Shades of Timothy Treadwell

In the days and nights following the attack, I imagined the winged devil stalking me, even from the sky.

 

     A Chinese pheasant rooster and two hens showed up on our farm one spring day, in 2012, and just as soon, scuttled all the plans the resident ruffed grouse had about nesting along our road. The rooster rousted them with such audacity that my wife Jackie and I later cried ‘fowl’ in its escalation. Pheasants aren’t native to our part of Minnesota, and these, it was later reported, had been released by one or more of the neighbors in an effort to establish a resident population. We had seen a few nearby, over the years, but I don’t think they survived our severely cold winters, and all the predators that still exist up here.
 

    Jackie and her son, John, sighted the rooster and his hens, three weeks before I did, seeing them usually after I had gone to work in the afternoons. It was during the weekend, when the rooster boldly strode in front of my car as I left the farm one day, causing me to stop and slowly edge by the beautiful bird whose detailed plumage shown iridescent in the sun. The rooster was unafraid, totally oblivious to the differences of the scale of his size to the car. It was amusing and I wondered, if as things go in the wild, I’d ever see him again. Pheasants and other prey species don’t last too long in Palmville. C'est la vie.
 

    One afternoon after our introduction on the road, I was using the rider mower in the yard when the pheasant flew across its hood so close to my head that the wind from his wings blew my cap off. Amazed, I shut off the mower to retrieve my cap. I tried to approach the bird but it ran away, nervously looking over its shoulder and disappeared into the brush. So I went back to mowing.  
 

    During the hours that followed, the pheasant stayed within the yard, edging ever closer to me and the mower, not frightened by either man nor machine. His crowing and wing beating antics gave me an idea to record him with my tape recorder and play it back to him if I could get close enough. Watching the pheasant’s whereabouts, I laid the recorder in the grass, then pushed “record,” and walked away. Surprisingly, the bird began getting closer, stopping every now and then to flap his wings and crow within a few feet of the recorder. As evening came on, the wind stopped and the whole yard became quiet in an instant.
 

    Rewinding the recorder, I played and paused it, listening until I found the pheasant’s voice on tape. Turning up the volume, I played it to him as he stood a short distance away. I think it gave him pause.
Replaying the recording again, the rooster ran to almost within an arm’s length of where I stood, and eyed me with a cautious look. I stood stock-still and let him ease around behind me, watching his go-around in my peripheral vision. The pheasant ventured ever nearer. I wondered what he'd do.
 

    Stopping in front of me, the rooster began to sort of 'talk.'  I had the presence of mind to push the 'Record/Play' button just as he started, and captured almost all of his conversation on tape. Rewinding it, I played it back to him. The rooster just stood there with a quizzical, almost contemplative look on his face, then he nodded forward, ever so slightly, and resumed his elliptical walk around me, with the feathers on his body and long tail, all fluffed out. I looked toward the dark house hoping Jackie had been watching and wished it had been light enough for her to have filmed this rare encounter between man and pheasant.
    

    In the following weeks, however, the rooster became my constant companion. It ignored Jackie and John, when we would come outside in the mornings. The bird would run to see me, keeping a distance of one hundred feet or so, then strut stiffly about the yard, pecking at the ground on occasion, his feathers all fluffed out. He would flap his wings and crow, then go back to eating, always keeping an eye on me. As I moved about the yard, the rooster would disappear, then reappear, not too faraway.  
 

    It became so familiar that every morning about seven o’clock, the pheasant would cackle near the bedroom window and wake up Jackie, (because I wear earplugs against her snoring), who would wake me up. “Good Googamooga, man! Your friend wants you to come outside and play! Why does he do this??” she would say annoyed, from under the covers.
Then things got ugly.
 

Oh, there were those tell-tale signs to be sure.
    1.) The rooster was circling the house at 7:00 AM every morning. He knew where I lived.
    2.) The pheasant would eye the house, stretching his neck to see in the window above the kitchen sink. It was obvious he was stalking me, but we just thought it was cute.
    3.) The pheasant followed my every move. He’d dash between the parked cars by the cedar trees, crow, then flap his wings and strut his stuff, or run and fly beside the car when I went to work. Then, he would stand in front of the vehicle to get me to stop. I learned he always moved just in time, so I wouldn’t hit him.
    4a.) I had often filmed him using humorous narration, never completely realizing that through my ignorant behavior, I was either boosting the rooster’s ego or feeding his fury.
    4b.) One advantage of videoing an event is that people can record what could be the last moments of their lives, as when a grizzly bursts from the brush and charges them with its mouth agape, the gnarly bits of the last wilderness trekker still stuck between his teeth, or when they are attacked by a crocodile and being dragged down the river bank. 

