There is a clipping of a cartoon I have hanging on a wall near my computer that says a good deal for me on the too often destructive relationship we humans have with other creatures on this planet.
Drawn by American cartoonist David Wiley Miller, the cartoon depicts a forested area where hunters are creeping in on a herd of deer with a crowded metropolis of highways, high-rise buildings and smokestacks looming in the background. “Let me get this straight,” says one of the deer looking over the hunter’s heads at the concrete, metal and smoke. “It’s our herd that needs to be ‘thinned’?”
Don’t you just love that word “thinned” we humans so often choose to use when we want to pretend, for some ‘scientific reason’, we need to engage in a little bit of population management for some other creature’s own good. And it almost always means selling hunting licenses to those guys among us (and they are almost always guys) who think they are going to find their manhood by blowing away a deer or a bear or a fox or a duck or whatever else happens to be ‘in season’ out there with a gun.
The other word for ‘thinning’ is ‘culling’. There are a lot of bureaucrats in our governments’ wildlife services who like to use that one. ‘It’s time for a culling’, they’ll say, because these animals are beginning to populate too much space per square acre, their numbers are placing too heavy a demand on the available food supply or they are encroaching on the habitat of others, which more often than not means they are encroaching on us. There is rarely ever thought given to the possibility that we might be encroaching on them.
So it’s time to go “hunting,” to do a little “thinning” or “culling,” which are all soft, deceptive words we use as if, for the good of whatever herd or flock or other arrangement these creatures are living in, we are doing them a favour by putting some in their population ‘to sleep’.
But let’s stop snowing one another. What we are really talking about is killing. And I know, mom doesn’t want to put it that way to the kids when dad is going out to do a little culling today.
‘Well, kids. Dad will be back later. He’s just going out with his gun and a box full of shells to kill some mallards.’ Just doesn’t sound fuzzy enough, does it? Sounds like a guy who could come home later and cuff the kids if he’s having a bad day (possibly because he didn’t bag enough ducks) and he thinks the kids are out of line.
I took a good look at that cartoon again last week when I was learning the news about the brutal assault last week by possibly two or more people on the Happy Rolph’s Bird Sanctuary at the northeast end of St. Catharines along Lake Ontario where a number of animals, including goats and rabbits and others, were killed or wounded.
The outpouring of anger from the public over news of this mindless slaughter of animal life is heartening and very understandable, given the long history Happy Rolph’s has played in the lives of many Niagara families (including mine) with taking children there to interact with some of the other creatures we should feel so fortunate to share this planet with.
But how far will that outrage extend?
Will it extend to cormorants – a Great Lakes bird that, after decades of being brought to the brink of extinction due to PCBs, DDT and other man-made poisons discharged to these waterbodies – is being “culled” again with the blessing of our provincial government, because, allegedly, these fish-eating birds are robbing the waters of too many of the fish anglers like to catch? Ironically, this bird appeared on one of our coins about the same time the McGuinty government, a few years back, decided it was a good idea to start with the shooting and oiling of their eggs so they won’t hatch.
Will it extend to the human world’s hunting down of the last few tigers on this planet, the last few families of elephants and gorillas, the fishing of the last few blue fin tuna (now classified as “seriously endangered species”) Canada’s government would not vote to protect at a recent global conference, the sharks being callously destroyed for their fins for a soup, and one could go on and on.
Maybe other creatures on this planet would be better off if we humans had ‘culling’. Better yet, can’t we find a way of living on this planet without so much killing?If you have any information on this latest brutal crime at Happy Rolph’s, contact the Niagara Regional Police at Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 and/or the Lincoln County Humane Society at 906- 682-0767.
Doug Draper can be reached at
drapers@vaxxine.com.
