What do you think of when you hear the phrase “human-animal bond”? I suspect, for most of us, our first thought is our relationship with our dogs. Which makes sense, given the depth of our connection with the animals that we have taken into our home and hearts like no other. However, Philip Tedeschi, Director of the Institute for Human-Animal Connection, and MSSW, reminded us in a speech yesterday that our connection with “other” animals goes beyond that of our companion animals.
Philip co-authored a chapter in Ignoring Nature No More, The Case for Compassionate Conservation, edited by Mark Bekoff, titled “Conservation Social Work: The Interconnectedness of Biodiversity Health and Human Resilience”. Yesterday, in a speech directed toward social workers in Madison, WI, he eloquently made the case that social workers have every reason to worry about the health of our environment, in part because ecological problems always hit the poor hardest. Equally important is the need to facilitate empathy and respect for all life. Philip argues that we have a “broken relationship” with nature, and that we need to find ways to build human-animal relationships among people in all cultures and economic levels. Doing so can have profound effects on efforts to reduce domestic violence, human aggression and animal abuse.
I couldn’t agree more. However, the fact that I was sitting in the audience worried sick about my husband and dogs who had been attacked by wasps lent an unwelcome irony to his message. Jim called me as I entered the conference room to say that he had riled up a nest of ground wasps while feeding the sheep. This species, the Eastern yellowjacket (Vespula maculifrons), is particularly aggressive if you get anywhere near their nest. The BCs were with him, and a posse of wasps chased all three of them into the house, a good 75 yards away. At least 10 wasps got into the house (probably on the fur of the dogs, they seem to get tangled up in dog fur). Jim was stung five times and Willie re-injured his bad leg in the scramble. This was bad enough; wasp stings are shockingly painful. But Jim is super sensitive to wasp stings and we have an epi-pen in the cabinet just in case. So I was worried (good news: Jim is okay thanks to Benadryl®), but also very much aware that our relationship with other animals can be a bit complicated.
The irony of this did not escape me while I sat listening to Tedeschi’s excellent talk. However, negative encounters with animals do little to dampen my belief in the importance of teaching children and encouraging adults from all walks of life to interact with the natural world. The evidence is overwhelming that time “in nature” is essential to true physical and psychological health, and no group needs that more than our children. The best summaries of the research on this topic are Richard Louv’s books, Last Child in the Woods, and The Nature Principle. I always feel a need to remind us all that being “in nature” isn’t always all sweetness and light. Finding a dead lamb in the barn motivated me to write Why I Farm, in which I said:
[Living in the country] . . . helps me to feel centered, with the earth holding me up and the land surrounding me, with something bigger and better than my own little life.
Of course, interactions with dogs are often the easiest and most readily available way to add animal life into someone’s nature-starved world. The work of Philip’s Institute toward that end is staggeringly ambitious. The Institute for Human-Animal Connection trains social workers (and their dogs) to do animal-assisted social work as well-educated professionals who have the knowledge and skill to do it well. But the people at the Institute do much more: The Institute has just signed a contract with the city of Denver to work with the homeless who have pets. It will work with the Warrior Canine Connection, which is moving to Denver, to study the use of animal-assisted therapy in the treatment of military trauma. Phil goes to Africa and works on programs to help farmers protect their crops from elephants while protecting the elephants at the same time. He and colleagues just finished a study on children exposed to animal cruelty and domestic violence. They are working in Romania, where dogs can be subjected to institutionalized violence en masse, to try to show the links between this kind of violence and the effects it has on children. They are involved in prison programs and global conservation concerns. Whew. Inspiring.
Listening to this led me to ask: What am I doing? I would like to think that my writings have encouraged a love and respect for all of nature, but yesterday I felt inspired to ask what else I could do. I might have an answer: The registration fees for the talk yesterday were donated to WiscCares, a joint effort of the School of Social Work at UW-Madison and the School of Veterinary Medicine, to provide health care and advocacy for homeless pet owners. It’s an effort dear to my heart and an effort I might be able to assist. (Remember I have ‘social work in my bones, I worked with “troubled adolescents” for two years in Alaska in another life.)
I hope you are in a place where you can either add an effort to connect people in need with nature, or find a way to receive it if that’s what you need yourself. Or both. I write this with a tinge of apology, having sprayed the wasp nest into oblivion last night. I won’t pretend that I regret killing the wasps. Their nest was in a place that none of us could avoid, and I draw the line at putting my loved ones at risk. However, I have to admit that I said, and meant, I’m sorry, as I did it.
MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Is there anything better than looking at a barn loft full of a winter’s worth of hay? We unloaded, with the help of the Zwettler family, about 5 tons of hay on Saturday, and boy does it feel good. I’m still enough of a wannabe farm geek to think it’s exciting and wonderful to unload and stack hay bales in the barn. My friends who grew up on farms tell me this is not an emotion that they share. And understandably so–hay is usually cut and delivered on the hottest and most humid day of the year. The chaff flies into your sweaty face, the alfalfa stems scratch your arms and your back thinks it has better things to do after the first 50 bales. But for a girl who grew up in the suburbs of Tucson and Phoenix, it still feels special.
