Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 16:07:54 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "Laura M. Appelbaum" Subject: Snakes and Birds etc. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I admit it, I have an irrational fear and dislike of snakes, among other things (which include all crustations, Japanese Beetles, large black, scurrying spiders, and basically any bug that finds its way into my bathroom!), and yet I agree that shooting a snake was an inappropriate response. And yet again ... I think some of the "pro-snake" forces are over looking here are the critical particulars of the situation that make that action if not condonable, understandable. The snake was eating eggs/nestlings *in a bird house.* It wasn't a snake eating a bird in the "natural environment" (which sadly doesn't, IMO, really exist anymore), it was a snake doing what comes naturally only in someone's backyard, in the nest box they put up, to what then become "their" birds. Once you put up a bird nest or feeder and begin to pay attention to what happens in and around them, a person moves from the vaguely scientific realm of "birding" and into the purely human world of "bird watching." Prolonged and repeated viewing of the individual birds that come daily to your feeder or who choose to raise a family in your box personalizes them in an emotional way. You get to recognize them, then to know them and their peculiarities. You start to care, really care, about how the mother bird is doing when she's incubating her eggs, and about how often the parents respond to their chicks' needy and vulnerable peeps and cries for food. You look outside when it's rainy and blowing and wonder if the nest is secure and dry and if the babies will make it to morning. You anticipate with great excitement, the moment when the chicks first fledge and then take to the air the first time. The birds in question are "your" birds and you care about them, even if you don't want to admit it. So when some interloper, be it a snake, a bird, a cat, a child, enters that idyllic world and starts munching on YOUR birds, well, you're not going to respond in the same way you might if you saw the same thing happening in a National Forest. To say that anyone who responds in such an unscientific, emotional way is somehow no longer "worthy" of being respected as a birder is to deny their humanity. And if anyone is entitled to get up on a high horse and condemn anyone else for the actions they take that result in the *real* threats that face birds and everything else in our no-longer natural world, it's me and the few others I know (does anyone else here on this list qualify?), who has consciously and intentionally chosen *not* to reproduce. Refraining from bringing even more people into our excessively overpopulated world has a far, far more profound impact than shooting -- or sparing -- an individual snake. Laura Appelbaum Cloverly, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================