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I am in the computer room and my husband very quietly told me to come quietly to the back door to see what was there. We usually have possums and raccoons stealing our cat's food. Not this time. A not very big deer was under our apple tree eating away. We have a four feet high fence.
I would love to see it leave, but I don't want to disturb its feeding time to make it go. The apples are so small we never bother with them. Sometimes we see rabbits collecting them, but the cat has taken care of that. She is a hunter and had captured a bird Sunday morning. They mostly fall off the tree and worms get into them and the birds come and have lunch too.
I love our animal viewing back yard. There are so many birds around that it can get really noisy out there sometimes. They seem to like the cat's food more than they like seeds. We keep water for everybody too and a bird bath both water and dirt. Maybe I need to buy a salt lick too. Good idea!
We are on the outskirts of a fairly large city; guess it is called "suburbia" and have a huge pasture across the street from us. Last week, the farmer came and hayed the pasture and that is when all the critters come out to eat the sweet grass or in the case of the vultures (turkey vultures) they hunt the little mice who skitter about in the soft mowed grass. We try not to have the deer cross the street to our house because there are times when the traffic does fly up over our hill and I fear that they will get hit. We too have cats, but I don't let them out. One look at the turkey vultures across the street stops that. Those are the biggest, ugliest birds I have yet to see. My husband did put up a bird feeder in our backyard and calls it the "kitty entertainment center". We had to stop feeding the birds because the bunnies are plentiful this year and they too were eating the seed and our Pit Bull would go out in her fenced in area and chase the babies. I couldn't have her killing baby bunnies, so now they are forced to go elsewhere for food. I wouldn't buy a salt lick unless you are far enough out in country so that the deer don't get hurt crossing a street. When I lived in Maine, we had a salt lick out for the deer but for a totally different reason that I always hated. When the deer would walk into our yard, I use to scare them away. Being a city girl, I just couldn't deal with them getting shot like that. Enjoy your nature watching area!
I am in the computer room and my husband very quietly told me to come quietly to the back door to see what was there. We usually have possums and raccoons stealing our cat's food. Not this time. A not very big deer was under our apple tree eating away. We have a four feet high fence.
I would love to see it leave, but I don't want to disturb its feeding time to make it go. The apples are so small we never bother with them. Sometimes we see rabbits collecting them, but the cat has taken care of that. She is a hunter and had captured a bird Sunday morning. They mostly fall off the tree and worms get into them and the birds come and have lunch too.
I love our animal viewing back yard. There are so many birds around that it can get really noisy out there sometimes. They seem to like the cat's food more than they like seeds. We keep water for everybody too and a bird bath both water and dirt. Maybe I need to buy a salt lick too. Good idea!
No, bad idea. Please don't put out a salt lick for deer.
It is believed that CWD (Chronic Waste Disease) is spread in this manner. You can wipe out a significant portion of the population in your area if even one infected deer uses the salt lick and others use it becoming infected as well.
And I don't care a fig about endangered species. If they are meant to survive they will. Trying to keep something around after it has run it course is fruitless.
So if bald eagles had been completely wiped out by the use of DDT (and not simply reduced to the level where they need to be declared as "endangered"), would that mean they would have "run their course?" How about whales needing protection because we historically killed so many for commercial use?
You might want to consider the factors that cause different species to become threatened or endangered. More often than not, they have something to do with human activity, whether via outright killing or habitat destruction.
It's usually not as simple as a species dying out for no other reason than they have "run their course."
Well, at our country place, I've seen deer, rabbits, fox, turtles, racoons, armadillos, mice, rats, deer ticks, squirrels, chiggers, black widow spiders, and many other critters, including cats and dogs. We have some Carolina wrens nesting peaceably on the same deck that a feral cat visits regularly.
All of them get treated with respect, but that respect is in proportion to the respect they give us. When the deer attacked my garden, I built a 7' electric fence to knock them on their cute little deer butts. When the cute little field mice got under our home, the feral kitties got additional food to stick around. I helped a fox who wanted a rabbit who had hidden in one of my drain pipes.
