Au Revoir, Summer!

It’s August - better known as the month I ruin by complaining the whole time that the summer is almost over. I love spring and early summer: the birds, the soft sunshine, the longer days, and the relaxed let’s-get-together-outside nature of friendships. But in August, the birds grow more quiet. The garden goes from abundant to weedy and overgrown. The sun seems too hot and the days too short. And the first day of the coming semester looms like a shadow over my carefully-cultivated summer-break calm and tranquility.

"Baby Eastern Bluebird" by Mark Theriot CC BY-NC-NC 2.0

But, as often happens when I take a long walk down our country road, nature had a lesson to teach me this morning. I was reminded that life comes in seasons and the fullness of life doesn’t diminish in fall and winter. It simply changes. Even though the birds may get quieter and begin to migrate away, there is still a wonderful bird-ness about August. Today I saw flocks of blackbirds and Canada geese feeding on the cut grain fields. I saw young, speckle-breasted bluebirds, trying their hand at hunting for insects, which are plentiful in the August heat. In fact, I saw lots of juvenile birds, and heard them, too; the beauty of the dawn chorus has been replaced by the amusing sounds of recent fledglings trying to mimic the adults. I heard a Northern Flicker cry out over and over again, in a time with the adults have mostly grown silent - it even attempted drumming a few times against the hollow wood of a snag. A fluffy little blue jay, in a rare moment of vulnerability for such a tough, canny species, cawed over and over again.

"Mother's Love" by Victoria Samuel USFWS CC BY 2.0

And then I looked through binoculars at a funny brown spot at the edge of the distant wood and made out a turkey, and then another turkey, and then lots of turkeys straggling in and out of the boundary of the wood: four hens and the twelve poults of their collective nursery. Later I saw a fawn, grown quite big but still with spots, looking at me curiously. Then it followed its mother across the road and disappeared into a cornfield. August is still alive - and magical.

And I relearned the rather trite lesson that everything has its season. We must move on to fall, and fall will be beautiful in its own way. Then there’s Christmas, and winter, and those first couple of snowfalls are indeed breathtaking. There may be fewer birds left at that point, but they’re easier to get to know. They spend their time nearer to us as we bring food to the feeder and crack the ice on the birdbath, and we can observe them more readily on the bare branches of trees. Then, just when we think we can’t take winter any longer, there are those marvelous days of March that hint at spring. Slowly, once again, the world comes back to life. And then I spend another August trying not to lament the end of summer.

"Sunset over Cornfield," by Johan Neven CC BY 2.0

I think we’re seasonal creatures living in a culture that tries to erase the seasons. We live a moderate-temperature life in our homes, no matter the weather outside. We buy strawberries and apples all year round. Christmas decorations show up in Walmart starting in September. It feels good to be outside on an August day, observing the specific pulse of life that happens only in August, and to bid summer au revoir rather than adieu.

Back from the Brink

I was just skimming over my nature notes from this time last year and recalled an amazing week. It was a busy week, and I couldn’t have spent more than 40 minutes total walking outside. But in those 40 minutes walking up and down my country road, I saw three amazing things: a bald eagle, a mink, and an eight-point white-tailed buck deer. Why is that so amazing? Because all three species have been pulled back from the brink of extinction thanks to concerted human effort.

"Bald Eagle Head 2" by Tony Hisgett CC BY 2.0.

The sight of a bald eagle is still a thrill for me because I remember a time when it was such a rare sight. Now the bald eagle is listed as “least concern” and “population increasing” and has been taken off the endangered species list, with over 6,000 breeding pairs in the lower 48 states. Their endangerment was caused by a whole host of factors: habitat encroachment; poisoning by DDT, lead shot, mercury, and other toxins in the prey eagles consumed; and shooting by ranchers and others who considered them a pest. Some of these explanations are considered controversial, as are all claims by environmentalists that threaten an industry or way of life, but what is clear is that a combination of efforts taken over the last decades has worked well. Federal and state agencies and individuals have worked hard to protect habitat, outlaw the shooting of eagles, and reduce use of toxins, and will continue to do so in order to ensure the bald eagle survives.