    If they just keep filming, then throw the camera into a safe place for some searcher to find, a person can provide answers to all their surviving kin's questions and insure closure to those grieving their sudden demise--just like Timothy Treadwell, “Grizzly Man.” But I wasn’t thinking about that. I did start to think, however, “Is this all my fault? Am I to blame here? I mean, this is just a pheasant, of all things. Would I have been so ignorant to allow, say, a grizzly to follow my every move or let him edge closer? Would I have been so stupid to record a grizzly’s growls, snarls, and roars and then play them back to him as he sat upon his haunches perplexed and confused a foot away? Shades of Timothy Treadwell! “

 
    I was determined not to be intimidated by a bird, of all things. Besides, I must be blowing this out of proportion. It was just my imagination at work again.

    One Saturday evening, I told Jackie I was going across the creek for a walk in the woods where I hadn’t been for several months. Although the creek is only about ten feet wide near the house, it was too far to jump, and too deep to wade. Recalling some lightweight 12-foot long I-beams I had purchased a few years ago, I loaded two of them into my truck and backed it down to the creek as close as I could get. 

    Unloading them, I stood each on end, and dropped them with a splash across the creek at a narrows I discovered, and in short time had a dandy foot bridge. With dinner being prepared by John soon ready, I told Jackie I’d be back in 20 minutes, grabbed my camera, and set off across the creek. Sure enough, the rooster saw me and ran for all he was worth to Birch Point, a high point east of the house, and curiously watched as I crossed.
 

    Catching a glimpse of something moving in the grass about fifty yards away, I saw the pheasant had flown across the creek and was running toward the timber, setting himself on a collision course with me. I took some still pictures of him, and did a little filming, trying to get 'that particular shot' that would one day see a printed page, or maybe a postcard. Snaking his way through the underbrush like a dog on a scent trail, the pheasant closed the distance, then started talking to me, his tailfeathers straight out behind him, the feathers on his body all puffed out. His head was down and bobbing as he came on. I stood in one place and calmly filmed what would easily become the most harrowing experience of my life thus far.
 

 

    "Whoa!” I said, admiringly through my viewfinder, “I don’t know what to make of you. I don’t know if you want to peck my eyes out or kiss me. Maybe you’re saying, “THIS is my territory!  If I have to, I’ll peck your butt back across the creek.”
 

    The rooster lifted his head, then moved it to and fro to look at me ominously, lowering himself almost against the ground and up again, bobbing and weaving like a boxer in the ring. He hurriedly pecked the ground and hurtled leaves into the air like he was drawing a line in the sand daring me to cross it.
I kept filming as the rooster grew increasingly aggressive, when it dawned on me that this behavior obviously meant--that I was either being courted, or was close to being attacked. Every hair on my head, neck and back started to rise. I had read extensively about bear attacks, and I could see all his posturing was no different.
 

    Knowing ‘flight’ only incites predators, I stood my ground. I knew I couldn’t out-run him, and it wouldn’t do any good to climb a tree because the pheasant could fly. I even considered throwing myself to the ground in a fetal position and trying to protect the back of my head and neck, then wisely decided it'd only give the rooster the ultimate height advantage. If I remained standing, I thought, and the rooster leaped up at me to sink his spurs deep in my vital areas, I could snatch him against my chest and bite his head off, if I could dodge his pointy beak as he tried to gouge out my eyes. My palms sweated. My heart beat loudly in my chest. I knew he could smell my fear.
 

   My attempt to move slowly to a closer proximity of saplings nearby, provoked the attack. The rooster rushed me when I moved, exploding from the ground toward my face. Nonetheless, with the coolness of a professional photographer being charged by an African lion, I kept filming, narrating the frames with glib humor. “Whoa! Dude! Hey! Whazzup? That’s a little scary... That’s a little scary for the human here!” Shielding myself with my free arm, I backed away, then stood still, cautiously casting my eyes about looking for a suitable weapon to wield against my furious feathered aggressor.
 

    However, in the heat of battle, I felt I was starting to lose my grip on reality. The tell-tale tip of the rooster’s head to look up at me with one red-wattled eye, then straight on with two, was wearing me down, slowing my reflexes. All the bobbing and weaving; the shuffling, the ground and leaf pecking, the exploding flap of wings against me, began to grimly take its toll, and I began to think longingly of home, the home I could almost see through the small trees, the smell of the steaks John was cooking on the grill, and his wonderful wild rice dish, his baked beans. . . I could envision Jackie’s loving smile, her laughing teasing eyes, oh my. . . 

