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[urbpan]

I've written the very beginning pages and the last page of the next Urban Nature Walk zine. Now I just have to work on the middle. Here's a look at the ending:




You aren't supposed to feed wild animals, and you really shouldn't hand-feed them. Feeding animals causes them to lose their wariness of humans, which is an important survival attribute for urban animals. Food that we provide for animals is almost always bad for them-surely white bread bagels are not good for a gull's digestive system.

But people who call themselves animal lovers willingly commit this small sin of corrupting a wild creature's habits and diet. Why is it such a strong impulse?

In John McLoughlin's "The Animals Among Us," he supposes that people feed urban birds "for the solace of...feeling the whir of their wings...sensing the freedom of flight above the stinking cities that lean close around them. " Perhaps, but there's something else there. People hand-feed squirrels, who are flightless, with much the same enthusiasm as they feed birds. Unwise people have hand-fed foxes, moose, and even alligators. What I think people are reaching for, when they hold out a peanut or pizza crust, is the connection with nature that--as a species--we have lost our immediate touch with. When an animal comes so close that you can see yourself reflected in its eyes, in some very small way you are connecting with wildness itself.

Comments

[ms-cantrell.livejournal.com]

people need to hear this regularly. we live on the edge of a forested area, and people are constantly trying to feed cat food to the racoons and peanuts to the squirrels. one of them asked me last week what opossums like to eat, so she could get some at the store. i said that's nice, but you don't need to- they've been getting it for themselves for quite some time now.
you actually can get a ticket here, for feeding the geese.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's pretty damn unneccesary to deliberately feed raccoons and opossums. I would have a hard time answering with anything but "cats, mostly, why?" (not strictly true, but it's funny)

The marvelous (to me) thing about opossums is how much their range has spread in response to the appearance of urbanization on this continent.

You can tell the squirrel-feeders that peanuts have been found to cause nutritional deficiencies and disease in squirrels, if you like.

[ms-cantrell.livejournal.com]

i posted the list of feeding 'no-nos' on the mail box clusters in the neighborhood. hopefully the animal-feeders will read them. i also put the name of the store that sells wild bird supplies (bird houses, bat houses, appropriate bird foods). clearly people want to connect with nature, since this neighborhood wraps around a chunk of it, it seems like a good idea to show them how they might do it a little better.
opossum are a huge population up here. i'm looking forward to (hopefully) watching the coyote thrive, too.