Who needs
it?
So I turned
to a blog doña Taí recommended—repeatingislands.com. And discovered a bird I
never knew existed—the whimbrel. Here it is.
Shouldn’t
they know?
The other
thing is that they fly thousands of miles nonstop.
Well,
that’s tremendous news—stuff we should all know about.
There is a
little downside.
Several of
the birds have made it through hurricanes only to be shot by hunters.
It seems
that on some islands of the Caribbean, there are illegal shooting ranges. Just
for fun. And there was the whimbrel and there was the guy with the gun, so…
…he shot
it.
No, not as
a trophy, not to protect his crop. Just for fun!
In fact,
the article reports, it’s not unusual for the killers to leave the killed dead
on the beach.
The point
was just to kill.
This is a
part of the male psyche that I don’t get. I can understand—just barely—the
allure of hunting. Michael Pollan, of all people, fell prey to it, and likened
it to the time-altering effects of marijuana. And it’s certainly in our
collective genes.
But this
isn’t hunting, it’s slaughter.
May be
something more. There are people, I think, who have an indifference to beauty
and to nature that verges on hate. They see something brown and white and
moving and they kill it.
Why?
Just
because….
Well,
well—I was determined NOT to be delivering a downer this morning. What else is
stirring in the Caribbean?
Well, I
knew that they were running around in the mountains down south, but here? In a
very much populated section of San Juan? Just look at ‘em!
It turns
out that it’s not just iguanas that are overpowering our eco-system, it’s
monkeys as well. (By the way, the iguana population in Puerto Rico is estimatedat four million—meaning we have more iguanas than people….)
And these
monkeys have an interesting pedigree. They were brought here not as pets but as
lab animals in the 1970’s. Originally they were let loose on small islands off
the southern coast of Puerto Rico. Just one problem…
Monkeys can
swim!
Well, the
researchers went away, but the monkeys stayed. And now they’re invading the
metro area! It’s too much!
May watch the Republican Convention after
all….
Two fascinating facets of the same issue. One the one hand, man as a changer of his own ecology. He destroys wantonly, often without thinking of the long term consequences.
ReplyDeleteThe monkeys reflect Darwinism at its best, and the way that man can sometimes assume himself the master of the domain, with Darwin's teachings reminding us that we are not always the fittest. In the case of the monkeys, they too were brought in by men who also sought to destroy and who also thought little of consequence. Once the funding dried up, the men left, without completing their destruction. Now we see the impact of letting loose an invasive species with no natural predator in a new environment.
Just as I've seen my beloved perros satos on the beaches eating shellfish and wondered what impact those dogs might have on the long term survival of fragile sea based ecostructures, I'm fasinated by this development.
Puerto Rico as a microcosm, it's something I'd never thought of before today. Thanks for the article.
El Perro Sato