Pestiferousness

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, sociology, pests

Smack in the middle of Pennsylvania, about a half-hour drive from Penn State University, we find Penn's Cave and Wildlife Park. Our whole church had an outing there some years ago, and on the fence of the wildlife park I saw this sign. It raises the point: when a bear and a human find themselves in close proximity, who is the trespasser?

One point made in Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains by Bethany Brookshire is that humans are the ultimate trespassers. When the bear is "in the woods", supposedly a "natural" setting, of course the person is in the bear's territory. When the bear is enjoying your swimming pool, though, take a moment to consider: if "your" yard and house were "developed" just a couple of years ago, that bear's favorite scratching tree might have been removed to make room to install the swimming pool. A quarter acre or more of forest may have been removed to plant grass for the yard. What else used to live there with the bear?

Pests is not about insects or disease or anything most of us first think of when we hear the word "pest". It is about vertebrates that are called "pests" by some significant number of humans, somewhere. The word "pest" comes from Latin pestis, meaning Plague or pestilence, plus several other meanings including "curse". In the opening chapter the author curses, frequently and eloquently, about a squirrel that destroys her tomatoes, every year without fail. She even tried chicken wire, but the squirrel could reach through, and cherry tomatoes fit through. Chicken wire works for us; we fence far enough from the plants that squirrel limbs aren't long enough to reach.

So, the bailiwick of the book is mammals, from mice to elephants; birds such as pigeons; and reptiles such as snakes. In particular, Burmese pythons in Florida have cross bred with native boas/pythons to produce offspring that are much larger; big enough to tackle humans. Most of us find ourselves pestered by more prosaic critters: mice, voles, squirrels, or rabbits, perhaps rats.

The single biggest problem is the huge range of attitudes about any animal that might be called a pest. For example, we know deer live near our neighborhood, in a few loosely-connected patches of forest totaling 30 acres, and there are forested areas of similar size scattered all through the surrounding several square miles. When we have apples drop in the fall, we'll sometimes see where a deer or two bedded down to munch fallen apples in a protected corner near the tree. We haven't caught any in the act (yet). My wife doesn't like deer that get into the yard, while I am more neutral. A few neighbors try to feed the deer, while others would rather shoot them, except there is no hunting allowed in residential areas even in deer season. 

Similar ranges of attitude exist in my neighborhood for the local squirrels, foxes, raccoons, and hawks. I've seen a Cooper's Hawk land on a squirrel not ten feet from me and flap away with it to feed her nestlings (Cooper's Hawks are mainly bird hawks, but they're not too particular). My wife wishes the hawk would go after the rest of the squirrels in our yard.

Slide halfway around the planet to Kenya. A hungry elephant can consume all of a poor farmer's crop overnight. While it is barely possible to build a fence that elephants can't destroy, it would cost more than what an entire Kenyan town could afford. The author reports that combinations of electrified wires and bees, along with other measures, discourages most elephants. In Kenya, "coexistence" isn't a cool slogan on a bumper sticker, spelled out in bowdlerized religious symbols, it is a necessary wildlife management skill.

Stories abound, but the author's focus is on attitudes. Those who can afford it like to live in more "natural" settings, but then far too many of us get perturbed when "nature" pays a visit. Leave a door ajar, and a sparrow might get inside (dodging a Cooper's Hawk perhaps): you could spend a couple of hours trying to get the terrified bird back outside. Meanwhile, it will have poo'd and peed in a few places; birds don't wait to find a toilet to "drop it". Is that bird a pest? Attitude…

The author points a finger at the Western/Christian cultural undercurrent of "dominion", based on Genesis 1:28. Less than half of English translations of The Bible use "dominion" to translate the Hebrew word, while a larger number use "rule", which is more accurate. A few use "take charge". By domesticating many animals and penning out the rest, the human race has definitely set itself up to "rule" nature. "Pests" are those animals that remind us our rule isn't perfect; we aren't totally sovereign. A little humility is a useful antidote to our hubris.

A big issue is ignorance. There was a joke when I was a child about a city kid on a field trip seeing a pile of discarded milk bottles, who said, "A cow's nest!" That's only slightly exaggerated. Every day children eat eggs but have never seen a chicken, let alone reached under a hen (risking a peck) to feel the warm eggs. Perhaps suburban houses and yards should come with a "Former Owners' Manual", describing the lives of the rabbits, squirrels, voles, mice, raccoons, foxes, perhaps even deer or coyotes (or even pumas) that were displaced to clear the land and build the house. The Manual should include strategies for coping with former residents and their descendants that may still make use of the place. Lacking that, reading this book is a good way to begin to learn.