Here’s what it looks like outside the barn. The “chute” that moves the bales into the barn is called an elevator. Getting the bales out of the wagon onto the elevator is harder than it looks–when the hay is cut and eventually baled, the bales fly into the wagon from the baler, land with a lot of force and are smashed together. It’s actually great fun to figure out what bale to pull to undo the pile. Pick-up Sticks with hay. I always did love physics.
Jim gets the credit for all the photos. My favorites are the ones from inside the loft. Guy and young Garrison did much of the stacking, which takes more experience and attention than you might think.
This is my favorite photo of them all. Love the light.
Unloading the hay is a summer ritual that I will always cherish. It includes hard work, laughter, ice tea & lemonade, and whatever I was in the mood to bake for a break (brownies this time). The only parts that aren’t quite so fun include my eyes that night (yeah, I’m allergic to hay) and my back the next morning. But all that is in the past, and the bales of hay smell devine as they sit in the loft, ready for the hungry mouths of sheep once winter comes.
Andy says
Last Wednesday a trucker from Mississippi lost his English Bulldog in the middle of the night at the loading docks near my home. His friends helped him try to find the dog, but at a certain point the trucker had to choose between finishing his load or losing his job, so he went on to Houston.
He posted a notice to a local group I follow that’s solely dedicated to helping people find their lost pets. The group started as a simple Facebook page, but gradually grew into a full non-profit complete with street teams, trapping experts, a foster network for found pets and a working relationship with the city to avoid intake. These folks are really serious and I just love them.
Within about an hour the group figured out where he’d lost Beefy, and since it was in my neighborhood I took Cecil out to see if we could traces of him. We didn’t find him, which honestly is a good thing since it’s unlikely Beefy would have survived long in the summer heat down here. Another volunteer printed posters and drummed up some cash for a reward, since it’s quite possible this dog is stolen (EBs go for a lot of money down here, and we have a good bit of theft in general). We’ve papered the area and have posted to most major social media outlets.
During all this, the trucker was answering questions online and monitoring his phone. At a certain point he really opened up and shared that he’d lost his long-time EB of 10 years not long ago, and that losing Beefy as well was really hard on him. He was so grateful, even though we have yet to find his dog.
Will this guy be reunited with his beloved companion? I sure hope so. But if he can’t be, I’m glad he knows that a bunch of strangers care about him enough to help him, and sympathize with the terrible loneliness he must be feeling. I’m also glad I got to help a little since I’ve felt jaded and tired with my other efforts this week. It really is a two-way street, this helping thing, and I’m lucky I get to do it.
Sue says
Thanks, really enjoyed your post – yet again… Interesting thoughts about our connection with nature, including wasps and other ‘pests’. I’ve finally got my first own garden this year and have been battling slugs all spring and summer – after a mild winter we’re having quite a wet summer this year in the UK and it seems that’s perfect weather for slugs! I don’t want to use slug pellets or other poison as I don’t want to hurt the slow worms, hedgehogs etc, not to mention the risk to the dog. However, the other evening I got so enraged at them eating all my new plants that I finally collected all that I could see and put them in a bath of salt-water – like you and the wasps I did apologise as I did so… not sure what the neighbours thought!
Secondly loved Jim’s hay pictures and reading about your hay stacking – reminded me of when as a young teenager I used to help out at a horse yard, including harvesting and brining in the hay and straw… very hard work but so rewarding. Wish I could give my desk-based job every now and then to go back to something like that…
Trisha says
Andy: How good of you to tell us this story, and how good of you to expend the energy to help such a worthy cause. I am sure that you are right that the trucker at least felt surrounded by a caring community, and I know that can assuage grief more than that besides time. I do hope that Beefy is found though. Please let us know if there’s good news.
To Sue, and her slugs: Ah, I so understand about the slugs! I too can share my plants to some extent (I love that our CSA farm let’s the Sandhill Cranes share the corn. We are told when the ears come in to just cut any damaged ends off the corn, and cherish having cranes in the valley. I couldn’t agree more. BUT, there are limits. I do a “Japanese beetle run” 2-3 times a day, dumping them in soapy water. I have to confess I’ve done it at times chanting “I hate these beetles, I hate these beetles?” There’s nothing good about that, so I’m going to stop it, say I’m sorry, but I choose my roses and plum trees over them.
Margaret McLaughlin says
My deep sympathy to Jim & your dogs–mowed over a nest a few years back & got more than 40 stings. It was excruciating, & led to an epi-pen for me, too.
With most insects (& arachnids) I can live-and-let-live; but anything that’s stinging me will get slapped into oblivion. I’m both a pacifist & a vegetarian, but I guess we all draw the line somewhere.
