Offshore, among the myriad fish, our cousins lived: whales, dolphins, porpoises, sea lions, sea otters, seals. Around the marshes, in the reeds, our brothers lived: coyotes, weasels, raccoons, badgers, rats. On the plains our sisters lived: deer, elk, foxes, wildcats, jackrabbits, mice. In the hills our parents lived: mountain lions, grizzly bears, black bears, gray wolves, bighorn sheep.… There were a hundred and fifty different species of mammals living here, once upon a time; and snakes, lizards, insects, spiders—all of them were here.

This warm dry basin, between the sea and sky, was—and not so long ago!—crawling with life. Teeming with all manner of life, saturated with the vigor of a complete ecology. Animals everywhere—in the grasslands, and the tidal marshes, and the sagebrush flats, and the oak forests of the foothills—animals everywhere. Animals everywhere! Animals everywhere. Animals … everywhere.

And the birds! In the skies there were birds of every kind. Gulls, pelicans, cranes, herons, egrets, ducks, geese, swans, starlings, pheasants, partridge, quail, finches, grouse, blackbirds, roadrunners, jays, swallows, doves, larks, falcons, hawks, eagles, and condors, the biggest birds in the world. Birds beyond counting, birds such that even as late as the 1920s, a man in Orange County could say this: “They came by the thousands, I am a little reluctant about saying how many, but I can only say we measured them by acres and not by numbers. In the fall of the year the ground would be white with wild geese.”

I can only say we measured them by acres and not by numbers.

The ground white with wild geese.

Chapter 9

9

Abe Bernard guns his GM freeway rescue truck down the fast track, scattering the cars ahead with the power of the truck’s sound and light show. “Get out of the way!” he shouts, his swarthy hatchet face twisted with anger. He and his partner Xavier have just been tapped out a few moments before, and he is still a bit jacked on the initial adrenaline surge. The driver of a passing car flips them off; Xavier says “Fuck you too, buddy,” and Abe laughs shortly. Stupid fools, when they’ve crashed he hopes they lie there in the metal remembering how often they obstructed rescue teams, realizing that other fools are doing it that very moment as the trucks try to get to them.… Another recalcitrant driver ahead, Abe turns up the siren to its full howl, the music of his work: “Get—out—of the way!”

They’re into the permanent traffic snarl where Laguna Canyon Highway meets the Coast Highway, pretty beach park to the right, century-long volleyball games still going, sun glancing off the sea in a million spearpoints. Abe keeps the siren on and they push cautiously through a red light, up the Canyon Highway. Beside him Xavier is on the box trying to get some more information on the accident, but Abe can’t hear much through the siren and the radio crackle.