Good-bye Groundhog

I have a high tolerance for the killing of little furry animals. And I know I need to explain this to many people, some of whom have been writing to our local city paper lately fulminating about the shooting of garbage bears by an octogenarian country lady.

First off, garbage bears. Why shoot garbage bears? Because these are bears that have lost their sensible avoidance of humans and are therefore unpredictable and dangerous. We live in black bear country. In the almost twenty years when we spent weekends here and the twelve years we have been full time residents, we have seen bears perhaps as few as ten times. I used to pick berries from a fairly distant patch with my (then) very young daughters and our dog, and would frequently see the raspberry canes coming upright from having a bear leave them as we arrived. We see bear scat, footprints and claw markings (one on the cabin wall), but we rarely see the animals themselves and if we do, it is a fleeting glimpse as they quickly move elsewhere. We have had one garbage bear which, when we were alerted by the thumping of the garbage pail and went to see what was going on, walked toward us. We yelled, it left briefly and returned to the compost bin. JG took a shot at it (compost bin has bullet hole to substantiate this) and it left for good. We now lock the garbage bin in a metal sided shed and do not compost berry material. Black bears are big enough to kill a person. And the habituated ones may try.

We also target groundhogs and other sweet furry beasties. It's this way. We live way out in the 'bush' (Canadian for second growth forest). Of the 300 acres we tend, 295 are managed forest or beaver flood, and any animal that wishes to is welcome to den in them. Of the five remaining homestead acres, we regard only the immediate vicinity of the house as off limits. We even tolerate chipmunks in the mowed part of the field and lawn. Groundhogs are welcome to dig in the untended areas and live in the rock piles. However, in the last month we have had to eliminate a chipmunk family that persisted in digging up the tile bed of our septic system (after the application of moth balls and ammonia) and a groundhog that insisted in reopening a hole directly under the supports of the stairs leading to the kitchen door. We use live traps when we can, and more than a few chipmunks have been transported for wrongful digging, but find they are not too effective with groundhogs. We had to use a spring trap on the stubborn idiot who was undermining the stairs. This requires waiting for the trap to spring and shooting the perp to put it out of its misery. Imagine if that hit the newspaper!

I guess you could argue that the groundhogs et al were here first and we are encroaching on their territory. True. But overall, I think we are kind to our first citizens and we do a lot to improve their habitat. The deer love the trail system we have developed and are equally pleased with the tasty hostas and other imported delicacies I have planted. Robins revel in the big patch of mowed field. Red squirrels and chipmunks get lots of nourishment from the bird feeders and we don't hassle them if they confine themselves to gleaning what the birds have dropped. The odd squirrel that figures out how to get into the bird feeders is shot and provides a tasty snack for the fisher that we see occasionally. I would say that we usually coexist. Maybe the kitchen stair groundhog was making a First Citizen protest. If so, he would have been wiser to file suit in court.

These are animals, after all. Most of us use animal products which involve the death of the animal. We don't see the slaughter and most of us don't think about it very much. Those people who do worry about it (and they had better be vegetarian and wearing synthetics) tend, in my opinion, to go a bit overboard. ( Also take a look at this link -- hunters going overboard!) Especially if the animal in question is a cute baby harp seal or a laboratory dog or monkey. Have you ever heard of anyone mourning the demise of lab rats? Or trying to close down a pig raising barn? If polar bears become extinct it is not going to be due to the controlled hunt that brings the Inuit badly needed cash; it will be because we are all, to some extent, carbon criminals. I eat meat and wear animal products. And I trap groundhogs. Guilty as charged.

While we're talking about encroachment on other people's property, let's take a look at the urban raccoon. Here is an opportunist animal that makes garbage bears look like rank amateurs. These wily beasts have perfectly adapted to living in cities and are happily increasing their urban populations every year. And this is a real problem in Quebec at the moment because raccoons are rabies carriers. The rural population of raccoons along the Quebec/Ontario/New York State border has a lot of raccoon rabies. The Ministry of Natural Resources in Ontario and its equivalent in Quebec have been trying to eradicate this population humanely by dropping bait containing a rabies immunization drug and by trapping and relocating the animals near an infested area. But the infested areas are increasing and soon will be close enough to Montreal that crossover may occur and the urban raccoons become infected. If this happens, it is going to be a big problem for the residents of Montreal. The animals may stop being furry little charmers and become targets for destruction. If you have to choose between killing a raccoon and having your child in danger, I know what I would do.