Kat says
Loved your description of bringing in the hay. It brought back fond memories of the smell of fresh hay and how the cats would spend the heat of August sleeping in the hay and them bring the smell into the house for the night. Thinking about it almost makes me want to purchase a few bales to spread out and persuade the dogs and cats to nap in it.
I am working on modifying the slope of a steep hill in my yard by creating a brushpile framework and composting all my leaves and weeds there. About a year ago a family of wood rats decided this would make a great home. I live with four non-human predators and I keep them confined within fences and walls. I didn’t feel bad at all when Finna eliminated the wood rats. Nor do I feel badly when a mouse comes in and is dispatched by one of my cats. The majority of my property is left wild for other creatures and my predators are contained. If the wood rats or mice choose to move in where the predators are confined they deserve their fate. Perhaps a lot of my attitude is the result of living close to nature all my life and observing the cycle of life up close, watching cats hunt, shutting up the sheep to protect them from coyotes, seeing raptors catch prey, etc. Nature isn’t always pretty; there’s a reason the poets speak of nature red of tooth and claw.
One of my passions is getting people to re-engage with nature. I sit on the Board of Directors of Mountaineers Foundation (mountaineersfoundation.org) where a large part of my job is creating/fostering/encouraging environmental education programs that get people to connect with the natural environment. I love seeing the hyperactive kid who is a constant challenge in the classroom come into their own on the trails. Or the quiet kid open up and blossom in amazement in front of an enormous Douglas Fir tree. One of my very favorite questions to be asked is “why does it smell so much better out here?” as we wander through old growth lowland rainforest. My daughter wrote a paper for one of her college classes on Nature Deficit Disorder. She needed to do a 10 minute presentation on her paper and chose to have her classmates write down five words about how they felt right then in their warm dry classroom then she took them outside on a grey, drizzly, chilly, Pacific Northwest day, grouped them on the grass around a tree and asked for five more words describing how they felt. The inside words were things like trapped, bored, and sleepy. The outdoor words were things like free, happy, and alive. Those 10 minutes have always seemed to me to capture the very real need people have to be connected to nature, a need which I suspect accounts for a lot of our desire to keep pets.
Gabi Wooten says
I had this discussion with a vegan friend of mine. She feels the connection so acutely that she has stopped eating meat. As far as she is concerned, she would no more eat one of my dogs or chickens, than she would a cow or pig. I appreciate the sentiment, but I struggle with its broad application. I especially struggle when, like your wasps, I killed a black widow in my backyard and many of my Google searches for “animal safe ways to kill black widows” turned up folks asking if I can relocate her. I don’t know that I could ever get that close to her however my golden silk orb weaver has a home as long as he wants one. I still feel guilty about the black widow death… hopefully the only one to appear as I’d feel really guilty if I had to call an exterminator to kill more.
Maybe the important part about connection with nature is fully embracing that nature its self can be cold and decisive in matters of life an death. My protecting my small feathered and furry family (and feeding us) is natural too, just so long as I continue to promote the prettier, humane sides to balance.
Elizabeth Gibbs says
Relating to Living Beings:
I was taught by a friend who has a native american spiritual practice to say “I’m sorry, I love you” whenever I killed a living being accidentally or intentionally and this has helped me deepen my life long relationship with nature. The practice helped me recover from the shock of unintentionally running over a tortoise one day which sent me into shaking sobs. What an obvious reminder to slow down while driving! I can’t say I sobbed while killing the yellow jacket that was near the kitchen where I work. We as humans have preferences, partly due to which animals are perceived as threats (perhaps why so many people fear of snakes).
I work as the kitchen manager at a small Buddhist oriented retreat center in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Accompanied by my own little border collie, Trixie we are right at home in the middle of the woods halfway up a mountain. One of the Buddhist precepts is non-killing, although some of us do eat meat expressing respect for where (and whom) it came, and I have to contend with the mice in the kitchen since we are in the middle of the woods. I warn them first, and when necessary apologize. (note: We don’t serve meat at the retreats and I have learned to be a capable creative vegan cook, grateful for the bounty and variety of vegetables from the local farmers. I used to be one of them and even raised grass fed beef and personally have great respect for livestock farmers using humane practices. I think our relationship to food, at least where it comes from, can also deepen our relationship to nature.
MORE about TRIXIE!
Trixie is a great connector with the people who come here for silent retreats with various teachers. She has found her calling in life! On the farm, she never took to herding the cows as our first border collie Django assumed that role and learning to work as a team just didn’t happen. Here at the retreat center in the middle of the forest Trixie is in heaven: there are sticks everywhere and her job is to bring one to you and entice you with her darling eyes to throw it. She’ll bring it right back. Over and over again.
Retreats are conducted with “no talking” and the physical communication that occurs with the dog seems to help people be here. We are surrounded by nature, fairly remote by some standards. Many of of the folks who come here live in larger cities and the dog serves as an emissary, increasing their level of comfort with this unique experience.
