During one of our many ”let’s-explore-LA” driving trips, my parents and I inched past the backlot of MGM Studios. From the street it looked like a western scene with California chaparral hugging the ground and groves of eucalyptus and oak trees set against the mid-size urban mountains. In the midst of all this “nature” and mélange of desert colors I saw a tall, long painted backdrop of a bright blue sky. “Maybe they are filming a western today,” my father opined.
It was very exciting for me to see this. Like being in Hollywood. Except we weren’t in Hollywood. We were in Culver City. And little did I know that many years later I would actually live on this wedge of earth where they used to make movies.
Way back when, when MGM needed to sell off some their assets, they also sold this land. To a developer. Thankfully whomever “developed” our collection of buildings had the foresight to VALUE green space. AND old trees. AND the lake. Yes, we have a lake. A big ‘ol lake. Supposedly Johnny Weissmuller swam in “our” lake when he filmed his Tarzan flicks and that “Old Man River” was really “our” lake in the movie Showboat.
http://mgmhistory.tripod.com
Well, speaking of the lake… Yesterday morning, I heard a ruckus of honking and hooting outside. This is not all that surprising really, because urban living is urban living and couldn’t we all write a book about the sounds our neighbors make?
But this was a little off the bell curve so I poked my head over the balcony railing to check it out. By then the cacophony had stopped and I didn’t see what it was or where it was coming from. So I wrote the whole thing off to “ducks.”
Mating.
We share our MGM lake with a flotilla of ducks. This is their home too, year-round. It’s really quite sweet until mating season. Let me tell you, duck mating season is not pretty, especially if you are a girl duck. There is nothing erotic or even joyful about the whole prolonged process. It’s loud and mean spirited, at least from my anthropomorphic point of view. Suffice it to say, if you happen to believe in reincarnation, just hope you don’t come back as a lady duck.
So I wrote off all the hooting and hollering to them ducks and went on my way. Except word spread quickly, neighbor to neighbor, and people dropped what they were doing and charged to the lake. To see the most unexpected and elegant sight.
Forty Canadian Geese had just arrived. With accompanying fanfare. Our lake is an official flyway for migrating birds so we might get one or two representatives of some exotic species dropping in for a few days, but never forty of them. All at once.
Well this kind of event messes with the established hierarchy in the lake. The turtles poke their heads above water, twirl around and quickly disappear. I can only guess that the fish are also hugging the muddy bottom. The ducks are a flutter and heaving together at one end of the long lake as the geese settle in at the other and assess the territory as only wild things can. They quickly find food. Grass. And they are unusually fearless and friendly as humans approach with small children and cell phone cameras. They are big, like turkeys, and when they bob up and down in the water, en masse, somehow they all face the same direction. And shift direction. Together.
I think human beings do this too, although many would not cop to it.
The folks around here say the geese are on their way to Mexico and taking a little siesta before they continue south. I wonder to myself why they don’t just stay. It’s okay. We’re “south” enough and have experience with that mating stuff around here and can live with it. As long as we can take pictures. And maybe there’s room in the Homeowners Association Landscaping Budget for extra grass…
But Mother Nature always wins and these beautiful creatures are moved by some deep, primal force. So are we, but I think the distractions of life get in the way of feeling that stuff. But watching this “National Geographic” scene unfold, quite literally, in my communal backyard, is a reminder to me of the mysterious and grand “something” that really moves us.
And soon the geese will be gone.
It’s a crazy coincidence but right now, today, I’m reading a delicious novel by Richard Ford. It’s called “Canada.” The second half of the book unfolds in the desolate plains of Saskatchewan during hunting season when Canadian geese fly through on their way to, say, Culver City…
And suddenly forty of them actually land HERE. In “real life.” Fiction meets non-fiction. Yeah, yeah. I guess it all depends on your point of view…
anne geffner
i am touched by your descriptive story. it warmed my heart to know that a flock of migrating geese actually landed and took comfort in a culver city habitat. wonderful pictures too. thanks cali for taking the time to write and share about this event.
larry
When I owned a home next to the Culver High, we regularly had a flock of Parrots visit our magnolia tree. The noise was unbelievable, but after a few minutes they stopped (all of them at the same time). They were still there, just quiet. I was told they were from the parrots for the Old Bush Gardens near the 405 and Roscoe Blvd. I have not seen them recently, but the memory will never leave me and my children.
larry
What a nice departure from you normal music venue. It was nice seeing you perform recently and it is refreshing to see you also have other interests.
Larry the K