"An American Mink in Capisic Pond, Portland,
ME" by Chuck Hemler CC BY-SA 3.0

By the early part of the 20^th century, wild mink were in trouble because of the demand for their fur. This conservation story is a mixed-happiness one: the wild population was saved because of the increase in mink farming. Mink farming is not a nice industry, and the animals are subject to a great deal of cruelty. Mink were farmed in the U.S. and then exported to Europe, what was then the U.S.S.R., and South America to fill the high demand worldwide for mink fur coats. Escapees from mink farms outside the US are now an invasive species, out-competing other native small mammals and reducing bird populations through egg predation. In the U.S., mink farm escapees, bred to be smaller and have thicker pelts, are changing the genetics of the wild population, which may have important long-term effects. But for now, this story shows that, when we stop over-hunting a wild population of animals for whatever reason, the population has the potential to rebound quickly and stabilize.

"Whitetail Deer" by Garett Gabriel CC BY-SA 3.0

And the white-tailed deer. It is hard to believe today, but that population was in severe decline by the end of the 19^th century due to hunting for meat and buckskin by Native Americans and settlers of what was then a relatively small population, as well as the removal of food sources through heavy logging in forests. There is historical evidence of concern for deer populations; one New York locale had deer laws as early as 1788 that established a season for deer hunting! Throughout the first half of the 20^th century, feeding of deer combined with limits on both season and numbers brought the population back. The clearing of forests ultimately aided the deer, as it provided edge habitat - the meeting of forest and field - that deer prefer. Now, of course, the white-tailed deer population is too big, and they have become pests: harming agriculture and private gardens, destroying new growth in forests, and decimating the habitat of birds and other animals, not to mention causing car accidents. Now many forest and wildlife conservation efforts include the hunting of white-tailed deer.

"American Bald Eagle" by rightclicks
CC BY-SA 3.0

What seems to me to be the most important common denominator in these stories is a change in culture. Conservation efforts are the nuts and bolts of the rebounding of endangered populations, but most important of all, they change our mentality about the importance of animals. Eagle poaching began to decline in part because of stiff financial penalties, but today I’m certain it is kept in check because people have come to see the bald eagle as a somewhat sacred symbol of our national identity. Trapping of minks, beavers, and other animals have declined as the demand for furs and pelts have declined; even mink farming is on a downward trend. And hunters have become some of the best conservationists over the course of the 20^th century, realizing that animal populations and their habitats must be managed carefully in order to ensure that the sport of hunting can continue. (In fact, I would argue that we need to encourage more of a hunting culture in this country.) Now we must turn this concerted human effort toward other species facing extinction, and that will be the subject of my next blog.

Nuisance Human Beings

I went to a wonderful talk last week on “Wildlife Encounters” given by an employee for a state wildlife agency. His office is one that deals with “nuisance” animals. They include deer, bear, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, bats, snakes, and woodpeckers, as well as others. There are several reasons they become “nuisances” for human beings. They come into a yard, scare people, and harm or eat pets. They eat garden plants and landscaping. They hole up in attics and poop everywhere. They drill holes in homes to dig out insects. They run across roads and cause us to hit them with our cars. They cost us money in insurance claims and extermination fees.

But there is another way of looking at the issue. In most cases, it seems, we create the problem. Animals such as bears and raccoons would not normally want to come so close to houses and yards because they consider humans a threat. But they do so when we provide ready food sources, such as garbage piled in the yard or by the street. The speaker pointed out that almost all bear sightings near houses occur in the early spring, when bears are coming out of hibernation and hungry; they fall off in early summer, when natural food sources for bears are in ready supply. The most successful bear-avoidance strategy is removing garbage from open places, such as placing garbage outside on the morning it will be picked up rather than letting it sit there for days at a time.

Deer would not normally take the risk of spending time eating backyard gardens if they were not hungry because of overcrowding. In many places around the mid-Atlantic where I live, there are four or five times the number of deer per acre than the “carrying capacity” of the land will allow; that makes for a lot of hungry deer behaving in ways that are not natural to them (including eating backyard gardens and even eating baby birds in the nest). Overcrowding of deer leads to diseases that affect humans, such as Lyme Disease. [On a side note, because I’m also a grammar and punctuation freak, please note that it is simply “Lyme” Disease, no s or ‘s at the end!] The most successful means of treating the problem of deer overpopulation is hunting them, and unfortunately lots of well-meaning people actively oppose hunting or seek to over-regulate it.