I truly enjoy your posts, Patricia when I make time to read them and hope to connect with your community online more often.
CEO Olivia says
My huMom loves your connection with bringing in the hay. Like you, she is a city (Downtown Toronto) girl gone north to the country to live with the trees, dogs, cats & 3 pigs.
We don’t bring in the hay any more for ourselves as GG & MiG (Moss passed away) live inside until our house burned down; our neighbours had a fire that spread to our property. The boys are outside now but will be inside in our new home before the winter.
My huMom loved throwing straw, we didn’t use hay. Yes, she would break out in a horrible rash & her back & arms hurt the next day but it was a good hurt.
As a vegan, my huMom struggles with ethical dilemma such as yours. She too is very sensitive to wasp venom but has difficulty destroying their habitat & lives. We also have tent caterpillars taking over some of the trees. We are told to cut them out & burn them. Killing another living being is torturous for her & decisions often take some time & include much discussion with others.
Pawsome post! Much to think about.
Nose nudges,
CEO Olivia
Jan says
I have to agree so totally about the general ignorance about nature and it beauty and cruelty. that was brought home to me this month.
I have a smaller fenced in part of my yard for my dogs. A bunny comes through the fence to graze in the ‘dog yard’ and routinely, when noticed is chased out of the yard by the dogs. I now have a new puppy. while pottying him late one night, the bunny was sitting in the yard and wouldn’t leave. the puppy just watched her. the next day, the puppy was checking out where she was and found a nest with one baby that I fenced off to protect it. Fortunately, that baby made it and finally the pup chased it out of the yard.
Flash forward by 4-6 weeks and the pup was out in the yard, rooting in the same place and came up with something black in his mouth. He was good and dropped it on command. I saw that it was a newborn baby bunny . . . . mom came back. It was fine, so I restored the baby to the nest with it’s littermate(s) and put the fencing back up.
The next morning, I fed and let the dogs out and went inside to do household chores. I looked out to check on them only to see something black in the pup’s mouth again. I hollered to ‘drop it’ and he gulped. I ran out to find an empty nest. I was so sad, but it is nature and I did all I could to protect them.
Trisha says
Margaret: 40 stings? FORTY? I can’t imagine living through it, frankly. I got just three stings at once a few summers ago and whimpered like a toddler.
To Kat: Love hearing about your work with the Mountaineers Foundation. What a wonderful thing to do with your time and skill set. When I lived in Alaska and worked at the Youth Advocate Program we took a busload of “troubled adolescents” on a month-long camping trip down the coast of continental U.S. I won’t pretend it went smoothly all the time (ie, we adults didn’t really quite know what we had gotten into), but giving these kids a chance to spend a lot of time outside did indeed do some magic.
In relation to comments about reverence for life and where to draw the line, I agree absolutely that living close to the rest of the natural world has many valuable lessons, including that death is the birth of life. The “circle of life” reminds us daily that we simply can’t live in a world in which nothing dies. I struggled for a while when my barn was overrun with rats, but the day one ran across my kitchen floor I didn’t hesitate to kill them all. (Which turned out not to be so easy.) To CEO Olivia, we all have to make decisions about our place in this world. I myself wouldn’t hesitate to kill a black widow spider, because it could kill me or my dogs, and nature forces us to take sides sometimes. For example: tent caterpillars can injure trees (although they rarely kill them). We are starting to learn how rich with sensation and surprisingly complex plants are… so, who do you choose? The tree or the caterpillar? As you said, much to think about!
To Elizabeth Gibbs: That’s a wonderful story about Trixie and the retreats. Always wonderful to hear about a dog that has found her calling! My BC Pippy Tay was also not the best sheepdog, but she turned into an invaluable helper with dog-dog aggression cases in my caseload. So wonderful when an individual finds their niche!
Beth says
Yellow jackets are just nasty. They build nests in highly trafficked areas and then get very hostile about the traffic. Bees are generally gentle and not especially threatening, but most wasps and hornets…. I don’t treat my property for insects in general because they all serve a purpose, but when a wasp started a nest in the roof overhang near our front porch, we went right out to the store and got a bottle of that high-pressure wasp spray and killed them. Do I feel guilty? No, not really. They built it on my house, by my front door. Sorry gals but you have to go. I felt the twinge of “I’m killing a living thing here” but the nest was small and they decided to build by me, after all.
The disconnect with nature is one thing that really concerns me and I’m not sure of the answer. I see two parallel courses being followed: One is the one we’ve been on for years where we disregard our role in nature and destroy it in the name of progress. We have made some progress against that. The other, also alarming, is what I call the “Disnification” of nature. I once had a non-heated discussion on Facebook with someone overseas who was advocating for continuing a ban on a certain sort of hunting because “hunting is cruel.” There may be valid issues to be considered there. However, when I asked how this person thought animals died “in the wild” when they died a natural death, she had no idea. Honestly she had never considered it. There was “Death by hunting = Bad” and “No death by hunting = ???????” When I pointed out there is no euthanasia in nature, and that in a world where apex predators have been pushed to the brink most animals die of illness, injury, starvation, parasites etc, this had never really crossed her mind. I believe the average lifespan of a fox is about 2 years. A rabbit about 3 months. Many animals live short, somewhat difficult lives in nature, which is the way of the world. That is not to say we should be unnecessarily cruel, but the number of people who cheerfully eat factory farmed hogs who live their lives in a crate but actively petition the government to stop hunting because it’s so mean is a little bit alarming to me.