Nature is not kind or nice. If you think it is, you have been watching too much Disney. We happen to be at the top of the food chain ONLY because we are better at dealing with the aggressions of animals and plants better than other creatures. Think of that when a tick from that Bambi in your backyard gives you Lyme disease, or a mouse chews your wires and burns your house down, or that armadillo passes on leprosy to your child, or the raccoon with rabies bites your dog. Our ancestors killed off bears from around civilization for a reason. I'm waiting for the next bear mauling to be fully covered in color and 3-D in one of the environmentalist magazines. When it is, I plan to gush over how wonderful it is that we are communing with nature.
Well, at our country place, I've seen deer, rabbits, fox, turtles, racoons, armadillos, mice, rats, deer ticks, squirrels, chiggers, black widow spiders, and many other critters, including cats and dogs. We have some Carolina wrens nesting peaceably on the same deck that a feral cat visits regularly.
All of them get treated with respect, but that respect is in proportion to the respect they give us. When the deer attacked my garden, I built a 7' electric fence to knock them on their cute little deer butts. When the cute little field mice got under our home, the feral kitties got additional food to stick around. I helped a fox who wanted a rabbit who had hidden in one of my drain pipes.
Nature is not kind or nice. If you think it is, you have been watching too much Disney. We happen to be at the top of the food chain ONLY because we are better at dealing with the aggressions of animals and plants better than other creatures. Think of that when a tick from that Bambi in your backyard gives you Lyme disease, or a mouse chews your wires and burns your house down, or that armadillo passes on leprosy to your child, or the raccoon with rabies bites your dog. Our ancestors killed off bears from around civilization for a reason. I'm waiting for the next bear mauling to be fully covered in color and 3-D in one of the environmentalist magazines. When it is, I plan to gush over how wonderful it is that we are communing with nature.
Nature is wonderful and terrible - and this post started out as a post about someone's joy and amazement over a deer in their yard.
We live in the rural part of a flyover state. Seeing deer and antelope, rabbits and wild turkeys, wandering down our road or in our yard and pasture is no big deal. We got some cats that we keep as barn cats rather than use poison or traps to kill the gophers that plow up our and our neighbors' yards, gardens, and pastures, as well as to keep out the bunnies. Just this morning before sunrise, Momcat went past me, heading south, intent on her purpose. She came back a few minutes later with a gopher dangling from her mouth. "Good kitty!" I exclaimed - but, she knew it already. She was taking the gopher back (still wriggling) to teach her kits how to hunt. If you don't want to believe that this is 'nature' - that is certainly your prerogative - but it isn't fact.
Our horse firmly believes that she is the protector of our cow herd. She gathers them up and herds them into the corral when storms threaten or coyotes howl. She has stomped at least one coyote into the dirt. Sometimes she gathers them up and runs the cows thru the pasture - just for fun! She protects the calves and watches over people who come into the pasture; will often stand between them and an eager bull or a protective momcow. This is her nature; even though many folks think it is odd behavior for a horse to do so without a rider or direction.
No matter what you desire to be true, or what you need to tell yourself, nature is never, ever, going to be exactly what you want it to be or suit your proscribed theories about "should" and "Shouldn't". If you don't want to believe that or can't deal with it - well, that's your problem, not nature's.
Yeah, sometimes city dwellers and suburbanites might not be in the right world though...
Nature is wonderful. Nature can be positively awesome. But as the courts in Australia finally figured out, that dingo hanging around might not really be a friendly puppy, but just wanting to eat your infant.
I don't blame people for getting a slanted impression of nature if they aren't out in it. I blame the media and in particular Disney for purposely presenting a sanitized version of nature. We recently read in the news that an early explorer was disgusted and horrified at the debauchery of penguins. That was real life nature. Can you imagine "Happy Feet" with the little tyke coming across an adult male penguin casually having intercourse with the corpse of another, or engaging in carnal acts with another male? By sanitizing nature and not offending an audience of squeamish and overly protective parents, it imprints children at an early age that life is wonderful in the forest, or in Antarctica, or wherever there are animals away from humanity.
