Squirrels are cute! Don't kill them!

My wife said that to me this morning. I gave request a lot of thought and
composed the following reply:

I know that you come from Japan and from an "urban" environment but there
are some things you need to understand.

First, humans have been farmers and animal herders/keepers for about 5,000
years. That seems like a long time, but humans have been hunting, in one
form or another for Five Million Years. That's 1000 times as long as we
have been farming and keeping animals. There is a strong bias between men
and women when it comes to hunting too. After all, among our ancestors it
was the men who did the hunting while the women gathered fruits, nuts,
grains, and vegetables. Men tend to have more of an inclination to hunt
than women (although there is some sign that's changing--a lot of women hunt
these days). Culture can modify that somewhat. You have groups saying over
and over again that "hunting is bad" and people start to believe it and
suppress the natural urge to hunt. It's quite possible that a lot of the
emotional problems many people have today comes from that very suppression.

Then there's the practical aspect. The world is not a safe place. It never
has been. While Japan has been relatively safe for most people over the
last few decades, that is an artificial condition. A good part of the
reason that Japan is safe is that thre are large US forces stationed there
to keep folk like Russia or China from deciding to add Japan to their
collection. Another thing to consider is that while crime is low in Japan,
the cost of that is a society where the suicide rate is among the highest in
the world. The very parts of Japanese culture that makes people "safe" from
others, causes emotional stresses and problems that make them more dangerous
to themselves. Think about that: it's possible to fight back against a
criminal, particularly if one is allowed to be armed, but it's a lot harder
to fight back against the kind of problems that make suicide seem like a
rational option.

As a real world example: I have been having a lot less problem with
depression since I have been going fishing, both by myself and with Athena
and since I started on these hikes/hunting expeditions.

Back to the world being a dangerous place. Numerous times over the course
of history, great civilizations have collapsed completely. It wasn't always
external wars that did it. Numerous civilizations tore themselves apart
from within. What you see around us, the cities, the roads, the hospitals,
the stores filled with food, can all vanish remarkably quickly. Economic
collapse, war, race/class strife, poor decisions in energy policy, all sorts
of things can stop food moving from the farms to the cities. The average
city has only about 3 days worth of food on hand at any given time. While
it's not particularly likely to happen any time soon, once it does happen
it's too late to prepare for it. And so I feel the need to obtain the
skills to provide food for our family in the event of disaster. Seeing that
you and Athena (and Reio if you ever get him home) are fed is important to
me. A large part of why I'm doing the things I'm doing is against the need
to provide for you.

Now, squirrels. Yes, we have Nemo [our Chinese dwarf hamster], who is
distantly releated to squirrels--about as closely related to squirrels as
Mika-chan, Hoshi, and Sumisu [our goldfish] are releated to the Salmon you
like to eat. The squirrels I would behunting are not the half-tame animals
you see in parks or trees around town. These are wild animals. They get
into farmers' crops and eat food that might otherwise end up in the store
for you and me and Athena to buy and eat. The more squirrels and other
animals eat, the less there is available for us and the more the food in the
store costs. There's a reason that folk who spend a lot of time in the
woods often refer to squirrels as "tree rats" because that is what they are.
Yes, they're cute in urban parks or in a tree outside the window, but left
unchecked in large numbers they rapidly become pests. The thing is,
squirrels breed fast (like most other rodents). The main predators that kept
squirrel population in check (wolves, wildcats, hawks, eagles, etc.) are
largely gone and without hunting their populations would grow to the point
that they would become a real problem. The State government watches the
population of various wild animals and sets hunting seasons and limits based
on what's needed to keep healthy populations. Folk who hunt are actually
doing an important service in keeping the rest of the population healthy.

What I say above about squirrels is true about rabbits, deer, ducks and
geese, and pretty much every other wild animal that's not on an endangered
list (and it's not generally hunting that renders an animal endangered) out
there. Hunting is important to keeping animal populations down to a healthy
level.

So when you add everything up: the biological history of the human race,
the need to prepare against possible future disasters, and the need to keep
a limit on wild animal populations I hope you'll see why I consider learning
and practicing hunting to be important. I hope you will be able to put your
emotional response aside and support me in this. To help with that, I'll
make a point of keeping the more unpleasant aspects discrete so that you
don't have to deal with them directly. It would be good if you also
learned--although that would be a very large step and I won't ask it of you
now--so that if disaster happened, you would be able to obtain food if I
became injured or ill. But, as I said, that's too big a step to ask of you
now, so we'll leave that aside.

Anyway, I love you and Athena very much. That's a large part of why I'm
doing this.


--
--
David L. Burkhead -- Cold Servings, a webcomic
mailto:dburkhead@xxxxxxx -- http://www.coldservings.com
http://www.cafepress.com/coldservings <- OSHA for criminals

"If I had eight hours to chop down a tree
I'd spend seven sharpening my axe."
Abraham Lincoln
.

Relevant Pages

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