Parasitescapes

Aromas float through the yard in seasonal waves. Each fall there is a night you can smell the crisp air tip into winter. Spring rains chase the scent of wet creosote I remember from growing up in Arizona (or maybe I’m imagining things). If the early summer has a lot of rain, the humid air in Ephemerata Gardens has a tropical odor of sweet flowers and rotten fruit.

Once the summer heats up, sometimes the driveway smells faintly of shit. The white gravel is too big to cover the cat poop of the same size, and the decomposing leaf litter in the concrete courtyard is too thin to hide anything. Cats also use the dirt under the roses as a litter box. Roaming chickens add to the pungent sulpherous odor. Flies are happy with the situation, snacking on fresh stool. The neighbor’s dog loves to eat cat scat. The sun cures feces in a few days, but there is a constant flow of fresh excreta.

The human body recoils from the stench. It is an emanation of dangerous living garbage, polluted matter potentially loaded with the viral spores of the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii. A cousin to malaria, the pathogen infects host mammals like rats and humans through feline feces and undercooked meat. It can be lethal to people with compromised immune systems. Because the parasite can cause fetal brain damage, encephalitis, and miscarriages, pregnant women are warned not to change litter boxes or garden in potentially contaminated soil. Surprisingly, epidemiologists estimate that 40% of the world’s population, or 2.5 billion people, are hosts to T. gondii (Boulter 2007: 35). And its patchy landscapes are growing as the parasite reaches new host populations in the Pacific Ocean.

In 2005, researchers began finding a “Type X” strain of T. gondii in dead sea otters and other aquatic mammals. They suggested that the parasite’s egg-like oocysts are reaching the sea through freshwater runoff from the densely populated coast. Once in the water, mussels, oysters, and anchovies ingest the oocysts, and are in turn eaten by mammals that contract often-lethal infections (Conrad et. al 2005). With the help of Californians who flush cat feces or have trained cats to use toilets, the parasite may also find its way into the ocean after moving through municipal sewage treatment plants that are not equipped to kill the oocysts.

While news coverage of T. gondii’s devious urbanization have been cast in catastrophic terms as another threat to oceans, media attention to the parasite's manipulation of human behavior has a playful sci-fi, Body Snatchers flavor. Behavioral ecologists have shown that the pathogen alters risk avoidance in infected rats, making them curious about the smell of cat urine instead of running the other way (Zimmer 2000: 92-4). So what does it do to us? US researchers link the pathogen’s manipulation of dopamine levels to schizophrenia (Torrey & Yolken 2003). Scientists in the Czech Republic and Turkey suggest that infected people are more prone to car accidents, and much like cell phones and text messaging, “latent toxoplasmosis of drivers should be taken into account while developing strategies to prevent traffic accidents” (Yereli, Balcioglu, & Özbilgin 2006). More controversially, Czech researchers correlated toxoplasmosis with behavioral changes that differ in men and women. Australian epidemiologist Nicky Boulter sums up their research with what feels like a list of outrageous bio-determinist claims:

Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed to be less attractive to women. On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with noninfected controls. In short, it can make men behave like “alley cats” and women behave like “sex kittens”! (2007: 36)

Pushing this logic of parasitic agency further into netherworlds of quack science, Kevin D. Lafferty hypothesizes that the pathogen’s alteration of individual personalities – neuroticism and macho sex roles in particular – must alter “aggregate personality at the population level” (2006: 1). He then goes on to compare culture formations at national scales in correlation with differential rates of toxoplasmosis infection. For example, 12% of Americans carry T. gondii vs. 66% of Brazilians, so this must explain something about machismo in Brazil. By number crunching and jettisoning a good deal of contradictory data on Asia, he concludes, “the effect of T. gondii on culture could be broader than postulated here” (5). Science writer Carl Zimmer picked up Lafferty’s dubious findings on his blog, extrapolating wildly: “What about other parasites? Do viruses, intestinal worms, and other pathogens that can linger in the body for decades have their own influence on human personality? How much is the national spirit the spirit of a nation’s parasites?” (2006). Blogger comments ranged from outrage at another form of scientific racism to speculation that the parasite “is responsible for the condition known as ‘being a cat lover’” by recoding ‘child’ as ‘feline’ in the crazy cat person’s virus-addled brain. Cast as the vector for crazy cat person syndrome, cat poop will never be the same! We handle it with fear and awe as the mobile home of parasites.

