What Would Annie Oakley Do?

 Another  Tuscarora Tale                    

     This spring I asked Harry if he would please cut down an overhanging chokecherry branch by my back door.  A pair of nesting magpies were driving me crazy with their incessant “nasal rising jeek” and their “harsh lower rek, rek, rek, rek.”  That’s how their torturous racket is described in the Sibley Field Guide to Birds.

     I like magpies.  I didn’t like their messy nest so close to my back door.  I didn’t like their non-stop squawking.  I sure as hell didn’t like the bird shit dribbling down the wood siding of my house and splattering my doorstep.

     Harry, a retired librarian, is an American Buddhist who spends part of his summers in Tuscarora and who likes to make gas and grocery money doing odd jobs for his friends here.  Before I handed him a saw, I felt obligated to ask, “Is this against your religion?”   

     “No,” he said.  “Magpies were a terrible nuisance where I lived in Washoe Valley.  I had to deal with them.”  He sawed the thick branch, nest and all, and dragged it to the burn pile in my yard.  The rest of the afternoon was quiet.

     The next day, Harry knocked on the back door.  “I thought I should tell you,” he said.  “When I dumped the nest on the burn pile, some of the eggs broke.  The baby birds weren’t very far along.”  He gave a little bow and clasped his hands in the namaste gesture.  

     I thanked him for the information and I thanked him profusely for getting rid of a mess, which gave me some peace and quiet.  I wasn’t sure why he felt he had to report about the magpie embryos.  I thought it must have something to do with assumptions about my maternal sensibilities.  The truth is that if there had been a nest of hatchlings, I would have taken a shovel and whacked them.  I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but I would have done it.  

     The older a woman gets the less feminine she feels.  That’s my opinion, anyway.  However, my increasing lack of sympathy  toward pests and predators and politically correct causes  is making me wonder what a “real woman” is.

     Because I divide my time between Tuscarora, Nevada  and  Mendocino, California, I have two sets of women friends.  In California, my old--in both senses of the word--women friends have causes and  earnestly raise money to save something or someone.   I find their impulse toward altruism  to be both maternal and admirable, even when I think  the causes are misdirected (don’t get me started on “mustangs” vs. “feral horses”). 

      On the other hand, my female friends in Tuscarora, especially those born and raised on ranches, don’t have the luxury of being squeamish.  Everybody has to “cowboy up” to deal with pests and predators, with the problematic issues of life and death.   I remember the first meeting I attended of the Tuscarora Ladies Club.  When someone said, “We need to sharpen these pencils,” three women pulled out pocket knives.  

     I recently found myself thinking about Annie Oakley.  Wikipedia notes that “throughout her career, it is believed that Oakley taught upwards of 15,000 women how to use a gun.  Oakley believed  strongly that it was crucial for women to learn how to use a gun, not only as a form of physical and mental exercise, but also to defend themselves.  She said, ‘ I would like to see every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as they know how to handle babies.’”

      It’s the old “nature vs nurture” argument.  The influence of culture in defining femininity vs. our genetic inheritance.  Here’s my question.   My conservative women friends are pretty much pro life even though they’ll put down an old dog or sick cow if they have to. My liberal friends are pretty much pro choice, although they’ll  pay an exorbitant amount to a vet to extend the life of  an old dog or an ailing cat. 

     So, what do you think Annie Oakley would do?