We have lost our sense of what the natural world is like. One of my favorite organizations is National Wildlife Federation and they work hard at connecting kids with nature.
Some ideas: Do the kids love Pokémon? Take up geocaching! Or birding! They can “capture” real animals as well as fake ones with their cameras.
Instead of going to the boardwalk beach, go to a national seashore and watch the birds. Go see the dolphins from a boat.
Take your kids fishing, or crabbing.
So many options!
Lucy Flanagan says
Dear Patricia,
Thank you for wonderful blog on lost connection with Nature. I don’t suppose it’s the first time anybody made the point but it needs to be our mantra. Your friend in Romania sounds like a brave soul. You have a lot of talents, social work in addition to CAAB! I too had to kill a whole hive – of bees! – that were attacking my house guests. At the time I felt there was no other option. Maybe I could have hired a bee keeper to come relocate the hive. A thought. When I examined the broken hive I found interwoven into the structure a million little hairs that they had salvaged from my yard, hairs belonging to my beloved, belated dog. I realized that these tiny, sensitive creatures and loved the hairs on my dog as much as I did, every one. “Fine as a bees wing” is a good expression. So much finer than we are in so many ways are the other animals in the kingdom.
Bruce says
@Kat and @Jan – I have never understood the suicidal urge that drives prey species to inhabit fenced predator habitat. Could be a full habitat, I suppose. More than 90% of our yard is NOT dog run, so why do the groundhogs repeatedly dig their lair inches outside the dog run fence (with entirely predictable results)?
Yes, nature includes cute bunnies and charismatic megafauna and flowers and sunsets, just as it includes wasps and tapeworms and Ebola and smallpox. Anyone who thinks nature is inherently benign is spending too much time indoors. 🙂
That said, a walk in the woods has always been one of the great pleasures of my life, notwithstanding the need to check for ticks afterwards. Walk in the woods plus dog(s) is even better, of course.
I never minded bee stings too much; bees die after stinging so they tend to be judicious. Different if a family member is allergic, of course. Yellowjackets are beneficial but since they live in large colonies and sting repeatedly, sometimes their presence is just not compatible with human habitation. Apologizing is a nice touch, though.
Kat says
It wasn’t until a couple minutes ago when one of my kids asked about her that I thought of this human animal bond story. My parents who still live in the place I grew up have two large crabapple trees. When my folks were younger and had kids at home the fallen crabapples would be raked every year and fed to the sheep and chickens but being rather older now and not having kids at home to do the job the crabapples don’t get raked up. Now my parents have a moose that eats their crabapples. She’s been coming for the last five or six years, sometimes she has a calf, once she brought a calf and a bull (an extremely intimidating family group) but generally it’s just her. By family vote she’s named Mocha and she’s quite content to be a wild moose who hangs out in my parents’ yard for a few weeks every fall. She doesn’t mess with the garden, she’s just there for the crabapples and the lawn. When my father goes out to feed the chickens he’ll tell her where he’s going and she’ll flick an ear his way but doesn’t bother to get back to her feet. He’s passing within 10′ of her and although there continues to be mutual respect no one really thinks anything of it. My siblings and I find it charming but unsurprising that our parents have a moose. Given how we were raised and the connections to nature that were always part of the fabric of our lives it seems perfectly reasonable that a wild moose would spend a few weeks visiting them when the crabapples are ripe. Once all the crabapples have fallen and she’s cleaned them all up she moves on until next year. So my parents have a moose that does part of their yard work.
Mireille says
Just a general thank you for your post. Right now being outside and reconnecting with nature serves as a lifeline. Happy that the dogs take me out there.
They occasionally catch mice and moles. I feel sorry for those animals but I cannot restrict their freedom so much that they cant’t do that.
I’ve started practicing with macro-photography and it is awesome what you can see then if you choose to look at what is under your nose all the time!
Nancy says
Thank you each for your comments. It is nice to know I am not the only one who tries to counsel the kitchen mice into making better choices. As the granddaughter and niece of dairy farmers I have always been baffled by their willingness to give their lives for the care of these creatures and yet tease me mercilessly because my dog sleeps in a bed. For the moment though I am occupied trying to figure out the person to person relationships in our country. Nature isn’t always kind, especially human nature.
em says
What a poignant and thoughtful post. It can be hard to appreciate our lives as an integrated part of the natural world, especially when we’re currently bent on extermination of one living entity or another, but sometimes I find it helps to remember that even if we are not conscious of it, human civilizations are a part of nature too. Big brains and the capacity for advanced social behavior has made us very powerful, for both good and ill, but not so powerful yet that we transcend our physical existence. No matter where we live, or how much or little we think about it, we ARE a part of nature, and nature is not always kind or pleasant.