 

    I thought of my daughter Bonny, who, at that very moment, was dancing her night away in Washington, D.C. with her favorite in-laws. I recalled the Minnesota DNR's controversial decision to hunt Prairie Chickens, and their delisting of gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act. I recalled 4-H skits (even though I was never in 4-H), and thought of middle-aged belly-dancers, deer season, and Memorial Day weekend 2012. I remembered dogs jumping into swimming pools, sailboats named Indian Summer, eating fresh-caught clams and mussels in Shipsbottom, Massachusetts. I could see, in my minds-eye, my little Chinese-American great-niece named Claire, who lives in Colorado,  envision the streets of New Ulm, Minnesota, the roads through Beltrami Island State Forest, and driving past Marvin Windows & Door Company in Warroad, Minnesota on the way to the municipal liquor store, truly all strange things to ponder as my life is ebbing away….
 

    I pulled myself together as though slapped,--well, slapped repeatedly by this be-winged fowl below me. In pure survival mode, I picked up a long forked stick and thwarted yet another attack, keeping the pheasant some distance away although it was apparent the rooster was not to be subdued nor thwarted so easily. Backing away out of the trees, I kept the fork of the stick against the pheasant’s breast as it followed me into the clearing toward the creek, within view of the house. I started to feel like a sheep herded by a Border Collie. Well, that did it. Now that the rooster had attacked me repeatedly, he might attack Jackie or John too, so we have to do something about him. He had turned too aggressive.
 

    When I got to the footbridge, I turned my back on the pheasant and crossed the creek, I walked up the bank toward the house and stopped, looking back from around the corner of the house, out of the pheasant’s sight. The rooster was still across the creek peering over the grass from a swale, appearing now just a diminutive creature, colorful and noncontroversial in the distance, a mere bird, not the demon I recognized him to be. I walked farther, then ducked down low behind the old doghouse to watch what the rooster would do next, at the same time wishing our dog ‘Bear’ was still alive and inside it, waiting for me to say, "Git 'im!" 

    I started to dread going outside the house after that. I was always looking over my shoulder, always listening for his cackle, always ready to see him charging after me either in flight or on foot, but for a few days, he made himself scarce.
 

    About the time I thought he had finally been killed by an animal or run over by a car somewhere, he made an appearance again, this time out by the one-room schoolhouse called Palmville District 44 West at the end of our driveway. I was working along a little two-acre field using both my truck and tractor; when I heard him cackle, then saw him fly and land nearby, about fifty yards away. I was walking between the two vehicles parked some distance from each other when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the rooster in flight bee-lining straight toward me, hit the ground on a run, and in a few seconds slam into my legs, a fury of short strong wings and clawed feet. 

    It scared the b’jesus out of me, and angered me to the point of kicking the bird away. Foolishly thinking that had done the trick, I turned back around to go to the truck when it attacked me again. Completely losing my temper with it, I kicked and stomped the fighting bird, knocking it into the high grass in the opposite road ditch, where it laid still, sprawled as it was, one of its wings cocked back, the other bent awkwardly under him. I was so mad, I hoped I’d killed him, and walked away thinking I had. I just shook from the adrenaline and swore my anger out, my heart beating ninety. This was the craziest thing I had ever experienced up here. What the hell?
 

    Loading up my truck, I drove slowly past the place where he laid in the ditch a few minutes earlier to find him gone. So I hadn’t killed him, but for sure he had crawled away to die, a bird couldn’t survive a beating like that. I felt completely thrashed myself.
    

    A couple weeks later as I unloaded groceries from the car, suddenly the rooster was at my feet, his great red wattled eyes peering up at me as though eyeing me for the kill. Dropping the bag of groceries back in the car, I roared like a man possessed, I ran straight at my adversary, leaping about and waving my arms, chasing the reddish-brown bird towards the tractor parked along the edge of the yard. But the pheasant was not deterred, for as soon as my back was turned, he ran toward me at full speed with his head low to the ground, his wings flapping, their tips brushing the grass, in hopes of sinking both his spurs into my neck--when I turned and deftly kicked him in the breast knocking him upwards through the air. 

    Unruffled by my surprise counterattack, his short wings pumping, the rooster pivoted, with one three-toed claw against the ground, the other cocked back under him in kung-fu fashion its spurs splayed for combat, flew at me again, coming to ground one more time just ahead of me. I cold-cocked the rooster again, knocking him backwards, then ran at him while he was groggy and kicked him like a soccer ball, lifting him from the ground and crashing him against his back. Without looking back, the rooster ran for the woods. He was heard later, trying to impress his hens with his version of the story.
Now the rooster’s aggressiveness had reached a completely new high as he started attacking our cars as we drove in or out of the farm. The big bird had to be dealt with one way or another, for things had gone too far.
 

    Two evenings later, John admitted he had accidentally hit and killed him with his van on the driveway. The next morning, when he went to find its body to bury it, all he found were scattered feathers and blood where something enjoyed a nice meal. I was delighted. The only way I ever want to see a pheasant here again, is on the business end of my shotgun or on a plate with a potato and tossed salad.