So I'm watching Discovery channel last night, in between watching some movie and waiting for True Blood to come on. The name of the channel was appropriate, because I am discovering just how moronic people are becoming. There's this two hour special called Uprising. Basically, it's about this uptick in the numbers of animal attacks and the discovery channel is postulating, without any proof of course (much like a bad journalist), that animals are turning against us and we'd better be ready for the all-out animal assault.
Now, I didn't bother to watch this ridiculous show more than one segment where a man hacked at a mountain lion with a chainsaw, and how biologists were keeping tabs on the numbers of coyotes in major cities, but the scare-mongering tactics used by media to up their popularity seemed to be in full swing just in what little i saw. They were talking about how coyotes were sneaking into your streets, and how we might have to fight the wildlife in the alleyways, and all this total bullshit.
All i could think was, come on discovery channel, how stupid can you actually be? I thought you liked animals? Or at least, cared enough about them because they were your bread and butter, so to speak? This show just infuriated me, for several reasons.
One, wild animals are not pets. They generally don't like being petted, and just because you throw them a marshmallow, it doesn't mean they think of you as their master now. If you try and pet them, get close to them, or just generally irritate them for any reason, they will still proceed to bite, claw, stomp and eat your stupid ass. Even if you did feed them your strawberry flavored marshmallows. Yes, even the whole bag. No, I don't care how good they taste. The animals still don't love you for it. They just want free food.
Two, animals are learning that people mean free food. If the coyotes are lacking in territory, or even if they think of cities as one big mcdonalds drive thru, they are going to be scrounging around in back alleys looking for snacks. Let's be serious here, people, everything needs to eat. If the animals learn that your garbage has better scraps and is easier to get to than trying to take down a bull moose, then they are going to dig through your garbage for scraps. It's just that simple. Rangers can tell the people not to feed the animals all day and night, but until they get it through to the animals, animals are still going to associate us with food, even if we stop feeding them. We throw out things that are a thousand times better tasting than wood grubs. I mean think about it, if you are starving, would you eat a wood grub, or a stale big mac? Some cold french fries? Yea, that's what I thought. For the most part, animals are just as hungry as you were that time when you forgot to go shopping, came home from work to find no food in your fridge at all, had no money in your wallet, and had to scrounge the leftovers from last week's pizza party that were stuffed in the back of the crisper drawer. Yea, that hungry.
Three, animals are smart. All those people that used to anthropomorphize animals, ascribing to them human emotions and reactions? Well, they were RIGHT. Dogs and cats and hamsters and goldfish DO have emotions, and memories, and dreams, just like we do. Maybe not the same ones, of course, I mean, if they are dreaming about your 3rd grade teacher and how hot she was, well, that's just creepy. But a recent study on goldfish proved that they can recall memories of where and when food was coming, and felt bad if they got their ass kicked over a morsel of food by another fish, and felt great if they were the ones kicking ass. That sounds like emotions and memories to me, and if they know when and where the food is coming from, that's better timing and memory than half the people I know. So stop treating the animals like, well, like animals. If you piss them off, they have every right to be upset.
I am reminded of several instances while I have been camping the last few years. Most recently, my brother in law had been complaining of a raccoon being aggressive towards him. So one night I was sitting around the campfire outside his cabin, waiting to mooch dinner off of him and my sister (my usual fun thing to do while camping), and the raccoon ambled up onto the cabin porch and started sniffing around. Of course, my brother in law makes a threatening gesture towards the thing and it growls at him. Not surprising me in the least, I might add. Then, my sister convinces him to give the poor thing some leftover french fries, and he takes the bag and heads over to the edge of the woods to dump it out, and the raccon is literally following at his heels like a puppy waiting for it's dinnertime snack. If it wanted, it could have chewed his ankles off easily, but it was obvious to the raccoon that it was going to get fed and completely lost all desire to be aggressive. So the raccoon immediately digs into the fries, eats with gusto right at the edge of the light from the campfire, and then immediately goes to sleep. Right there. All I could think was, if I had been that hungry, I'd have gone to sleep right after a good meal, too. Poor thing must have been exhausted.