I don’t take Thomas Hobbes at face value when he described the life of man in a state of nature as “nasty, poore, brutish, and short,” but I do try to keep in mind that while we have a responsibility to use our cognitive abilities to evaluate the impact of our actions and our capacity for empathy as a guiding principle in all our choices, when a hive of yellow jackets aggresses against humans or creatures under their protection, nature made her choice when she allowed us to evolve those big fat brains. 🙂
I would also point out, as a salve to the conscience, that there is a difference between the consideration I feel is owed to native species in a balanced ecosystem and invasive pests like Japanese beetles, or even native species unbalanced by an altered ecosystem- whitetail deer spring to mind here. My village organized a cull for the first time last year in an attempt to curb the spread of Lyme, road accidents, and property destruction. Professional sharpshooters shot eighty-nine deer in two days. Of course the deer are part of nature, but there was nothing sustainable or balanced about our population density figures, which FAR exceeded anything possible in even the lushest protected wilderness area.
At the end of the day, the fact that humans sometimes have the luxury of mercy or even patronage of wild creatures does not alter the fact that we are, at heart, wild creatures ourselves, and the imperative to protect our resources, our families, and ourselves should not be shameful, even if it is sometimes sad.
em says
Sorry, I confess to paraphrasing Hobbes a bit, the exact line is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” and he was, of course, contrasting the warlike state of man in nature/anarchy with the benefits of civilized society. 🙂
Trisha says
Eloquent Em, absolutely lovely. When are you going to write a book? About anything…. I’d read it. (Or, have you already?)
LisaW says
This post touches me on so many levels – personally, professionally, agnostically spiritually, and world-widely.
First, a few easy examples. Last year I gave up eating pork even though I have access to humanely (there’s a word worth unraveling) raised and slaughtered bacon, sausage, chops. Eating something that is so biologically similar to me felt wrong. Not to mention most large-scale farmed pigs live nasty, brutish, and short lives. So, for me, that was an easy one.
We just finished making an outdoor shower on the north end of our back porch. This shower is one of the best things ever and it is right next to the entrance to a carpenter bee’s enclave. Carpenter bees look like small cousins of bumblebees. The drones are virtually blind so it looks like they are purposefully flying at you, but in reality, they are stumbling into you. We thought about killing them, but I just couldn’t do it (now, if they start stinging me, there might be a different outcome). For now, an easy detente has been reached.
Here’s where it starts to get more difficult. How do we bring back into balance an entire system that has been out of balance for so long? Disruptions in our natural or built environment affect those with the fewest resources immediately and immeasurably. Think Katrina-Astrodome, think Super Storm Sandy, think Haiti, Nepal, Bangladesh. Think how the affected become the disenfranchised and what are the entrenched systems that rely on keeping these imbalances alive. How do we begin to make a difference? Compared to systemic catastrophes, does it matter that I have two mouse traps waiting for the next hungry rodent? Yes, it all matters. It’s all intertwined and all tangled up.
Then I look to places where I can find some hope. Places like your post about Philip Tedeschi’s lecture and some of the thoughtful comments that followed. Places where we have the space to assess, re-evaluate, and think. Our connection with the natural world and our place in it is at the core of our strife and our solace. Wasps and dogs are good examples of that complex contradiction.
Andy says
Trisha, per your request….BEEFY WAS FOUND!!!
Two Spanish-speaking guys cornered him in a yard late last night, remembered the poster, called the Spanish-speakers number (which the poster-maker had thoughtfully provided), and helped two street team members bring him in!
The trucker is beside himself with relief, and Beefy is sleeping in the A/C on a couch. I confess to being prone to cynicism at times, and I really considered theft to be the best likely option given our triple digits. But apparently this brachycephalic EPD was a lot more street-smart than I realized. Perhaps he spent his days deep in one of the open concrete drainage pipes, and just came out at night to forage.
So proud of my community right now, thanks for letting me share this!
Trisha says
Andy: You made my day!!! I’m just thrilled about Beefy, couldn’t be happier. Good news is so very, very welcome this year. Thanks for taking the time to let us know. YAY Beefy boy!
Megan says
Thank you for your inspiring post and pictures! If you ever visit your “other life” in Alaska, we’d love to have you drop by for a visit! (I work at Anchorage Animal Care and Control and we met ages ago (yes – in the elevator!) at a conference in Pennsylvania given in honor of the event coordinators’ dogs.)
mireille says
I had a discussion on a dog-blog about feeding your dog. That in my eyes there is a contradiction in calling yourself a real animal lover and then feeding your dog the cheapest version of fresh meat available – which comes from mass-produced chickens and cows, that lead a horrible life. Off course it touched on the difficult subject of money.
