A Mother's Fury | New York Times Magazine - October 23, 1988

A Mother's Fury - Richard Selzer

In these day's of Discovery Channel (with Shark Week!) and Animal Planet, it's hard to imagine the rarity of nature shows on television.  We basically had two choices: The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (yes, that is an insurance company, sponsoring a show like they would a modern-day sports stadium.)  By the time I was a teen, PBS had started the show Nature, but if you're household was like mine, the local PBS station's signal was fairly weak and the antenna wasn't always able to obtain a clear picture.

These days, there always an IMAX theater showing some sort of film on nature, cable channels are dedicated to this sort of programming, and you can find online practically any video you can imagine regarding animals from whales eating plankton to cockfights.

We were Marlin Perkins men, my dad and I.  Like most people, our favorite episodes of Wild Kingdom involved Jim Fowler getting into trouble a la Steve Irwin (although not intentionally) while Marlin did the voice-over in that folksy chuckle whenever Fowler was charged by an elephant or chased by a crocodile.

For most of us, this is our exposure to the world of animals beyond our pets and our backyards.  We don't get to see the natural world doing its thing.  When we do go for hikes or a drive in the wilderness, we rarely have the patience to watch nature play out.  In her book, A Country Year, Sue Hubbell talks about having to sit still and quietly for at least thirty minutes before the birds and other animals ignore her and grow comfortable enough to act naturally.  I don't know if I could do it.  I know what standing still does to me; just thinking about it makes me need to urinate.

In this essay, from way back in 1988, Richard Selzer tells of a trip to Yellowstone where he witnessed an attack of a team of coyotes on an elk and her calf.  Dr. Selzer is moved by the elk's furious fight to protect her doomed calf.  His guide, Jim Halfpenny (who still works at Yellowstone), can see his distress and warns him against mapping our morals over this natural terrain.  "A calf dies," he says. "Three coyotes live another day."

Dr. Selzer can't help but draw parallels with his own career as a surgeon, when he had to tell a mother that her child died.

Dr. Selzer has seen many things that most of us will never see, and never hope to see.  It is special people who want to do the hard work of healing others, knowing that failure can be final.

If he were alone and came upon this situation, would he have chased off the coyotes?  Would you or I?