I too get that brief sensation of wicked and deplorable goodness when I hear of these things, but it is always followed immediately by the sickening assuredness of that animal's demise. Like I have said before, I'm not an anti-hunter, I'm an anti Idiot-Hunter. My sanity rests on the knowledge that capable, intelligent, respectful hunters DO exist, although sometimes the things I hear and see make me feel like I really belong in the same cadre as the Nessie, Chupacabra, and Yeti seekers. Lately the news has been full of "human predations" and in each instance the troops are rallied and sent forth, guns blazing, to eliminate the offending animal. There were the two mountain lion attacks (one a write-up in Reader's Digest--(complete with color phot of the dead cat, which turned out to be an emaciated male) that reeked of the usual sensationalism-mongering-- and one near Denver) the black bear that killed the little boy and attacked his mom or sibling or something near Chattanooga, and the black bear that got after the hunter in Washington near the Olympic Peninsula. It usually ends the same, although I don't know if they ever killed a bear-any bear-in retaliation for the sad incident with the 2 year-old. I am not trying to be disrespectful, and if I lost a child to any animal I cannot imagine how I would feel, I really can't. But we continue to cut off migraton routes, shred habitat with subdivisions, and force animals into smaller and smaller little boxes of space, which also forces them into closer and closer cohabitation with US. Combine this with ever-growing numbers of humans hitting the trails and tromping through the woods and you are going to have troubles. For some reason we have come to either view animals as cute cuddly little creatures on exhibit in our own personal zoos, or else imagine them all as trap-jawed, gore-toothed monsters with a taste for human blood. This is the one reason why I am split right down the middle on the issue of reintroduction of the bigger carnivores. You are likely setting the animals up for a big run-in with humans, and the minute a bad thing happens, whatever the situation and the details, there will be people clamoring for a dead wolf, a dead bear, a dead mountain lion. |