The interesting fact is that the same people who feed the cheap meat, strongly objected to me allowing my dogs to catch mice.
I think that also has to do in part not only with the Disnification of nature but also in the Disnification of dogs.. I feel like that is happening to.
Anyway, about nature: there is a book by Gerry Paulsen, I think it was in Dogsong or Winterdance where broaches this matter and he describes how he sees wolves kill a deer. He writes it very well.
Shannon Finch says
Lovely post, thank you for bringing this topic up., the comments were enlightening too. Folks might be interested in the work of the Institute for Humane Education, I got my master’s degree in Humane Education through them, dovetailing beautifully with Philip’s work.
Re slugs: here in the Pacific Northwest, we are overrun with non-native slugs. Because I have native habitat, I won’t poison, but I handpick and relocate at least 40 feet away, since they can travel that far in a night. The native banana slugs I leave alone, there aren’t many, and they generally like dead foliage. Another thing I’ve used is a product called Slug Shield, which are copper barriers. Most of the time, the slugs are deterred. I do get frustrated with the super slugs that go right over them or through them, but I grit my teeth and do the relocating thing. I prefer to live and let live, but we have removed wasp nests when they present a danger to us or the animals. That’s a safety issue, and common sense. Don’t love it, but necessary.
em says
Trisha,
Ha! No, no books written or planned, but what a lovely compliment. Maybe someday :-).
Peri says
Fleas would be the life forms that makes my compassion go out the window. I try to appreciate and apologize as appropriate, but I am just not sorry when the fleas die!
Karen says
Love the photo of Trish and Tulip. That picture just speaks to my heart. Their loving bond is so evident in the photo. I have definitely become more compassionate to all living things since I got my very first dog 13 years ago. Now, 6 dogs and 3 cats later, I have a new found empathy for animals and most living things. My favorite quote of all time is: “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” Anatole France
Diane says
i’ll go back and read all comments later…but I apologize to the spiders I kill in my house. Hate killing them, but if I can’t get them outside (or it’s too cold and they won’t survive anyway…or they are way too creepy looking and I don’t want them crawling on me or mine while we sleep) I do kill them…and I don’t feel good about it. After all, they are doing me a favor by getting rid of other bugs (wonder if the spiders apologize?). (Just looked up and read Peri’s comment ….. yeah not so sure I care about fleas or TICKS!)
HFR says
Moths and various flying bugs often get trapped in my screened-in porch. I have to leave the door open so the dogs can get out to the yard. Insects are not my strong suit, but I felt so bad for them as they struggled to find a way out. So I found this tool on the internet called My Critter Catcher. It’s a long plastic thing with a narrow brush at the end that opens and closes when you pull the trigger on the pole. It catches spiders, moths, flies, etc and you can carry them outside and let them go. It is so fantastic. Besides, there is nothing more pleasurable than saving a living thing from a hopeless situation and letting it free. Even if it is “just” a moth. 🙂
Chris from Boise says
Belatedly – what a thought-provoking column, and thoughtful responses. Organizations that assist homeless or low-income people in keeping their pets healthy and safe are meeting a deep need. Mirielle’s comment about disneyfication of nature is part of the estrangement from nature that Trisha pointed out – we ignore it, or we ‘cutify’ it, or we fear it, not realizing that we are part of it.
Our ongoing wasp interactions are fascinating. Per my comment on Trisha’s last post, paper wasps (fortunately NOT yellowjackets or bald-faced hornets, which are much more irritable), are nesting on our patio railing. The dogs had been harassing them while I was out of town. Now that I’m back, I’m discouraging that behavior and encouraging a mutual detente, and so far so good.
The other day I dashed across the patio right past the nest, not thinking, and felt a solid “Thunk!” on my bare arm. I expected an immediate sting and a swarm of wasps, but – nothing. Apparently one of the wasps felt threatened by my haste, and gave me a warning head-thunk. I apologized, and have minded my behavior since, and they have minded theirs.
Yellowjackets seem able to identify their target(s), and as Trisha so vividly described, chase them for considerable distances. Bystanders are at less risk; in other words, they’re not a mindless stinging horde but a thoughtful stinging horde – not much consolation to the stingee, but interesting. And yes, if we had a yellowjacket nest in our yard, we would eliminate it (with apologies).
I think that I can tolerate potentially hazardous creatures (and plants) because I understand enough about biology to differentiate between reasonable risks and stupid risks. Many thanks go to my parents and a number of naturalists who took me under their wings at an impressionable age. I try to do the same for our neighbor kids, passing it forward.
Beth says
Interesting timing as I seem to have a yellow jacket nest in my compost bin. Not happy and hoping for an early freeze.
