We need to be sensitive to all life
NOVEMBER 21, 2007 (WEDNESDAY) – I remember when Oak Terrace subdivision (where I live) was begun with the clearing of four (mile long) paths through the woods, which became Redwood, Pine, Oak and Hickory Avenues. I recall also taking aerial photographs of the raw acreage that eventually became the Rockport Country Club Estates, complete with one of the nation’s finest golf courses. Both areas were full of wildlife. In these places, we are still treated to the sight of wild animals.
At about 10:00 p.m. Tuesday night, November 13, my son, Dwight, motioned to me to take a look through the glass doors at the patio. A beautiful fox was out there, looking for a bite to eat. We often see raccoons there, also, and they have become well aware of just where to look for leftovers from the cat’s meals. They are very interesting to watch, because they seem to be so intelligent. We would see an opossum out there every night if we camped by the door and kept our eyes open.
One day Wanda looked out the front door and a mother quail was leading a line of her offspring right down Pine Avenue, but we have not seen quail for several years. For years, a roadrunner would dart up and down the flower beds almost every day. A few months ago, Dwight invited me outside one night to see a large owl perched on a utility pole in our back yard. While I stood there watching, he took wing and sailed silently right by me, so close I could have reached out and grabbed the end of his wing. Birds of prey now abound out here, with red-tailed hawks and ospreys gliding through the air. For a while, several deer were paying a visit each morning to the lots across the side street, but the building of the bypass seems to have put an end to that. However, they are still around. Many residents of the area have mixed feelings about deer, which eat their beautiful flowers.
Every once in a while, an armadillo will be seen, and tortoises, too.
One Thanksgiving I put the carcass of a turkey at the edge of our back yard, next to the woods, thinking a coyote or some other such animal would feast on it that night. Would you believe the seagulls spied it and descended en masse upon it, ripping it apart, squawking all the while, and in a very short time, it and they were gone. Poof! No more turkey. No more gulls.
We had a semi-wild domestic cat once, that finally ran away into the woods to live. One day she brought her litter of bobcats to the lot behind our house. Wanda tried to be nice to them, but they would have none of it. Wild! They were real bobcats.
Our grandchildren used to love hiking in the woods behind our house, but now the Highway 35 bypass and the building of more homes has cut down the size of that area. There are still alligators in the ponds back there. People have been known to feed them, and that’s a dangerous thing to do. They learn fast where they can find food, and you don’t want it to be at the end of your arm.
The resiliency of wildlife and its adaptation to roads, houses, autos, etc. is amazing. The world God created teems with life. Whatever we can do to preserve it is the right thing to do. Somehow, I have the feeling that it’s in our own best interests to do so. I keep thinking of that old song from the sixties, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot! Hee hee, giggle, giggle.”