Now is the season
of hungry mice,
cold rabbits,
lean owls..
...now is the season
of the hunger Death;......he means to cleanse
the earth of fat;
his gray shadows
are out and running...
from cabin to cabin,
from bed to bed,
from dreamer to dreamer
Yesterday I spent the morning with a wildlife ecologist and a few professors of Religion and Nature. Our conversation ranged far and wide, and came back to the how of living in an ecologically diminishing world. The ecologist said that life is a series of relationships of facilitation and competition - all life, and she meant specifically we humans, compete, discern, judge, and collaborate. We do this all, and it is the way we evolved. The harm we do will not go away. Through us, ecology comes as a threat in the night to clean the world of fat. I am feeling the awesome responsibility to accept it all, and in particular, the tension of our kind between such beautiful dreams and terrible nightmares. In the winter darkness the hunter speaks, "There is no way through the night except to accept that we are part of dance that ends in death and ends in life."
I have not watched this happen much except on television with lions taking down a zebra or something like that. I can feel for the zebra but I tolerate that better than even just reports of a family pet being eaten by an alligator. In my yard most recently many robins stopped on their way north. One found a worm. A couple others watched as it was swallowed. My first thought was about an area I have set aside to raise worms for fishing. I hoped they didn't find it. Then it occured to me, "Hey! We don't mind killing a worm to fish and perhaps get food for us, why should I deny the robins food."
ReplyDeleteI dug up a couple worms, laid them on top and left to see if I could entice the robins to come get the worms, but they didn't.
I think it does not only depend on the species, but how it impacts us. A pet is different than even the same animal like a rabbit caught by a predator. But, how is a predator to know it is a pet. It is up to us to keep our pets away from things like alligators.