Rodents

I've always struggled with wildlife management. I know we're predators and that killing is in us. I was trained as a marksman and the conflict of sensations is tremendous. Everything I was crafted to do lets me rip a 5mm hole through a woodchuck. Everything I was also taught leaves me in moral pain watching them die.

Part of owning a property will always involve some degree of wildlife/pest management. I'm not for killing, but balance must be maintained and when it's an issue of destructive behavior, no matter how natural, actions must be taken. I own several have a heart traps though anymore they've been rather heartlessly employed. I have enough backbone not to make my burden someone else's.

I was brought up to see the creation story as a relatable lesson. We were placed in the garden to care for it and manage it. The Hebrew translated as rule the garden in which we were placed. In a place now with no fox, or coyote there's only a few hawks working on the rodents and that leaves some of the management to man.

Chipmunks have been the scourge of late. Many years ago when we kept chickens this was an issue as well and large rat traps were staked out. You'd see traps facing each other with small striped bodies on them. It couldn't happen simultaneously. They really don't care for one another. The fantasy Disney placed in your brains about Chip and Dale are perhaps more fantastic than the ancient Hebrew Story of gardens. I could only feel so sorry for them. However we found the innocent were being taken with the offenders when we started catching birds in the traps and it was decided that after 25+ chipmunks it was enough to consider the population managed.

This time the rodent revolution will be met with water. Something in me still feels it's a more humane ending under the pop of a strip of metal. I know it isn't as the evidence shows. I hope this time it can be as merciful as possible using bucket and water. We project ourselves onto the world. Another story that filled my childhood was Noah, and my youthful imagination of the torture it must have been to shut out the world as it died under their feet in the depths.

This is what it is to be among the throngs of humanity however and responsible. Difficult, painful, unrecoverable choices are our price for being "made in Our image."

detritus

It's hard, it's even harder when they are killing your chickuns, so it's a life for another. I had to kill a snake, I hesitated for a second, because I didn't want to, but I had to, it had already killed a chicken and was just trying to kill the second. Likewise with an oppossum. In my case I've erred on the side of security, which has worked so far. I wouldn't want to harm the iguanas, they live next to us and they are nice neighbours. So I jam the little chicks in a safe room for most of the day. There are also hawks, and there is no way I can hit them.

I also like to keep diversity as much as I can. I reason that chickens, well, they come from southeast asia, maybe that's why they don't really make it here, as they did not evolve in this ecological context. Of course, neither did oranges, bananas, and most of what are now considered staple "crops" of this region. I've been wanting to write something on the "cosmopolite ecology" that we have brought about.

So I make a compromise, and let the chickens have their man-made coop, because they were domesticated thousands of years ago anyway. And I let them have a little patio of their own, with all sort of alien plants, and they get visited by the local birds (who like to eat their leftovers), and sometimes they get to go outside and enjoy the rest of the place for a few hours before the sun sets.

I mostly struggle with killing the chickens, or the ducks. Well, I don't, but at some point I may need to. I'm waiting for a couple of young males to grow to displace the rooster, but the notion of killing him is something I can't quite stomach. Likewise with the ducks, the whole point was to have duck to eat. I used to take them to the neighbour but I only ended up spending more money than the worth of the meat I get.