Humanity does some nasty and cruel things to animals, I don't defend that. I also have seen animals be even more cruel to other animals. They don't in general have the power of controlling that behavior, so I don't humanize it any more than I equate big eyes and fur with a cuddly stuffed animal.
I understand that what I am saying is NOT what a lot of people want to hear. I wouldn't even mention it except that the extremists in groups such as PETA are lying and attempting to force insane laws, and people who are naive are much more likely to quietly go along with their anti-life campaigns. If a few of us don't stand up and counter them, you can be assured that eventually no one will be ALLOWED to have a pet of any kind, no meat will ever be on a dinner table, and in cases where humans and animals are in conflict, the animals will always win.
No matter what you desire to be true, or what you need to tell yourself, nature is never, ever, going to be exactly what you want it to be or suit your proscribed theories about "should" and "Shouldn't". If you don't want to believe that or can't deal with it - well, that's your problem, not nature's.
I realize animals can be cruel to one another in nature, that wasn't my point. I was responding to how he deals with nature with the quoted statements below. I'm not passing judgement, just sayin'. It just struck me as unusual that he would come to the Nature forum to post on a thread where people were admiring nature, and he went into details about how he helped kill it when necessary. My cats sometimes get a mouse when it comes in the house, but if I get to it first I put the mouse outside. If I had a rabbit trapped in a drain pipe I would help release it, not feed it to another animal. And mice carry deer ticks as well as the deer, in fact our dog is currently being treated for Lyme disease. I just don't believe in unnecessary killing, preferring to deal with nature in a more "humane" fashion. I don't even kill spiders, I catch and release them outdoors. And we get some pretty ugly, huge wolf spiders, even in the house sometimes.
I suppose this will be an interesting forum indeed if hunters etc. also want to chime in on threads regarding their definition of nature.
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
When the deer attacked my garden, I built a 7' electric fence to knock them on their cute little deer butts. When the cute little field mice got under our home, the feral kitties got additional food to stick around. I helped a fox who wanted a rabbit who had hidden in one of my drain pipes.
We happen to be at the top of the food chain ONLY because we are better at dealing with the aggressions of animals and plants better than other creatures. Think of that when a tick from that Bambi in your backyard gives you Lyme disease, or a mouse chews your wires and burns your house down, or that armadillo passes on leprosy to your child, or the raccoon with rabies bites your dog. Our ancestors killed off bears from around civilization for a reason.
And I don't care a fig about endangered species. If they are meant to survive they will. Trying to keep something around after it has run it course is fruitless.
I read your original post because I like to hear from those who appreciate nature. It's a wonderful blessing in our lives.
But then I read your followup post and was simply disgusted. Are you that heartless, lack moral character, or are you just plain ignorant?
Nearly all species in danger of becoming extinct today are in that predicament due to humans. Numerous species have become extinct because of over-hunting (e.g. Passenger Pigeon) and several are on the brink of extinction due to poaching (Tigers, Rhinoceros, Great Apes etc.). By far, the greatest threat to a multitude of species is habitat destruction and fragmentation. It is appalling the amount of habitat which has been lost and the amount of wildlife that is now in peril of being lost forever from this planet.
Wildlife species are not becoming extinct today because they have "run their course", but because people have unconscionably destroyed them. With a little effort, however, many of these species can be saved so that future generations can enjoy them. Bald Eagles--once on the brink of extinction due to our use DDT--have made a huge comeback since we stopped using DDT in this country. Trumpeter Swans--which once numbered less than 100 due to over-hunting--are making a comeback as well. The list goes on and on.
Basically, it's a moral decision. You either care or you don't care.
Sorry, but your post was probably one of the worst posts I have ever read on CD. Maybe (hopefully) you just don't know any better.
Last edited by jackmichigan; 06-26-2012 at 02:32 PM..
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