Attention Bird Feeders of the North!

[urbpan]

Hey, you people who are throwing bird seed and bread onto the snow:

YOU ARE FEEDING THE RATS.

The birds survived The Ice Age, they will be fine.

Even if you aren't literally feeding Rattus norvegicus you are mostly feeding house sparrows and pigeons, which are, ecologically speaking, worse than rats. And if you don't have those birds, you surely have deer mice (Leucopus sp.) and chipmunks, the two main carriers of Lyme disease in the city.

Hang a suet cage if you must, but don't worry about the birds, they will survive--and those that don't weren't meant to. Sorry, shoveling snow brings out my callousness, and those are the facts.

Comments

[mrs-picasso.livejournal.com]

You are right. My neighbor hangs out a pot of birdseed only a couple of feet off the ground. One morning I went out to get the paper and there was a huge rat in it, feasting away!