Saturday, December 01, 2007

Fuzzy Bunny Ecology kills PEOPLE

People like animals. Mostly that's not harmful. Except when it is.

Glen Reynolds of Instapundit wrote recently of the problems that ensue when people don't understand animals. Growing up in farm country we knew that animals could be dangerous, domestic or wild.
But then "fluffy bunny" syndrome extended itself to become "fluffy mountain lion syndrome." Government-sponsored cougar hunting ended, bounties were removed, and cougars started to make a comeback. Boulder's inhabitants disliked hunters, and liked the idea of living with wildlife, causing populations of deer in residential areas to explode. Meanwhile low-density housing meant that more and more people were living along the boundary between settled and unsettled areas. As cougars, their fear of humans having dissipated after years of not being hunted, moved into semiurban areas bursting with deer, they acclimated to human beings. People were no longer scary and, after a while, started to look like food.

The problem is we as humans want to love all animals. We see movies like over the fence, Bambi and we watch way too much Animal Planet TV. The reality is animals are not fuzzy humans and certainly not fuzzy bunnies.

They can kill, they are dangerous and they are becoming way too comfortable around humans. Mountain Lions are showing up every where. Bears. Wolves. Coyotes. Then there are field rats - DEER. They should be kept under control but people are nuts. From David Baron's Book, The Beast in the Garden
A little later, we were in the woods above the field when we encountered a bear grazing along a path. It looked up at us and licked its mouth, a long strand of saliva dripping nearly to the ground. We were 20 feet away — in Homstol’s opinion, too close for comfort — so she whispered to turn and walk slowly toward the field. This we did, and when I looked back, the bear was 15 feet behind us, frozen in place. Once again, we walked toward the field, and when I turned again, the bear had closed the gap — it was 10 feet off, still making eye contact, still caught in that strange stop-motion pose. Like an image raised in a microscope, the bear kept getting closer and closer, though we never once saw it move. When I asked Homstol what that behavior meant, she said, walking swiftly toward her truck, “I have no idea, and I don’t want to stick around to find out.”

In the Sun Times there is a letter from someone saying how terrible it is that people kill deer. Well, I had venison for supper. I'll have it for lunch tomorrow.

Now, a little mountain lion shishkabob would be just right.

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