The Yellow Jacket on the Dogwood Bloom

Yesterday was a Wednesday. It was also April 15. If you live in the US, you know what that means. It's too ugly a thing for me to spell out, but the upshot was that I needed to have Lawrence sit with Bow for the whole day. And while he was here for that long, I asked him to  also weed-eat the backyard and spread the insecticide, because tick and flea season is upon us, not just on the Federal level, but at the grassroots, so to speak.

Bow  in a friendly mood

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Bow is always happy and excited to see Lawrence, but that does not keep him from displaying at him for about ten minuted before he will allow Lawrence to come into the pen with him. Fortunately, Lawrence understands Bow very well, and he does not hold this territorial display against him.

Brownie lets Leo do just about anything to him -- except eat his food

I don't like using insecticide, but we do have dogs in the backyard, and if they get fleas and ticks, they could spread to Bow and to me, and that would not be good. So while most of my ten acres are a haven for insects of all sorts, the backyard does get treated. The insecticide comes as a powder that is spread on the lawn, and then it gets wet and sinks into the ground. As this is the rainy season, I am counting on nature to help me with that last part.

This is how the front yard looked yesterday morning

Lawrence told me that he asked Bow to come outside with him to see him work on the lawn, and Bow even said he wanted to go out into the outer pen, but when he got to the door, he realized it was still cold out and changed his mind. Then they went back in, and when Lawrence asked Bow why he didn't want to go out, Bow just spelled. "You go out." Which meant Lawrence had permission to go, and Bow would not play a trick on him when he got back. There was no mess.

The dogwood petals have turned white

When I went out into the back yard late that afternoon, I wanted to inspect Lawrence's handiwork, but I was drawn to the blossoms of the dogwood tree, whose petals by now have turned white.

A lone yellow jacket on the dogwood

I noticed an insect on one of the blossoms, and tried with difficulty to identify it.

The yellow jacket focuses o a little black dot in front of it

It turned out to be a yellow jacket, which my friends warn me can sting very badly. But this lone yellow jacket was not interested in me. It was focused on a little black speck in front of it. Could that have been another, even smaller insect that it wanted to eat?

Yellow jackets look a little like bees, but they do not gather pollen, and they are in fact predatory wasps. No bees are attracted to our beautiful dogwood in bloom, because even though these look just like flowers,the white petal-like things are really bracts, and  the middle part is composed of flower heads that have not opened yet, and there's no pollen there to be had, I wondered if the yellow jacket seemed so passive because of the insecticide we had just scattered on the lawn. I felt a little guilty about that. Yellow jackets may be disliked for their sting, but they do help us by eating other pests.

Part of the end of semester handout for biology

My daughter is taking biology this semester. Looking at her review handout, it reminded me of the weird use of  "community" that certain artistic types make. One of my artist friends criticized some of the artists in her community for being too competitive -- as if there were no place for competition in a community. But the very first concept under "community interactions" in the biology handout is competition. Competition is normal. It is part of what makes a community healthy.

While none of us like parasites, some symbiotic relationships are healthy, as both sides benefit. The trick is to recognize which is which. Sometimes we err. But whatever the community, the concept of balance requires competing forces to be in equilibrium.

It is not possible for everyone to love everyone. It is not possible for a human to give the same consideration to a flea or a tick as to his own children and other non-human dependents. Sometimes a useful yellow jacket may be harmed by an attempt to get rid of parasites. We try to make appropriate distinctions, but mistakes can be made.

Even the story of the helpful wolves introduced into Yellowstone National Park has another side to it.

I am not necessarily endorsing the content of the documentary above, any more than I did that other film sponsored by the establishment that I shared a while back, singing the praises of the wolves. I think it is important to consider many sides of every story.

I like wolves and trees and honey bees and yellow jackets. But I am not a tree hugger, either. I wonder about the agenda behind all these competing nature documentaries. Were the wolves introduced to improve the health of deer and elk? Or were they ultimately meant to trim down the herd of humans grazing on the land?

The real balance in nature comes when we each take care of ourselves and our dependents first. If there are wolves, then there also need to be wolf hunters. If there are parasites, there have to be anti-parasites. For every force there has to be a countervailing force. This is the only way to keep everything in balance.

Friendship and Coexistence

Bow and I recently saw two little videos that I think will add something positive to my discussion here about the relationship of other animals to man and of the interdependence of all living things to each other, including predators and their prey. While I did not make these films myself and do not know the background of the people who did, I think the videos speak for themselves. Bow liked watching them, and I hope that you enjoy them as well.

The first video I came across quite by accident in my Facebook feed. Since it involved a dolphin, and I had just  written about the dolphin movie, I was unusually open to watching it, despite the fact that I am often jaded when it comes to "cute animal videos." Bow found it quite engaging, too.

To watch the video click here

Post by Антон Карпинский.

While I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the video, unless it is severely edited, the dolpin does not seem to be coerced or bribed in any way. Nobody is standing over it with a stick, nor is anybody giving it a fish for returning the ball. The little boy and the dolphin are just having fun. This is taking place, I assume, in Russia or some Russian speaking location, and the caption says "Просто играют друг с другом", "  or "just playing friend with friend."

Bow watched the video once, then asked to see it again, and for the third repetition, he figured out where he should press. Sometimes he got excited, but much of the time he sat still and watched, sometimes vocalizing his involvement, and sometimes sticking out his tongue at the boy and the dolphin, which is what he does when he likes someone.

Are dolphins wild animals? Can they be violent? Well, yes, to the same extent that we are also wild animals and can get violent when it serves our best interests. But this dolphin does not see this particular child as a threat, and he seems to enjoy playing with him. They are friends.

That is such a simple concept, that if there were no animal rights activists in the world, there would be no point in belaboring it. But there you have it. There's your answer to the wild animal propaganda.

The second film is somewhat more sobering, because it deals with predation, and how life comes from killing. Bow watched it only once, and he did find it enjoyable, but he did not ask to see it again. 

The video is called "How Wolves Change Rivers" and it is a very glossy, high production piece with a message. It may very well be propaganda of some sort. I am not sure who is putting it out or for what reason, but they use the word "sustainability" which sounds very politically correct.

However, the uptake, for anyone who thinks about it, is that predators make life better for everyone, including the prey. I have long believed that, and it's not that different from what my father wrote in his article about the greater good.

Greater than Ourselves by Amnon Katz

My experience with trying to share this article has been mixed. A lot of people of the altruistic persuasion respond favorably to some of the set phrases, such as "greater than the individual." But when I explained to them that this is an argument in favor of laissez faire, they got mad at me. One woman even blocked me on a social networking site. She thought my father's article was great, but that my take on it was not.

Vegetarianism does not pay, if everybody practices it. It is fine as a limited way of life, and I have nothing against those who choose it for themselves for personal reasons. But those who want everybody to be vegetarian, including wolves and cats, have no idea what they are wishing on the world. Herbivores need carnivores to keep themselves healthy and to make sure that their population is not too great and that they don't overgraze. Even soil erosion can be laid at the feet of rampant vegetarianism. The Middle East is now largely a desert because of the unchecked practice of agriculture, which started there and spread elsewhere more slowly.

Even in economic terms, there are reasons for the trophic pyramid, with few at the top and many at the bottom. Eliminate the one percent, and life becomes much harder for the other 99%. Did the makers of that little nature film realize what they were saying? I doubt it. But there it is.

Bow seems to understand. Do you?