From Behind the Lawn Mower

As I pushed the mower up along the edge of the raspberry patch this morning, I was startled by movement along the garden fence. A 4 or 5 inch long baby bunny was crashing against it, trying to run from the roar of my engine. But my "rabbit-proof" fence held, and the bunny finally realized that and darted left, through the wood slats of the border fence, into the neighbor's yard.

As I walked on, I remembered the couple of times when we were little and my brothers or Dad would bring in a couple of bunnies about this same size, salvaged after the mother had been hit by the huge field mowers out in the hay. We would coddle them and try to feed them a little milk from doll bottles along with a few tender clover leaves and blossoms we'd eagerly harvest for them from the lawn. All to no avail, as our success rate stayed at zero.

Now, I build fences to keep the little guys out and no longer feel lots of joy at the sight of one in my yard. I remember my dismay when seeing TWO rabbits cavorting in the snow on a moon-lit night earlier this year, right in the middle of what I hoped to be my new garden plot!

Then there are the chipmunks. When I first moved here last year, I was delighted to see chipmunks pop their little Chip and Dale forms on my deck, sometimes coming right up to the screen. At least they weren't squirrels, a rodent I had come to dislike after they had eaten holes in my siding, gotten into my attic, and dug up most of my bulbs back in New Jersey. Here in Minnesota, they had feasted on tulip bulbs as well, but my neighbors have been live-trapping them and taking them out to the rural parks in the area, so their numbers are a little slimmer. So I thought that a few chipmunks would be no problem.

Wrong. It seems everyone who has been around here for very long has some kind of horror story of the havoc tunneling chipmunks can bring, and--sure enough--there are a couple (or more?) living down at the front edge of my garage. To add verity to all the stories, a house one block over is having to put in a new garage floor due to the damage from chipmunks there.

So Phyllis brought over one of her traps last week, and the very next morning one was caught in it. However, as she predicted, it has carried the trap off someplace, so I may need to go poking around in all the hostas to find the little carcass. So far this year, Phyllis and her husband have caught a dozen (their total season take last year was "only" about 16), and there are still little critters skittering around yards all up and down the street. So we will continue our efforts to reduce, at least a little, the wildlife that really does reflect the delightful nature of the neighborhood in which we live.

And all of these thoughts about animals that are cute, cuddly and pesky brought me to the environment and tigers.

Tigers and chipmunks in a single leap.

Last week we went up to the Apple Valley Zoo and had some good views of their massive Bengal tigers, lolling and pacing among grasses. shrubs and trees that looked only slightly less overgrown than my shady backyard. The exhibit included lots of verbiage about the decreasing habitat available for these giant carnivores and the efforts being made to re-introduce them into some areas of their former habitat.

Inconveniently (!) many of these areas are now "overrun' by people, and there is resistance among many of the people there to having to share the land with animals with such well-deserved reputations for not being good neighbors. Now, as I pushed my mower around a very safe lawn, fenced so that not even a stray dog can get in, I wondered what it must be like to wake and see footprints, scat, or even worse evidence of a tiger in the yard overnight. I hope to protect my garden from predatory bunnies and seed-eating birds so I can enjoy fresh produce and perhaps keep my food bill a little more under control. What if, however, my yard held the chickens and goats that would be my only source of meat for the year, and I had to try to find a way to protect these animals from a tiger preying on them nightly? And I can be glad for the fence so that the kids can play out there and not stray into the street. What if I had to watch continuously to be sure my children did not become prey to some massive cat? Those man-eating tiger stories are not mere tall tales but are the stuff of life in too many of these remote villages.

But if the tigers AREN'T protected and helped to increase in number, will they go extinct so that my grandchildren and their children and grandchildren will be able to remember them only as residents in a zoo or in picture books just as we remember the dodo or the passenger pigeon? That would be a sadly diminished world that I hope they will not have to live in.

When Linda and I were trying to save those baby bunnies back in the 50s and 60s, there were several billion fewer people on this finite globe than there are now. We were aware--at least some of us--of the need to protect our environment, and we--at least some of us--were concerned already about the impact of over-hunting, of pesticides, and poor environmental practices on the wildlife around us. But the suburbs and deer had not yet collided, the sighting of a coyote anywhere outside the wilderness was still very newsworthy, and wolves were still being routinely killed because they were "cattle-killers" and dangerous.

So how does one balance trying to live more closely to nature and still keep under control the animals that will naturally be in competition for the food and space we humans need to survive? Certainly people, made in the image of God, have priority should there be a definite "showdown" situation, but the stewardship God has called us to must mean that we consider how we can best co-exist.

The sun is shining, our rains have come at just the right time, and all is beautifully green and lush. This is the upper-midwest weather I missed in Arizona's dryness, and I feel blessed every time I step out in the yard. But I cannot just sit back and savor these gifts without considering how I can work to be sure as many as possible are able to also enjoy the bounties of creation. So no poisons, some trapping (with "kill traps" for the chipmunks, sorry to say), and a willingness to let the bunnies enjoy a few select hostas as their dinner salads.