Daniela says
First of all I am so happy that Beefy was found. I help people in Romania help and rescue old abandoned furries, puppies abandoned in board boxes, dogs handed to PS by their owners … Sick, paralysed, blind or with sequels of Carré… I help lots of people finding back their lost dogs – which are mostly big trauma Spanish greyhounds or Romanian strays saved from a certain death in their countries. It is ok to do it just for dogs, but in time Ihave realised I am doing it also or even mainly for people who help, who, without me at this end of the “human leash” might feel themselves lost and abandoned. Your posts touch me enormously, but this particular one also has a bit of info that I would like expanded. It is about the study about the effects that violence against dogs in public spaces and of domestic violence have on children. Romanian society is a very traumatised society with animals being very little accepted in public spaces and in common living areas. Dogs presence in the public space is demonised, “responsible mothers association” plead for asking the dogcatchers to come pick and destroy – even the pups that their kids played with in front of their block of flats. I am convinced that exposing children to a street plagued by such violence will bare effects on children’s development and philosophy of life… But these are empiric observations, and I would very much want to read the study if available.
Olimpia Valli Fassi says
Thank you Patricia for all your blog posts and books I’ve been avidly reading!
You’re an endless source of reliable information and deeply insightful knowledge!
When you mentioned our disconnectedness form nature, I couldn’t help but wondering what your thoughts are regarding the following:
As our understanding of what is good and bad is socially constructed and relative,
would it be reasonable to assume that
when living in a society that as a whole, on a daily basis, is constantly encouraged to consider itself ABOVE other forms of life, we are progressively shaped to be more and more disconnected from others/nature?
I’m sure we can all agree that conflicts could be avoided if the parties involved would be capable of empathy. Empathy is a building block of morality and it refers to the cognitive and emotional reactions of an individual to the observed experiences of another. It is also a key ingredient of successful relationships because it helps us understand the perspectives, needs, and intentions of others human and other species, like a dog.
We are all united under one common desire: to be safe & fulfilled.
Quality of life relates to a subjective perception of well-being and functionality, and encompasses four main life domains: physical, psychological, social, and environmental.
How much of today’s world catastrophic condition can be attributed to compassion, or better put, lack of compassion?
“Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.” –Jane Goodall
I believe that discrimination starts on the plate, furthermore…ready for the retribution I’ll get from this….the food industry has a profound impact in how people relate to other forms of life.
The phenomenon of meat related cognitive dissonance (the conflict between eating meat and loving animals) is truly fascinating and I believe exacerbates that disconnectedness from nature you mentioned, and not only that, is damaging our planet and violating our children.
I agree with you, children and adults alike need to be more encouraged to spend time in nature, feel part of it, not above it…and maybe we should start doing so when preparing breakfast.
We are not BORN with this disconnectedness and dissonance:
According to a very interesting study, children are unsuspecting meat eaters.
More than two-thirds of children classified chickens, cows, and pigs as “NOT OK to eat.” Further, 84% believed cows and pigs were not ok to eat, and assume that animals are not eaten,(more than a third (38 percent) classified chicken nuggets as a plant-based product, despite the fact that the animal is included in the name).
As the meat and dairy industry are undoubtedly the greatest contributor to environmental damage, this is an opportunity to address climate change…
besides being a sad picture:
The lack of transparency, both from parents and the food industry, if you think about it is so sinister and manipulative. Imagine if someone you love and trust fed you dog meat all your life. You even enjoyed it. Then one fine day you find out you ate dogs, those animals you classified as “not ok to eat.” That’s a truly violent physiological act and the only way we have to cope with it it’s by developing a cognitive dissonance. (Most serial killer start by hurting animals……)
Most consumer (voting doesn’t change systems, consumerism does!), don’t farm, don’t hunt, don’t grow, don’t experience death and birth and witness the beautifully and delicately balanced ecosystem we are all PART of.
Christianity first, then industrialization and capitalism later, brought humanity to lose its connection with nature.
Imagine if we would let all these American children eat what they believe being ok to eat…80% of America in one generation would be vegetarian…picture that… 80% less methane, deforestation, abuse of human workforce, and so on…as you say, climate change impacts the poor first, so does malnutrition.
Let take a look a quick look into Vegetarianism. Vegetarianism, as a voluntarily choice of abstaining from meat, has its origins in 3200 BC, as ancient Egyptian civilizations started to held the belief that abstaining from meat consumption would facilitate reincarnation.
In India, where nonviolence principles are upheld, we have another millenary important cradle of vegetarianism.
Later, Greek philosophers also adopted a vegetarian diet, with Pythagoras being a leading figure among them.
Then comes the Christians, who for thousands or years told us that animals had no souls, and that their only purpose on Earth was to serve human beings.
Only in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when Darwin’s theory of evolution challenged the Church’s views, could we appreciate a slow returning of the vegetarian diet to the western world.
Vegetarians in Europe and North America comprise the 5% of the population, versus a 19% in Asia and a 40% in India.
Is it a coincidence that the most belligerent countries in the world are also the ones that consume most meat?
…So, I wonder…could the end of racism, successfully training your dog, and may I even say, climate change be somehow facilitated by our diet?