Feline shit became known as ordinary sublime matter, the “divine materials in manure” a source of death and life alike (Logsdon 2010:153). In 2009, microbiologist Laura Knoll began experimenting with a potential malaria vaccine with the premise that purposefully inoculating human hosts with T. gondii might provide immunity to its more lethal cousin malaria. She was inspired by the fact that “Toxoplasma is on the category B list of bioterrorism agents” (University of Wisconsin-Madison 2009). This year in Tanzania, working through the Red Cross, Knoll administered the first experimental rounds of malaria vaccines with oocysts isolated and prepared from infected cats’ feces (risking side effects of schizophrenia and bad driving).

Meanwhile, back in California, a Type X pandemic hits the Pacific seaboard. Somehow the Los Angeles water supply’s oocyst load spikes, sending over a hundred thousand people to hospitals and doctors with flu-like symptoms at first feared to be a swine flu epidemic. Since shit, soil, and meat are Toxo’s vectors, the outbreak is proving easy to isolate unlike SARS and other diseases accidentally transported by airplane. Presumably, Southern Californians are now immune to malaria but more cat-like in their behavior.

In San Francisco and Toronto, curbside cat and dog poop pickup are in full swing. The programs divert pet feces from the landfill to methane digesters that generate electricity when the gas is burned off, in the process effectively isolating Toxoplasma from other urban waste streams. Back in our driveway, cat shit decomposes into dirt loaded with oocysts. The spores can live up to two years, dreaming of mammal brain landscapes to inhabit. We buy more gravel so the cats can bury their stench. I finally spread three-year-old mulch from our pine kitty litter composter in the front rose garden, right where the cats have pooped for years. The roses had been getting yellow leaves with brown dots and falling off. Kitty litter mulch solved the problem, loaded with "divine" microbes that produce antibiotics to keep plant pathogens in check (Logsdon 2010:153).

In the coldest stretch of winter the buds open white and red, spilling their lemony scent.

2015

Boulter, Nicky. “Alley Cats & Sex Kittens.” Australasian Science (January/February 2007),  35-27, http://www.control.com.au/bi2007/281parasites.pdf (accessed March 23, 2010).

Conrad, P.A., M.A. Miller, C. Kreuder, E.R. James, J. Mazet, H. Dabritz, D.A. Jessup, Frances Gulland, and M.E. Grigg, “Transmission of Toxoplasma: Clues from the study of sea otters as sentinels of Toxoplasma gondii flow into the marine environment,” International Journal for Parasitology 35 (2005) 1155–1168.

Lafferty, Kevin D. “Can the Common Brain Parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, Influence Human
Culture?” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (2006), http://www.werc.usgs.gov/chis/pdfs/
Lafferty06toxoPRSLB.pdf (accessed January 13, 2010).

Logsdon, Gene. Holy Shit: Managing Manure to Save Mankind. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2010.

Torrey, EF, and RH Yolken. “Toxoplasma Gondii and Schizophrenia.” Emerging Infectious
Diseases (2003), http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol9no11/03-0143.htm (accessed January
23, 2010).

University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Medicine and Public Health. August 11, 2009. http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/cats-provide-unusual-source-for-potential-malaria-vaccine/1320

Yereli, K., I. Balcioglu, and A. Özbilgin. “Is Toxoplasma Gondii a Potential Risk for Traffic
Acciedents in Turkey?” Forensic Science International 163, no. 1 (2006), http://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16332418 (accessed March 23, 2010).

Zimmer, Carl. Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature’s Most Dangerous Creatures.
New York: Touchstone Books, 2000.

–––––. “A Nation of Neurotics? Blame the Puppet Masters?” The Loom: A Blog About Life, Past and Future, posted August 1, 2006, http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2006/08/01/a_nation_of_
cowards_blame_the.php (accessed March 4, 2009).

