It is popular with wildlife in this area to roam around in town, where I saw the biggest javelina I've ever seen. Apparently he has gotten quite good at foraging in town -- in fact, there might be a lot more to eat in town than in the desert.
A couple times I have seen a half-grown coyote wandering the streets in town. He was so thin and bedraggled. It doesn't look like he is having a successful career at panhandling in town. Perhaps town people know the threat he offers to their pets.
What seemed odd was that I had to fight feeling sympathy for him. It seems as though the canids of the world have made a slave of me. And yet I haven't forgotten how my first dog, a miniature poodle, was attacked in the city limits of a town...
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| From the archive: my little dog after I luckily fished him out of an arroyo, after he was attacked by a coyote. |
It seems ironic that this is happening near the Mexican border, where progressives make a humanitarian cause of helping illegal immigrants struggle through the desert. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether this is politically motivated more than anything. I once had a progressive friend in the Tucson area who was involved with this sort of thing.
Did the local townspeople have the same reaction as me towards the pathetic little coyote? We are talking about individuals' feelings, and yet, there is a broader backdrop: our culture and media is dominated by cities. Our society has become more effeminate in the best sense of the word.
The traditional female role is that of the creator and nurturer of life. It becomes tempting to extend that attitude towards wildlife. But that is a bad idea.
This tendency becomes stronger as children have less and less appeal, and pets and wildlife fill the vacuum.
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| A woman in the RV park (a retired vet tech) fixing up the little guy. He was as good as new in three days. |
Comments
Human beings are an anomaly of nature as we're the only species who knows we're going to die someday and we just don't like it at all. Not just for ourselves either but for lots of other species sometimes depending, of course, on whether they are friend or foe. It screws up our head. I killed a rat the other day that decided it liked living in my backyard and my neighbor went crazy on me for doing so. I should have trapped and released somewhere else. Sheez.
Anyway, truth is that nature isn't either cruel or kind. It just IS. We're the ones who are strange in this regard. It's really a curse. Consciousness isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I've had dogs my whole life and so sat with each one when the time came. I was upset. The dog never was. They cuddled and licked my hands or face and with no anxiety whatsoever and just went to sleep.
The gods are laughing at us.
George
Answer: 'Socrates. Because he knows both sides of the argument.'
Just drove the "camino del muerte." 130 miles from yuma to ajo.. Tons of border patrol, flares at night, track thru the desert etc, where there is no wall. Where wall is up, didn't see any b.p.