I hate killing things myself. I ran over a porcupine with my car once, and was really shaky after I made sure it was dead. I love watching little lambs jumping around but I also love lamb chops. I feel sorry for a crowded boxcar of pigs headed for slaughter but I eat lots of sausage. I wonder how defensive I sound to other people about this subject. It's a sort of mental dichotomy, I think, that is due to being far enough away from hunger and subsistence farming to have the luxury of not being 'in at the kill'. Could I kill an animal if my family needed food? Yes, I think so. I hope I never have to find out. In the meantime, I don't have much patience with people who get overly sentimental about animals.

Grama versus Blogger -- Round 3

I was really pleased to be named with a just post award by Jen of One Plus Two and Under the Mad Hat. Flattered, too, as I am not sure I am really in the swing of things yet and I am really awed by the company I am keeping. I gather that the idea is to put the icon in your blog margin and link it to the post. And I have just spent an unhappy half hour trying to figure out how to do that. And not succeeding. I will have to go and dig around in Blogger Help again, but I am just too tired tonight. Too many fundraising meetings.

Up under the blog title I have just changed the picture. I love photographing birds. My daughters would say I have an obsession with photographing birds. I have walked off the edge of docks, got sucked into swamps, fallen over backwards (to their teenaged embarrassment), and been eaten by every insect that frequents beaches, bogs and blinds. Some of the pictures I am even proud of. This heron shot is one of them. It has just caught a small fish and it is looking so smug about it all.

If you look very carefully you can see a very tiny gull in the shot of Little Stuff by the river -- off in the upper left hand corner. That shot is about the twentieth try. I love digital cameras. Bird photography used to be a much more expensive hobby with colour film. Especially when you're like me and never do exactly what you tried for.

Or remember people by the right name. Crumb! Sorry Mad. Just fixed it.

Blowin' in the Wind

We just got back from our monthly run to the dump (for city folks, note that no one comes for your garbage when you live 'in the bush'.) As usual I come back discouraged and a bit sick because of the mess that is our local garbage disposal site. Plastic bags festoon the trees and bushes all around, and especially downwind, the paper recycle has a huge pile of soggy cardboard outside in the mud, there is a lot of stuff in the actual tip that should not be there and the recycle shed has been closed because no one is prepared to look after it.

It's the plastic bag part I mind the most. For the last year or so all of the bigger stores in our shopping town have contributed to a cloth bag campaign. The bags cost a dollar, are available to buy in most stores and hold a lot of stuff. They fold flat when not in use, are washable and light. A lot of people have adopted them with enthusiasm, but you'd never know it at our waste site. Part of the problem is bears -- they get into the tip when the dump is not open, tear open the green bags and rummage through for anything good. The smaller plastic bags all get ripped open and scattered and then they blow. After the bears have had a good rummage the crows arrive, and loosen any bags the bears might have missed. Some of the township waste sites have electric fencing to keep the bears out, but ours is almost full and due to be closed so this improvement has not been made. And the bags blow.

When we built the house I persuaded JG that I needed a cupboard in the kitchen for recycle and I have capacity to store cans and plastic for about a month. Glass has to go into the tip, as the local recycle business cannot find a market for it, but at least it is inert, so I don't mind throwing it in there. I have two big compost bins, and we burn the clean paper. That leaves uncompostable scraps and plastic wrap to ditch. The other big item is newspapers -- we take two dailies and three local weeklies, plus an enormous number of coloured advertising fliers -- but that gets recycled, thus using up my cardboard boxes to pack it in. And I confess to the fact that a lot of the uncompostable but edible scrap gets dumped back in the bush, thus making the local raccoons plump and happy. So we lug boxes of paper, usually two bins of recycle and one small bag of the rest.

The waste disposal site at a hamlet not far away still has a recycle centre. This is a lot of fun as books, baby clothes, small appliances and lots of other fascinating stuff is all sorted and stored in an old trailer where you can go and add and subtract. There is also a local habit of plonking good junk down at the end of the laneway so that neighbours and passers by can see it and take it away if they like it. JG is enthralled with a jar of goodies one of our neighbours has set out, but so far has not succumbed.

He is a real problem -- you do not want to let him lose at an auction because he bids on boxes of mixed goodies and then keeps it all. He has lumberjack tools, a complete welding outfit, hardwood plank storage, building equipment and supplies and tools, automotive tools, and more. At present we have three storage buildings (one with two annexes) and a garage and the only reason the garage is not stuffed is that we only finished building it in December. Give him time and the cars may be back outside again.

Although I am not, blush, blameless myself. I can't bear to get rid of books and the cabin that we built here before the full time house is at present housing my paperback collection, because the hardcover books take up all the bookcase space in this fairly large house. There are probably 200 books in the office, some of which show in the photo behind the bag, and more bookcases in the living room and bedroom and TV room downstairs. And I need more bookcases. So, while I complain about JG the packrat here, I would not dare complain to his face. 'What about all your books?', he would say. Maybe I had better let him investigate that jar!