Eggshell Violation

Our two chickens have been laying about an egg a day. We got them as pullets from the feed store Callahan's: a Barred Plymouth Rock named Sal and a golden girl--maybe an Orpington?--we call Mango. Lately Sal runs around with two roosters and a rogue black hen who appeared in the spring and has taken to laying her eggs in our coop. Sal and Mango lay brown eggs, but this hen's are a beautiful blue. Mango got broody on her nest all day. Those six eggs must be fertile. I mark them with pencil so I can harvest the newly laid ones.

We spoil the hens and ourselves with organic feed, about three times more expensive than conventional, but the eggs taste three times better, their luminous amber yolk so bright.  The hens leave craters in the gravel scratching for seeds and insects like earthworms and fleas with their microscope eyes. They help themselves to whatever garden greens they can peck through the fence, hopping up to pluck snow peas. Lamb's quarters and other seedlings that volunteer around the yard in spring become wild sprout salad. Penned chickens are lawnmowers, decimating groundcover like goats.

For years we've put our cracked eggshells in the garden by the sidewalk as an interesting pattern among the pansies, snapdragons, and bamboo shoots. People say the shells make earthworms happy. They take a year to decompose. One morning right after the first Austin Art Yard Tour I'm up front watering and a Code Enforcement truck pulls up. The officer snaps some pictures of our yard and asks about the eggshells. He is inspecting some of the art yards for potential violations, and he's very friendly and smiling. Scott Stevens, who organizes the annual tour with Robert Mace, said they got a call from Code the day before tour weekend asking if they had a permit for the event. No, it is very informal and many of the sites are just drive by. The officer asks me, "Is this all there is--just the front yard?" Yes, just hundreds of egg shells in the garden and thousands of bottle caps strung up as garlands, stars, moons, and chains on the front of the house. (Never mind the museum inside.)

City councils work with code departments to set up ordinances that regulate whether or not having chickens is permissible in your city. Austin has lax laws about urban livestock. There's even an annual Funky Chicken Coop Tour. "Are you interested in raising chickens? Do you need coop design ideas? Do you enjoy talkin' chicken w/folks? Do you want to show your kiddo's where eggs actually come from? Do you own chickens now and need a few new ideas to spruce up their coop?" Chicken coops are unpermitted structures improvised out of chicken wire and often resused wood. Some are mobile and you can mow your yard by moving them about once a week. Coops must be fortified against predators like racoons, possums, and dogs, making them one part prison, one part fortress.

The main arguments against backyard chickens are noise and poop. Neighbors driven insane by 3AM rooster crows. Allegations that chicken poop runoff is eutrophying urban creeks with phosphorous. These kinds of complaints are also leveled against dogs, but imagine if your city said "No more dogs allowed--you will be ticketed if you have one, and the dog will be euthanized." More annoying to me is when the neighbor's chicks scratch in our food patch, its fence mesh just big enough for them to squeeze through. Now a layer of expensive chicken wire keeps them out. An inch gap at ground level lets gulf coast toads slip beneath the screen when the hens try to eat them.

Backyard eggs are food security, easy high protein, sustainable food so local you step in chicken poop. Chickens are at the center of new markets in chicken stuff (prefab coops, feed, even chicken diapers for indoor fowl), and all kinds of little communities of chicken people gather around them to enjoy the birds, trade tips, or mobilize for a common cause like revising city code. Every few months the New York Times runs an article on the "backyard chicken trend [sweeping] the country," sometimes chalking it up to the 2009 recession and desires for Depression-era self-reliance.

The eggs/unborn lives are part of an omnivourous whirlwind of consumption going on in the landscape patch. Like the compost pile, the chickens eat pretty much every living thing, but prefer scraps from our plates. As vegetarians, we eat their eggs and poop (via compost pile via garden bed via vegetables), but not them. But everybody else wants to eat them. We have lost five hens to animals and only one to sickness. A little massacre--a dog or something broke into the back of the first coop I built and tore apart all three hens. Then the neighbor's dog caught Aya, a golden rogue hen we adopted and tamed, and she died on a little bed of hay from a punctured lung or broken neck. Sometimes I forget to coop the hens and one morning find just feathers around the yard and our second hen in the fig tree--probably a raccoon. She never got over the shock, caught some kind of virus, and withered away.

