Guns are too quick.
You can't savor all the little emotions
--The Dark Knight (2008)
He was especially hard on the little things
the helpless and the gentle creatures
--Raising Arizona (1987)
My religion is kindness
--The Dalai Lama
____________________
Topic for consideration: How do you interact with the creatures in your world?
Varmageddon is a bullet manufactured by the Nosler Corporation specifically for waxing little critters. Yesterday I read an article in a hunting magazine which advocated for coyote hunting in Montana and Wyoming in the winter as the coyotes are starving and therefore must be on the move.
It struck Ranger as an odd reaction: Animals are starving, therefore, kill them. Lotsa kills to be had as a starvation dividend. My relationship with nature is different.
The animals passing through my compound do not starve because I provide them food and water to help them sustain their lives. Rattlesnakes have even drunk from my automatic waterers. Water is the most dire need for most animals, especially in the summer, and in urban environments. It will soon be the limiting resource on human life, as well. (Many of us do not see that because the water always flows when we turn the faucet.)
In return for allowing the animals forage, I get to see fifteen wild turkeys with three mature males safely eating 20 yards from my bedroom window. Same for deer, coyotes, foxes, squirrels and rabbits. Now that my dogs are no longer on patrol and squirrels are no longer being shot, rabbits and squirrels frolic in the front lawn and have taken over the water from the dog bowl.
Buddy the dog has entered the cycle of life, too, and his passage allows the squirrels ascendency. Every now and again the urge comes to kill one and place it on Buddy's grave, but I have fought that impulse so far. Enjoying this ebullient life refreshes my jaded soul.
The most common request from people who know my property is, "Can I come over and kill a few deer this year?" They do not get it.
Changes have happened over the 20 years spent on this acreage. The once-plentiful whippoorwills have disappeared and the white egrets have become a rare sight. Ditto the honeybees and butterflies. Is this due to the pesticides, herbicides and fungicides so liberally dosed on the local environment through the largess of truck farming?
There is an ebb and flow to life and it is at our peril that we ignore this fact. The whippoorwills used to sing me to sleep and they are missed. A coyote or a rattler could have destroyed this family of birds, yet that too is the cycle of life and the pattern of nature.
My critters will have a haven as long as I can hold onto this land. My dominion over the beast will be one of conservation. The world is filled with too much killing.
--Jim
Labels: advice for the war torn and lovelorn, on the op - lp, out on the outpost listening post, ranger advice column, varmageddon
posted by Lisa at 7:10 AM
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