Whether one eats animals or not from human farms, they will still be dead. If there was a way to do things otherwise, that might be feasible, but the economic game is more of a salve to individual guilt than something practical.

Meat also produces more toxins when digested, so fruitarians and vegans can often times purify their bodies, although not their spirits. Some of them treat it as a religion, thus instead of bible thumpers, they are now vegan religion thumpers. Humans being humans, no surprise.

Seriously, though, I think the bald eagles were almost as common as sparrows out there (but even sparrows are much bigger than in Florida, California, or any place with lower absolute latitude because without the extra mass to retain heat, they couldn’t survive). Sparrows, ravens, gulls, and bald eagles seemed to be the only birds. And all but sparrows would prey on pets < 15 lbs, but even they would feed on a corpse, just like chickens will (which has turned my F-i-L off chicken ever since he was a Marine in Vietnam in '66-'67).

My mother had a big, overweight cat that she used to let out at night (she kept him indoors during the day so he couldn’t prey on the songbirds at her feeders.) One morning he turned up desperately ill, with several deep puncture wounds on his abdomen. The cat got the feline version of peritonitis and nearly died. My mother and the vet figured that the predator might have been a large owl, since it happened at night and the wounds looked to the vet as if they were made by claws rather than teeth. Luckily for the cat, he was apparently too big for the predator to lift — but that didn’t stop it from trying.

A rancher reported that a coyote had gone through one of his sheep flocks and eviscerated them just for the heck of it, as the sheep weren’t eaten. I’ve heard similar stories of falcons scaring ducks by making “strafing” runs with no intent to kill, apparently just for fun.

Wilderness is a function of size, you don’t need to go far to find it. The bugs and spiders are doing their thing as they have for millions of years, even in the most civilized spaces. Up in size a bit and there are the mice, cats, birds, etc., no further away than the back yard.

blert Says:
January 10th, 2018 at 9:43 pm

BTW, I’ve entirely given up on gardening.

NOTHING green can survive deer.

You name it, they eat it. Even stuff you can’t name.

Got about a hundred foot long strip of “day lillies” running back from the road along the property line out by the ditch and fence.

Last two years it occurred to me that I had not noticed them coming up. Figured it was because they were off in the side yard quite a distance from the house and I just was not paying attention.

Then one day, leaving the house late morning I saw 7 deer in the strip ripping them up by the mouthful and contentedly munching away.

The bucks will even eat poke weed which I allow to come up a couple hundred yards back on the property at the verge of the little woods. The plant is not even native to this area so far as I know, and certainly was was brought in locally by a neighbor because of his southern connection. Yet the big ones will rip at it in amazing way. I thought it was supposed to be poisonous. Apparently not for whitetails. In fact by the looks of the antlers, they are thriving.

If I could shoot in my suburban neighborhood, I’d have a dozen trophy grade racks on my wall.

Instead I drive two hundred forty miles north for crappy 4s and 6’s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQbXSl1ReuQ

Happy Ending. Literally!