Our neighboors across the alley don't coop their chickens, and we're never quite sure which of the free roaming hens and roosters belong to them, and which are rogue. At dusk the birds gather in the hackberry branches clucking to each other in a rural refrain. The roosters crows day and night, with their glossy regalia of white, umber, and iridescent blue-black intensities. In Miami, free roaming and feral chicken populations become so large--"numbering in the thousands"--that Code Enforcement officers and firefighters dedicate time each month to rounding them up. "Captured chickens are sold to farms in Homestead and the proceeds go to charities in the City (including the Mayor’s Holiday Celebration)." So far they've raised over ten thousand dollars.

In February all six eggs hatch. The chicks hide under Mango's hot, fluffy body. One is blonde with two brown stripes down its back, and the others are black with white spots. Like magic our two hens trippled themselves. In a few months we'll know if the babies are hens or roosters.

Sometimes in the backyard I lapse into a naive state where I'm struck by the oddity of chicken money--buying and selling life itself. You can order chicks online for around $3 each. Then the market logic settles on me again. Of course you can buy chicks--you can buy chicken meat raw or cooked. The chicken factories chug away with their industrial egg and broiler machines all across the southern US. Seeking more flexible low-wage labor to supplement a largely African American workforce,  they now hire migrant laborers from Central and South America.* The broilers with burned off beaks are commodity life forms bred and engineered into being. So different from raising chickens yourself, the chores of provisioning them and cleaning out the coop, the responsibility for your food/pet, killing and plucking and eating the birds, or burying them when they die--the living commodity organizes parts of your life's textures and feelings in a complex relationship, adding to your qualia of life.

I crack our hens' unfertilized chicks into a bowl and whip with a fork to make breakfast tacos in the skillet. The shells go in an old plastic yoghurt container so we can later put them in the garden.

2012

*Angela C. Stuesse, "Poultry Processing, People's Politics: Industrial Restructuring and Organizing across Difference in a Transnational Mississippi," In Mexican Immigration to the U.S. Southeast: Impact and Challenges. Mary E. Odem & Elaine Cantrell Lacy, eds. Atlanta: Instituto de México, 2005. http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/members/congress-papers/lasa2004/files/StuesseAngela_xCD.pdf

Eggshell Blue

We found the blue eggshells under the figs. An old pecan looms above, and the empty eggs dropped from a long branch cradling a perilous stick nest built by herons.

The first spring after we moved into the house nine years ago a pair of yellow-crowned night herons nested in the empty lot across the street. They came back every spring, new pairs joining them every few years. This spring their nesting habitat spilled over to our yard with two nests in the pecan. We watched them break off twigs, maneuvering them across the fork in the tree branch till they locked into place like a kind of hammock.

Their waste rained down on the fig trees. Dropped or rejected twigs became heron trash (etymologically, "fallen leaves and twigs"). White urine streaked the green leaves like a Pollock painting. A tight ball of crushed crawdad shells landed on the Thai basil. This morning I found a little crustacean's pincer arm on the eggplant. This fall when I sweep off the roof I will find a charnal ground of shells and tiny frog bones.

The heron are supposed to breed in swamps and bayous, but here they are in the City of Living Garbage, nesting in the Boggy Creek Watershed. Maybe they hunt in the greenbelt where the creek flows a few blocks away. Every year they migrate from Central America, the Caribbean, and mangroves in the Yucatan up to Austin and beyond. They seem so worldly and free, flying in from places I've never been, without airplanes or passports. When winter comes, the heron will fly South to overwinter in some remote swamp or art yard, their bodies composed in far-flung landscape patches. 

Inside the vivid blue eggshells are white clinging membranes that dry into paper. On Easter I met an Australian painter and ceramicist who uses only dirt for pigment. He told me the color blue is hard to find in soil, but red, brown, black, white, yellow dirt pigments are abundant in the landscape. Blue and green can't be found except as subtle hues. He shows me the pan flute he made from different-sized plastic bottles held together with blended-up paper pulp, painted with dirt. He records ambient sounds of nonhuman worlds, then layers in his own music. The heron let out throaty caws. Now we can hear the fuzzy hatchlings peep for food.

The egg is the throwaway, temporary habitat, a little atmosphere of its own nested in this one. We put the eggshells in the Museum of Ephemerata. What fragile, worthless things--why save them at all? Collecting the eggshells borders on hoarding, but the blue is so beautiful.

2012