cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ignoramuses Here's something that I find obnoxious; urban-raised people who know absolutely nothing about wildlife or ecology but will still make windy, uninformed speeches about nature and how it should be managed or otherwise interacted with. I've heard a bunch of radio essays on NPR lately by urban transplants who moved out to the country not far from here. The first guy had this heart-warming tale of watching the deer out his back window last winter and how in mid-December a group of 6 does came tearing out of the woods like bats out of hell, plunged straight into the lake and swam across to the opposite shore. He went on and on about how these beautiful animals like to run and swim just for the sheer joy of it, and aren't they just much like humans? No, you nitwit. Nothing but waterfowl would jump into the water in December and go for a swim just for fun. Deer only swim when their lives depend on it - either to escape a predator or because they are on a land mass with insufficient fresh water or food. Those deer were running from a predator that you never saw. Then there's the retarded woman who was on the radio yesterday afternoon lecturing everyone about how the wonderful geese in her backyard pond bravely fly to Canada and back each year. She's retarded, too. ALL of the Canada geese in central VA are resident geese. This is not part of the original, natural range of Canada geese. The Atlantic flyway runs along the Chesapeake Bay, around 200 miles from here. All of these geese were captive-raised for generations to be used as live decoys and eventually released into the wild by humans in the mid 20th century when live decoys were banned. They have no historical migratory routes and generally only move between 5 and 100 miles at most for the winter. Literally, these geese she is talking about are probably just flying to a big field next to a lake a couple of miles down the road. And don't get me started on the retarded shit I've been seeing written about the wild turkey that was running around in Central Park in NYC. First some nitwit was worried about it starving or freezing to death in the winter. So she somehow captured it and took it to a wildlife rehabilitation center. All sorts of bureaucracy and paperwork followed. Debate as to whether to release it back into Central Park or to euthanize it (why?) or to release it into a different park where there was a flock of wild turkeys. Yeah, because they'll probably respond really well to a random stranger dropped into their territory. It's just a fucking turkey. Let it be, morons. Oh, and then there's this whole fishing debate in Central Park. People who are supposedly traditionalists advocate for the status quo of allowing fishing but mandating that it be catch and release. And in fact each day many people go fishing in the various bodies of water in the park and they catch these fish and fancy themselves outdoors people getting in touch with nature. And they impale the fish on a hook and then toss it back in the water. What the fuck for? What is the point? If you don't even intend to eat any of the fish then how is there any justification for torturing them? This isn't a matter of 'tradition.' Fishing, as an American tradition, is something that people have long done IN ORDER TO EAT FISH. Not to torture animals for fun. That is just sick. The most frustratingly idiotic shit in this vein is to be found at palemale.com for anyone who cares to point and laugh and stare. It's easy enough to shrug this kind of crap off, but the problem is that these people are legion and they end up getting to make retarded, ignorant laws about wildlife management that are based on absolute idiocy and knee-jerk emotion. I actually support many of PETA's goals and I appreciate their ethic. Factory farmed animals should not be treated the way that they are and most labratory use of animals for research does not need to happen. Raising animals for fur is also something that does not need to happen (at least not the way it is typically done). However, I have yet to meet the PETA activist who know as much about ecology as a typical, rural, American hunter. 9:55 a.m. - 2009-02-03 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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