During the spring of 2001, I volunteered at the Austin Nature & Science Center. My jobs were to feed and clean cages.

I fed and gave water to the breeder mice and rats. I changed out paper and water bottles in the education bird cages: there was a kestrel that h.a.t.e.d. me and would seriously bug out any time I got near it. I cleaned out the water bowls of the baby possums, but I never saw them (only smelled them).

I’d pick up the breakfast remains and hose out the owl cages. I had a little bag for the gooey stuff. It all smelled pretty bad, but it was so cool to be that close to owls. Most of them would wake up a little and watch me through slitted eyes, but they never seemed to mind me.

Jonah the hawk, an education bird, once cried in my ear. It’s a sound that I hear sometimes when I’m coming up out of sleep.

Bogart the bobcat had been a pet, so he was a giant kitty cat. He’d rub against my leg (leaving fur everywhere) and purr. He liked to get his ears scritched.

The first time I met Martha coyote, she jumped up on a stump and took my elbow in her teeth.

“Don’t freak out!” the administrator said.

“I’m not freaked out. She’s just saying hello,” I told her. I think that impressed her a little. Martha held onto my elbow for a minute, then let go (she didn’t break the skin).

I would come home from working there and Boadie would sniff at me as if to say, “HOLY MOLY DUDE WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING??”

(She reacted the same way when I came home wearing a coat covered in horse spit. Man did that horse love my coat.)

Last weekend we went back to the Nature Center. Bogey was very old and starting to have kidney problems by the time I left, so I didn’t expect to see him.

But Jonah is still there, and Martha. Still beautiful. Still my wild friends.