A pear drops from a tree, and I pick it up. A few blackberries just shout at me that they need to be picked, and I comply. If I don't lose everything on the way when I am chasing butterflies, I usually have something to share with Bow when I get back.
Sometimes the blackberries are so few, they just tumble into Bow's mouth, and we wonder: where did they go? But the blackberry bushes have their own plans, and their provisioning of the wildlife is not just a matter of free food for the masses: it is all about reproducing the blackberry kind.
There is a natural ebb and flow in the life of any species; its reproductive cycle. There is a time to sow and a time to reap, and every generation has its place. I can see this when I look at the purple milkweed seed pods which are now making ready for next year's crop of milkweed plants.
Sometimes we don't want to allow a species to reproduce and to prosper, and so we do things to interfere with its life cycle. That's what I am planning for the kitten.
Rather than killing it, which would be horribly cruel to the individual kitten, I am planning to spay it. But did you know that the "humane" plan is the one that spells death to the species, whereas the cruel plan has a way to revitalize it? It's called killing with kindness.
In Australia at the moment, the authorities are planning a mass extermination of feral cats.
Plan to Cull Two Million Feral Cats in Australia
This is an outright plan for genocide, but believe it or not, despite the horrors for all the cats who will die, this is better for the cat species than to round them all up, spay and neuter, and then let them go. Why? Because no two cats are alike, and not all of them are going to fall for the poison. The ones who will avoid getting killed are going to be smarter and better evolved to live in a treacherous environment. They may be harder to tame, too, because they will be aware of human cruelty, and so they will not allow themselves to be captured and de-sexed.
I know a little bit about avoiding genocide, as I am descended from people who did just that. It's not true that all individuals in a species or an ethnic subgroup are the same. Natural selection works best under dangerous conditions.
Throughout human history, we have tried to exterminate many species that we just don't like. Rats, lice, fleas, mice, cockroaches, various strains of bacteria, not to mention the pesky virus that we call the common cold. How has that worked for us, so far?
Every weapon we unleash against these natural enemies has found the next generation stronger and better able to cope with adversity. Animals -- and humans among them -- thrive under conditions that require skill in order to avoid extermination. Any weapon we devise, including antibiotics, eventually becomes useless as the creatures we are fighting evolve to cope with the new challenge.
The greatest danger to any species -- and to any ethnic subgroup -- is for their enemies to feed and to support and care for them while they see to it that they do not ever reproduce. That is what is being done to chimpanzees in America today in the sanctuaries in the name of humane treatment. If you think about it, the same thing may be happening to some human groups we know about.
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