A Tough Time For Deer, But Elephants Finally Catch A Break (Sort Of)
Traipsing on snowshoes the other day through, over and around waist-high drifts in the woods behind our house I crossed a veritable superhighway of deer tracks that meandered among the rhododendron, laurel, pine, spruce and fir, and reflected how life this winter has been infinitely more miserable for four-legged critters than for us homo sapiens.
After all, we humans have only had to shovel mountains of snow while deer and other non-hibernating wildlife have struggled to eat and drink because so much of their food and water has been buried for months.
Balsam fir are like crack for deer, or at least Lay’s potato chips, because they can’t eat just one. Every single fir I planted over the years has been chewed down to the nub, so I’ve switched to putting in pine and spruce seedlings that have sharper needles the animals eschew rather than chew.
A number of years ago I also foolishly planted English ivy to stabilize the steep bank behind our house, and now every night I hear deer thrashing around in deep snow while gobbling down the succulent leaves. One crazed animal even scrambled atop a drift and attempted to climb onto the metal roof, making an incredible racket.
The lake across the street has been frozen solid since early January, but a tiny spring-fed pond near our driveway has remained open, serving as a watering hole. Heaps of shoveled snow measuring up to 5 feet deep block this shallow pool but desperate deer have blasted a path in order to access a water supply.
As bad as it’s been for deer in our neighborhood they’re better off than their cousins living at Bluff Point Coastal Reserve in Groton, where state-sanctioned hunters have killed more than a dozen in order to bring the herd down to a more manageable 25.
Having struck deer on two separate occasions while driving late at night I can understand the rationale for “managing” the deer population but wish there were other methods. Nature seems to have addressed this by expanding the number of coyote, and last year I spotted bloody tracks in the snow at the same time a neighbor watched a couple of the predators chase a deer onto the ice before bringing it down for a feast. Nature isn’t always pretty.
While running a couple weeks ago with my friend Maggie Jones, director of Mystic’s Denison Pequot Nature Center, she pointed out fresh bobcat tracks. There also have been reports of a mountain lion roaming the nearby hills.
Anyway, it must be rough on the lower end of the food chain.
Life hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses for elephants, either, perpetual victims of poaching and other forms of human predation.
Killing the massive animals for their tusks of course has been the most atrocious practice, but nearly as obscene has been keeping them in captivity for so-called “entertainment.”
I was therefore delighted to learn this week that The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus plans to phase out elephants from the “Greatest Show on Earth.”
The Associated Press reported that animal rights groups have taken credit for generating the public concern that forced the company to announce its pachyderm retirement plan. But Ringling Bros.’ owners described their decision as the bittersweet result of years of internal family discussions.
“It was a decision 145 years in the making,” said Juliette Feld, referring to P.T. Barnum’s introduction of animals to his “traveling menagerie” in 1870. Elephants have symbolized this circus since Barnum brought an Asian elephant named Jumbo to America in 1882, the AP reported, but in recent years there have been numerous cases of the animals being abused by trainers.
There also have been several incidents of elephants running amok and trampling bystanders, including one in New London a number of years ago.
I stopped going to circuses in large part because I found nothing entertaining about watching these magnificent, intelligent animals forced to prance and perform. Maybe I’ll go back to a circus in 2018 when Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey drops the curtain on elephants for the last time. While they’re at it they should get rid of the lion and tiger acts and stick to clowns, jugglers, trapeze aerialists and human cannonballs.
Meanwhile, this week’s news about elephants hasn’t all been good.
Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, one of the most impoverished nations on earth, celebrated his 91st birthday in grand style, throwing himself a million-dollar bash highlighted by a sumptuous feast.
Among the succulent treats he happily devoured: Elephant steak.
Too bad he didn’t choke on a tusk.
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