corvus
Posted : 4/24/2008 7:02:08 AM
dgriego
corvus
I'm all for trying to help wildlife live alongside us. You won't be helping much if you feed them and they come to rely on you, but equally, shrugging and saying "it was in my yard and it needs to learn to respect me and my dogs" doesn't help much either, especially when the thing has just died a traumatic and unnecessary death.
It is not about the coyote respecting me or my dogs it is about him respecting mankind as a whole and our domestic animals as a whole.Is it not worthwhile for the coyote to respect man and to fear him? Had this respect and fear been instilled into the coyotes would some of this have been avoided? You sympathize with the coyote that is ripped apart by dogs, is there also room for sympathy for the child who is attacked by coyotes?http://www.varmintal.com/attac.htmhttp://tchester.org/sgm/lists/coyote_attacks.html
See, that's exactly what bothers me. Yes, there is room for sympathy for the kids as well as the coyotes, as well as the dogs. I have all the room for all the sympathy in the world. In a hopeless situation where there is no possibility for resolution, I do the best I can to minimise damage in my neck of the woods.
In the Top End where crocs turn up in people's swimming pools during
heavy rain, there are a list of things everyone gets taught about
sharing an environment with an apex predator that can and will kill an
adult human and eat them, let alone domestic pets. Stick by those rules
and you're unlikely to have any problems. They still pull a hundred crocs out of Darwin harbour every year, and they all end up as leather and burgers, but live and let live. They target the big ones because you can't have crocodiles that large hanging out in capital cities. They have dingos eating their
pets up there, too. Same thing. You take precautions if you care
enough. Doesn't mean you have to throw rocks at every crocodile or
dingo you see. You just have to be sensible and accept that they live
there too. Oddly enough, they don't do a thing about the dingoes. Guess they have their hands full with the crocs.
My point is, live and let live. Like I said before, it's not like I haven't had conflicting emotions about animals before. But that doesn't mean I have to pick a side and declare war. Coyotes do what coyotes do. Just like crocs do what crocs do. We humans are intelligent and compassionate enough to understand that and accept it, but we so rarely do. We just want our safe bubble where nothing threatens. I am so not interested in hearing all the stories about how evil and cunning and dangeous coyotes are. The coyotes aren't the problem. They've always been that way and who can blame them? It's what they do. If you want to live in the desert, you gotta accept the associated dangers. Just like when I lived in the Top End for a few months, I stayed out of the water, covered up when the mosquitos were out, and took responsibility for my hydration. And when I lived in Mexico for a few months, we took care not to attract bears and kept out of the way of the rabid foxes.
I can't know what will happen to an animal after I let it go on its way. All I can do is guard its safety while it's in my world and hope it doesn't come to grief at some point. When it comes down to it, I could never bring myself to make a violent action towards an animal unless an attack was underway. It's a slippery slope, and it does things to people that I don't like. I've seen it happen and I loathe it. Hating a wild species for being good at living is wrong and that's what my moral compass tells me. End of story. I won't deliberately set out to run over feral species on the road, and I'm sickened by the way people think it's okay to torture a cane toad because we're all taught they're very bad. I consider paint balls and rock salt torture. Sorry.
ETA, AL, this tirade has nothing to do with your situation. It sucks what happened, but you did what you could and that was more than some would have. I've had animals die in my hands and felt responsible in the past. It's not an easy thing to deal with. I know other people that take it harder than I do and are blue for weeks. These things happen. Fact is, it's easier to love your dogs after they kill a wild animal than to love the wild animal after it kills your dog. I'm glad you weren't faced with the latter scenario!