"That's good eatin'"

“That’s good eatin’,” he said. Not for the first time, and no doubt not for the last. It’s soon hunting season, and the gentle-looking middle aged man spoke proudly of his adventures hunting animals in the wild. Geese, turkey, boars, pheasants. “Them rabbits. They’re small and bony, but they’re good eatin’ too.” I stared out at the dense forest all around us, and imagined those furry little creatures roaming wild and free.

The man began to lament increasing sightings of black bears in the neighbourhood, and his voice lightened as he mentioned how the state had recently lifted the ban on bear hunting. Black bear hunting. The killing of ferocious creatures that can weigh up to a couple of hundred pounds, and that can maul you with their baseball glove sized paws and rip you to bits, because they love to shift through garbage. Local bins have locks to prevent bears from snooping and feeding off leftovers.

“And just a few weeks ago further north, a policeman came home after his night shift. He heard some noise at the back of his house, and he walked to take a look. He was startled by a black bear, and the bear was startled by him. Good thing he had his rifle, and he shot the bear a couple of times. Otherwise, he would have been good as gone.” There was a snide comment about how soft animal rights groups are, which I didn’t fully catch. All I wondered was what they did with the remains of the unfortunate bear, which on that fateful night unknowingly had (or was about to have) its last supper. Perhaps its head is now glued on a wooden plaque and nailed on the wall of someone’s living room. Fittingly ironic, on the radio was a talk show host, whose high-pitched rhetoric feverishly attacked the environmental agenda spearheaded by menacing leftists and soft-headed liberals.

On a small lake, a couple of Canadians floated leisurely with their long black necks outstretched. Through the closed car window I could hear their muffled but somewhat familiar call. Familiar because, like me, they too have come down here from the True North. Though, I’m only here for a temporary visit, whereas many of them have flown here, and decided to become permanent residents. I watched them, their graceful movements resembled little boats bobbing on the gentle surface of the lake, and admired their brown down.

“Them geese are pests. Make so much noise and nuisance, and they’re overpopulated.” Canadians geese are considered a threat to flight safety. In fact, US Airways flight1549 crashed in the Hudson because both its engines sucked in them pesky Canadians shortly after take off. The loud-beaked babble are also considered a public health hazard because of the fasces they shed on roofs, park lawns and people’s heads. To tackle the ‘plague’, New York City mayor Bloomberg has recently resorted to somewhat extreme measures to cut down the number of Canadian Geese to a more manageable proportions. Geese are being rounded up, taken into vans with cages in the back. And gassed. No doubt, they’ll be good eatin’ too.

Maybe I am one of them soft-headed liberals and pansy environmentalists who cares much too much about the birds and the bees, and the geese and bears. I don’t live in the countryside, and I don’t come from a background where almost every moving creature can be crudely summed up as “good eatin’”. I certainly don’t have to think about bears breaking down my kitchen door as I’m making apple pie (though living in the suburbs, leaving my door open can often invite the unwelcome smell of skunk perfume in). And I don’t have a family or dependants who I must guard against ferocious creatures of the wild.

But weren’t these creatures, however wild and savage, here first before we started building houses and communities right in their traditional habitats, before we chased them away and/or (for some) hunted them to (near) extinction? Aren’t there more anim-ane ways to control the population of a particular species? Once again, I am amazed by the ability of human beings to play ‘god’ and the controller of nature and populations just to accommodate our own needs and desires.