up. The gerbil had been missing a couple of days, and I had had visions of it being eaten by a neighborhood cat or dying of starvation inside a wall and stinking up the house.

Now at least there was something I could do. I went to the basement and laid out some gerbil food and a bowl of water. If the gerbil was there, it would perhaps eat the food and I could figure out a plan.

Sure enough, the sunflower seeds were gone the next day. I tried again, figuring that at least I was keeping the critter alive. Same result. Now I had to come up with a plan.

Armed with a plastic tub and a top, I went to the basement one afternoon. What to do? I'd seen how cats wait for prey: stock still, barely breathing, listening and watching. So I did that.

I stood stock-still in the middle of the basement, where I could see most of it. My breathing became shallow, regular, very quiet. I scanned the floor, slowly turning my head from side to side.

This was all fairly easy so far: just pretend I'm a cat. But the hard part was doing this for what seemed like an eternity. Waiting is very hard for a man, who is trained most of his life to be doing something to solve problems, not standing. Maybe I would have understood the waiting part if I had been a hunter or fisherman as a boy.

Minutes passed. Five. Ten. Fifteen. I was about to give up when I heard the faintest little scrabbling sound. Breathing even less now, I turned my head slowly toward the sound. A little gray shadow scooted along the wall by the water heater.

I was now in stalking mode. Slow step by slow step I made my silent way across the basement, eyes fixed on the spot where I last saw the shadow. Again I thought of cats I had seen as they stalked birds (or kittens as they stalked my ankles). One step. Stop and wait. Another step. Stop and wait. It could seem excruciating, but now I was into the spirit of it. I had become the cat.

As I got to the water heater I noticed that the insulation around the bottom had been chewed up. The gerbil was gathering materials for a nest. More immobile minutes passed.

Then I saw her, just coming around the other side of the water heater. Time for even more self-control; I couldn't pounce until I was sure I would succeed.

One. Two. Three. BAM! I slammed the plastic food tub over the gerbil. I had my quarry! Lifting the edge of the tub slightly, I slid the lid along the floor under the tub until the gerbil was trapped safely inside. I flipped the tub over, held the top loosely on, and went triumphantly upstairs to her cage.

Although this happened about thirty years ago, I still remember the rush of animal adrenaline when I bagged my prey. Except for the food tub, I had used only my wits and some ancient instincts - I hadn't outwitted a lower animal mostly with superior human tools or intelligence.

Why am I telling you this story thirty years after the event? Well, for one thing, I may be a slow learner when it comes to life's lessons. And I think I learned some things from this that are worth passing along.

First, I did get some advice and information in the usual "human" way - the phone call to the animal control folks. But notice that they weren't able to tell me how to get the gerbil back, just where I might reasonably find her. Lesson One: Ask questions; ask for help. Even if the answers seem inadequate, use whatever information you can get.

Second, I got some first-hand knowledge. If I hadn't done the food experiment, I would not have been quite so sure that the gerbil was, indeed, in the basement. And that means I might have given up sooner in my stalking attempt. Lesson Two: Check things out for yourself.

Third, I entered into the animal world to catch an animal. Sure, I could've set a trap or come up with some other clever human contrivance. And it might've worked. Instead, I chose to become a fellow-creature: controlling breath and movement, focusing on my quarry. Lesson Three: Your world is not the only world; to succeed in a different world, sometimes you have to "go native" in it and become a part of it.

Fourth, I became very still, physically and mentally. Animals will do this when stalking, so this may be a part of the third point. But alertness and discipline are also human traits. Lesson Four: Be still and patient. Choose the right time to act; don't let it choose you.

Fifth, I brought the tub down over the gerbil suddenly, with almost no thought. All the preparation, all the stillness, all the patience, had led to this decisive moment. Lesson five: When you act, do so swiftly and decisively.

And where can this all lead?

What are you stalking? What do you need to be stalking? What information do you need? How can you test it? What world or environment do you need to visit? At what point do you need to be silent and still and patient? At what point do you take action? Answers to these questions are built into your male DNA. It wasn't for nothing that your forebears spent tens of thousands - maybe hundreds of thousands - of years as hunters and warriors. What you have left are the instincts of the deep masculine, most of which have been mothered and schooled out of you - or buried. But they're there. You have an intuitive feel for them.

What to stalk? Here's a list of suggestions. That job. That discipline or practice. Her. Him. (But not in the illegal, twisted way.) Your soul. Your soul-mate. Understanding. Your masculinity. God.

Remember: Information, testing, entering the world of your quarry, stillness and patience, decisive action. These don't necessarily happen in a neat sequence. Sometimes your information-gathering and testing bounce back and forth for years. And you may spend years in patient waiting, depending on the quarry. Finally, the decisive action may be physical, or it may be a major psychological, spiritual, or moral shift.