Karen
Dove Barr, Attorney, was recently recognized by the Georgia State Bar for
providing legal assistance to military families and service members. She has practiced in the field of family law
in Savannah for 34 years.
All over North America humans are
committed to protecting and fostering the existence of other species. Deer, gray wolves of the northwest, the
almost extinct bison, the grizzly bear, the ubiquitous coyote, and that great
nuisance animal, the American eagle, are returning in droves, adapting to life
in a world full of human neighbors.
Excited as we are that animal and
plant species almost exterminated by unthinking expansion of human control are
returning, the adjustment for humans is not as simple as restoring the animal
populations. Humans must adapt to life
with the animals as well.
The pressures that led us to limit
coexistence with undomesticated animals return as populations rebound.
As beautiful an animal as is the
white-tailed deer and as sentimental as we become after watching Bambi, the
reality of life intermingled with a thriving deer population makes humans want
to reach for their guns and blast the annoying, rose garden-eating,
tick-infested animals back to the forests where they belong.
But there are no forests.
Deer, once we stopped trying to
exterminate them, are perfectly happy to change their diet to roses and day
lilies. Ospreys and eagles prefer to
build their nests on cell phone towers instead of swaying treetops, if only the
cell phone companies weren’t compelled to clean up the nests sites at the end
of each season. No raccoon ever turned down the opportunity to frolic overnight
in a hot-tub.
If humans want to share the world
with animals, we must adjust our expectations for a sanitized environment and
learn to coexist.
On Skidaway Island we are doing just
that.
By Karen
Dove Barr
Karen will be awarding a
$25 Walmart gift card to FOUR (4) randomly drawn commenters during the
tour, and a Grand Prize of an Apple iPad to one randomly drawn commenter
during the tour.
Blurb:
Wild Times on
Skidaway Island, Georgia's Historic Rain Forest, details life in a
unique Audubon-designated, ecologically friendly refuge. There, golfers
pitch balls around endangered great blue herons, mama raccoons march
their babies across backyard decks where once Guale Indians trapped
ancestors of the same raccoons, and residents dodge alligators and
rescue snakes.
Even the vegetation is wild.
Three hundred-year-old oaks dripping Spanish moss and poison ivy
surmount an under-story of wax myrtle and holly. Carolina jasmine,
Cherokee roses, and endangered orchids grow wild in the rain forest. The
book examines choices residents make when stared down by a bald eagle,
when a red-tailed hawk mistakes a golf ball for bird food, when wakened
at midnight by deer munching hibiscus. Wild Times on Skidaway Island
educates about the species that residents must adapt to on this historic
island.Excerpt:
When Walt and Carol Culin topped their house at The Landings
with a coated metal roof they were confident the roof would be problem-free for
a hundred years. Walt’s contacts as head
of an industrial coating company helped him get the latest technology. Even a hurricane shouldn’t destroy their
unusual–looking roof.
But nothing in Walt’s Princeton-educated background prepared
him for dryocopus pileatus, the pilated wookpecker.
Male pilated woodpeckers are fixated on the notion that
female woodpeckers are attracted to the stud with the noisiest pecker. Usually
the woodpecker has to be content with drumming on a hollow tree to resonate his
sound. Walt and Carol’s metal roof, however, raised the bar for the local
woodpecker population. Walt and Carol
were regularly awakened by mate-seeking woodpeckers as soon as they moved into
the house.
Walt ended up having to make a run to Toys ’R Us for rubber
snakes. Glued to the chimney alongside a big fake owl, the snakes allowed Walt
and Carol to catch some winks in the early morning during woodpecker mating
season.
12 comments:
Thank you for hosting me!
An excellent guest post :) I never thought about the difficulties of coexisting now that we've build the populations back up..though I will say that population has never been an issue for white tailed deer up here in Michigan...I practically hit one everytime I'm driving at night around the lakes. Gotta be careful up here in the mitten or you'll make an accidental hood ornament out of bambi...
andralynn7 AT gmail DOT com
Hi Andra, That's exactly what I'm talking about. We all want to protect other species but when we do it there are more issues. We've looked into birth control for deer. Presently Skidaway Island has a trained DNR ranger who shoots excess deer. The meat is butchered and distributed to homeless shelters and grocery stores. It was a tough decision but too many deer eat themselves into starvation.
I agree that everyone needs to coexist with the animals. Thanks for sharing your book and the giveaway. evamillien at gmail dot com
I would love to visit and see the three hundred year old oaks with the spanish moss. AFischer48@mail.com
It's mind-boggling to think of the species that are disappearing from our planet. Humans are not doing a very good job or co-existing with nature.
catherinelee100 at gmail dot com
Informative interview
bn100candg at hotmail dot com
Wonderful post!
justforswag(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
Sounds like a really good read!!
Thanks for the excerpt and the chance to win!
natasha_donohoo_8 at hotmail dot com
Learning to co-exist is so terribly important.
marypres(AT)gmail(DOT)com
Thanks for the excerpt and giveaway, Take me away to the island :) bobbyehopebooth at yahoo dot com
What a beautiful post. Living in Florida, I've experienced a bit of what you described, but for the most part, the wild animals stay away from where I live, but it's tough coexisting with them. My grandparents had a farm up in Virginia, and they'd get deer and raccoons trying to get into the gardens all the time. Though, they just shooed them away instead of eating them, so I suppose that's some progress towards coexisting :)
tiger-chick-1(at)hotmail(dot)com
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