I know, you really aren't supposed to feed wild animals, and I stopped throwing marshmallows at them about the time I hit puberty, but the animals that know humans have tasty food are also the animals that don't know how to find their own. The most well fed ones, the ones that live entirely off of our garbage, would probably die if that food source were ever removed. or at least, spend a lot of nights going hungry. Much like me if I didn't mooch off my sister and her husband, but that's not the point.
Speaking of throwing things at animals, several years back we had a fellow camper run up to us, breathless, and tell us to watch out because a raccoon had been seen in the area. At first I thought he was joking, because by and large, seeing a raccoon on a camping trip is pretty much expected for me and my family. But no, he was quite serious, and he continued to expound on his asinine behavior by telling us he'd thrown rocks at the raccoon til it went away. I was like :-o I literally could not believe my ears. This obviously city bred moron goes into the fucking WOODS to rent a cabin, sees a wild animal that LIVES IN THE WOODS, and then throws rocks at it because ... well, to be honest, I have no idea why he threw rocks at it. I was going to ask him how he'd like it if he went into his backyard to cook some burgers, and a raccoon started hurling rocks at him, but he ran off to tell someone else about the "scary raccoon" and I didn't feel like running after him, tackling him and beating some sense into him. He was probably high, anyway. Scary raccoons, indeed.
Let me tell you, amongst all the close encounters I have had with raccoons, snakes, skunks, bugs, lizards and biker chicks, it's always been my fault when the encounters have gone bad. Without fail, once you allow the animal to calm down, it's as harmless as a warm rock. Except for the biker chicks. They are almost universally dangerous. Stay away from them unless you are a professional biker chick handler, like me. I had a pet iguana once, and typically I let it set in it's cage for weeks at a time. Anyone who's ever owned an iguana is shaking their head now, because iguanas rapidly go from tame to wild within weeks if you don't keep them accustomed to you. And I understood that, but I had to clean the iguana tank, and I gently picked the iguana up, holding it firmly but carefully while I carried it to the other room. Of course, because it was scared, the tail was whipping around like a crazed ninja on PCP, and luckily I have the reflexes of a cat on steroids, so I was able to avoid getting hit by the tail. However, the iguana then bit my thumb, and the only way to have avoided that was to drop the poor thing, which i wasn't about to do. Sure, the iguana would have been fine, they drop out of the branches of hundred foot trees without damage, but I'd have had to catch him again and I just wasn't in the mood. But, once he bit me, and I didn't do anything about it, he calmed right down. The tail stopped and dropped to hang down, and he just sat there and looked at me as if to say "Ok, i'm sorry I bit you. Still friends?" Yea, I bled for like an hour after that, but still, my fault for scaring him.
The two really close, surprising encounters I have had with raccoons, my nephews were feeding them while I was around. In one instance, my nephews were pelting me with marshmallows in an effort to get the raccoons to climb up in my lap to feed. The raccoons never did climb into my lap, but one did stand up on his hind legs, put his paws on the back of my chair, and sniff my head. I literally felt his breath on my scalp. Of course, I am so used to raccoons doing this sort of thing, I didn't care, and the raccoon wandered off to eat marshmallows. I'd have preferred that they ate my nephews, because those marshmallows hurt when the get whipped at you, but alas, the raccoons are nicer than my nephews are, and my nephews yet live. The second instance, they were feeding them peanuts, and I was eating peanuts at a picnic table, and apparently a raccoon had come up silently behind me, because I felt something tap my thigh and then touch my ass. I turn my head to find out who's flirting with me, and lo and behold, it's a raccoon. Probably a female. She wanted me, I know she did. I'm a stud.
That about covers it, kiddies. Animals are your friends unless you attack them with chainsaws. Nuff said.
No comments:
Post a Comment