I asked the speaker if his agency ever has a seat at the table in discussions of new housing developments, and of course the answer was no. Development is rampant in my area, swallowing up woods and pastures in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. We’re crowding wildlife into smaller and smaller wilderness areas and then considering them “nuisances” when they come onto our property. The speaker explained that, once an animal has become habituated to humans and human neighborhoods, there is no going back. Moving a “nuisance” bear to another part of the woods doesn’t work; studies of tagged bears show that such bears will continue to seek out humans and grow bolder and bolder about approaching homes, campsites, and cars. Thus the slogan “A fed bear is a dead bear.” State wildlife agencies, and the animal removal agencies with which they contract, generally no longer catch and release. A “nuisance” animal that is trapped will be euthanized. A very sad end to this particular story of the relationship between humans and nature.

What would happen if we started to see ourselves as “nuisance” humans? What if we thought a bit about the world from the point of view of wildlife and then acted accordingly: stopped putting pet food and garbage outside, considered deer movement flows and put up fencing accordingly to keep them out of our gardens, watched to see how squirrels and bats were getting into our attics and then simply filled those holes, drove a little more slowly and carefully during the deer rut, and so forth? What if we planned development a little more carefully, to decrease the amount of land fragmentation that resulted, or to allow some habitat to remain in large developments so that animals were less likely to come into our yards looking for food and shelter? What if we accepted well-planned hunting as a necessary solution to an unnatural problem? And what if we stopped letting our fears of animals get the best of us? As always with nature, how we perceive it affects how we act. The question is: can we change our perception?

Deer 911

A couple of months ago, I was leaving a late-night meeting to drive the 45 minutes home on dark, two-lane Appalachian roads. “Be safe!” my fellow volunteers called out as I left. I shared their concern: dark country roads during the deer rut are dangerous indeed, and I always thank God when I make it home without killing myself or a deer.

I didn’t hit a deer on the way home, but I saw one that had been hit by someone else. It was bucking desperately from where it lay on the side of the road, trying to stand up so it could run to safety. It was a small deer, probably one of last year’s fawns or maybe a yearling, I’m guessing a doe. I called 911 and asked timidly if the need to put down an injured deer is indeed an emergency. Turns out it is, and the dispatcher sent a Maryland state highway officer to do the job.

While I waited, several cars stopped for a few seconds to look at the deer and then drove on. Finally, one stopped and backed up toward me, and a young woman got out.

“Are you claiming it?” she asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are you claiming it? If not, I’ll take it. We don’t like to see good meat go to waste.”

I looked at her small, two-door, foreign car questioningly. “Hey,” she said. “All I need is a knife, a tarp, and a trunk!”  She was a tiny, thin thing. You gotta love a tough country gal.

I explained that I had already called 911, and she looked a little disappointed. “Well, hopefully he’ll let me claim it. He might want to use my knife instead of shooting it since we’re so close to houses.” It seemed she had done this before.

We waited together until he arrived, about fifteen minutes later. By then, the deer had managed to get on its feet and drag its wounded rear end across the road, where it continued about four or five feet and lay down in the grass. (For those of you who fault me for wasting the time of a police officer on such a situation, I can add that the deer standing in the road almost caused another hit. So ... endangering the public, etc., etc.)

I fretted the whole time. I hated to see that poor animal suffer. I also hated to think that she might actually heal up and survive if there weren’t an officer on his way to kill her, thanks to me. My husband is a hunter and has seen (er, shot) some strange things: a deer with a broken leg that had healed, a deer that had been shot and whose body had calcified the bullet and gone on to survive to an old age. Oh well, I consoled myself, at least she’ll feed a family. I know personally how deeply satisfying it is to go into winter with a freezer full of venison.

How many deer die horrible deaths every day as part of their natural lives? I would be willing to bet it’s a very high number. Disease, starvation, wounds, attacks by other animals, old age - the end of life can be pretty horrible for a deer. For all wildlife. So why did I feel so heartbroken about a deer hit by a car and so personally responsible for making sure that it suffered as little as possible? I’ve been chewing on that ever since, and I think it goes beyond the fact that I just really love animals.

I think we feel a responsibility for wildlife that live in our human environment. That deer was in the road that night because we built the road, because in the last few years we took that isolated farmland and developed it with McMansions and condos and now there are way too many cars on that narrow, curvy, unlighted road. We turned this country into a country of edges, where woods and fields come together, and the deer population thrived and increased because edge is the perfect habitat for white-tailed deer. I’m not faulting us for that (at least not right now, in this blog), but I am interested in how it might make us feel responsible for the animals that then live and die in our human landscape. It’s not so easy to just dismiss death as “part of the life cycle” when we set up the conditions that led to it.