Turning 50

Schuyler, Virginia
27-28 February, 2009

On the eve of my 50th birthday, which arrives in 65 minutes, we have come to The White Pig, a vegan B&B in rural Virginia. It’s our 3rd year running and the 2nd year we’ve brought Emily and her friend Haley Warren (daughter of Frank, whose Post Secret books are best-sellers). Our arrival at dusk was heralded by a cluster of wild turkeys moseying near the border of a field and woodland. Half an hour later, a Big brown bat flapped overhead as Marilyn and I wandered the property in the last wisps of light.

I’ve been reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriett Beecher Stowe’s famous novel of 1852 which is credited with helping to fuel the end of American slavery. Bringing about measurable social change must be the highest achievement in writing. How desperate I sometimes feel to end the suffering of so many animals caught up every moment in factory farms, fur farms, research laboratories, abattoirs and fishing nets. The magnitude of human abuse of acutely sentient animals makes the hope of their eventual emancipation seem remote and unattainable. But there are so many little victories to be won, and in any case what is to be done during one’s time on Earth but to strive onward? The animals’ cause which consumes my heart and soul makes it oftentimes hard to locate peace within. But I also draw immense pleasure and inspiration from animals’ presence, be it a covey of wild turkeys melting into the undergrowth, a kettle of vultures wheeling high overhead on a thermal air column, or the ladybird beetles buzzing, bouncing and crawling about the lamp at my bedside. Tonight, as I stood on the dried grass lawn in front of the guest-house here, watching the last traces of light disappear behind wind-blown cloud patches, and a crescent moon brightening in the night sky, I felt peace and tranquility. As I get older and the planet grows more crowded, my appreciation and adoration of nature grows richer. Nature reminds me that the best things in life cannot be bought or sold. They are timeless things unfettered by the clamor of our false civilizations. I know just what Whitman meant when he marveled at the pismire (ant) that could stagger sextillions of infidels. Tomorrow the sun shall rise and I shall awake healthy and grateful for another day. Birds will sing again. Earthworms will till the soil. Humble mosses will lie soft and cool on the rocks. I will live.

Midnight fell as I wrote that last sentence. The next half century of my life’s journey begins. The ladybugs, oblivious to my thoughts, continue their own explorations. I will turn out the light that they too may rest.

Memphis Blues

I’m in Memphis for the National Association of Biology Teachers 70th Anniversary convention (October 17).

I have noticed a dearth of two things here. The first is trees. From my 7th floor downtown hotel window, I can see only a faint scattering of green spots dotting an otherwise gray concrete landscape. I realize that cities are not noted for being like lush jungles, but this one is clearly impoverished compared to most cities I’ve seen. Nevertheless, squadrons of pigeons do aerial circuits and alight on roofs; starlings, house sparrows and mockingbirds are commonplace; and quite remarkably, I watched a Cooper’s hawk land on a church cross as the sun set. Also, there is a loose fairy-ring of large white mushrooms on the lawn in front of the nearby Marriott. And the weeds poking through the cracking seams of run-down lots remind me that nature lies waiting to reclaim her turf when we’re done.

The other dearth is of vegetarian and vegan fare at restaurants. Most menus I’ve perused lack even a single vegetarian option. I went with a colleague for lunch at TGI Fridays. There was no veggie-burger available (unlike their menus in Washington, DC), and the waitress patiently sat down with pen and paper to negotiate our requirements. Five animal ingredients (chicken, bacon, cheddar, blue cheese and egg crumbles) were struck from my cob salad. The waitress recommended fried green beans, which came deep fried in a thick batter that oozed oil. The NABT receptions are no better: meat dishes, no vegetarian options.

I attended a plenary lecture by Dr Steve Running, a climate change expert from the University of Montana, and one of the 450-or-so lead authors on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. As Al Gore did in An Inconvenient Truth (see my blog from Sept 2006, http://www.firstscience.com/home/blog/8.html), Running didn’t sugar-coat the crisis, and he mentioned several steps to address rising greenhouse gas emissions, such as biking/walking to work, supporting wind power, and addressing human overpopulation. But dismayingly, Running overlooked the enormous contribution of animal agriculture — estimated at 18 percent by his own Nobel-winning Panel. That contribution exceeds the entire global transportation sector, which the IPCC has estimated at 13.5 percent. Speaking to about 700 biology teachers, he missed a huge opportunity to edify a large body of influential citizens. I was prepared to rise and ask why Running missed the boat, but there was no time for questions. Instead, I sent him an email:

… I feel it is imperative that we not skirt this issue given its central role in the problem of climate change and its potential to empower people to take immediate and personal life-style steps to address a problem of global scope. If we don’t take personal responsibility for climate change, then I see little hope for our reversing the grim trends you presented.

… As you are a person of high influence on this issue, I urge you to add the meat and dairy connection to your lectures. People must be made aware of it, and the time is now. I’m hoping you’ll also remind them of the other benefits of plant-based diets — including benefits to human health, lower health care costs, and the relief of cruelty and violence toward animals.

I await his reply (stay tuned).

All is not lost in Memphis. I did find a spot (Bigfoot’s) with a decent veggie-burger, and most servers at least know what “vegan” means. Nor will I soon forget the sight of five adolescent mallards engaging in a game of chase round their circular marble pond in the ornate lobby of the famous Peabody Hotel.

A mouse's life

This morning as I came downstairs for breakfast, I was confronted by an adult house. The poor animal lay prostrate on the kitchen floor, having been badly mauled by my two cats. Though I could make out no obvious external injuries, she appeared unconscious, taking in weak, gulping breaths at two-second intervals — very, very slow for a mouse. As I carried her outside I cursed my cats for their cruel indifference to the suffering of another, and wondered if they had been perusing the daily paper, filled as it is with news of similar cruelty among humans.

Mice are not infrequent visitors to our abode, especially in the autumn as the weather cools. In the previous fortnight I had discovered the grisly remains of another mouse, and rescued a third, half-grown mouse unhurt as our two cats toyed with it in the living room.

I spent several minutes trying to revive this latest victim, but her body remained slack so I euthanized her and placed her in the woods behind my house. Back inside, I quietly reproached my cats again, as I served them their “proper” breakfast, which ironically may be a poor nutritional substitute for what I had just taken outside.

I have to wonder why mice venture into my home when they must know — given their superb sense of smell — that it is prowled by cats. Just earlier that day I had learned of the tenacity with which a mouse will return for a free lunch. The manager of a sanctuary for rescued farmed animals at which I volunteer from time to time, told me of a house mouse they had caught recently in their home. They took the live-trap to the pig barn, gave the mouse some food, then released him. The very next evening, the same mouse was recaptured in their house. They recognized him because his front left foot is snow-white. For the next three mornings “white-foot” reappeared, almost mystically, in the Have-a-Hart trap, having traversed some 100 meters of mostly open pasture from the barn to their home. By this time he was rearing up on his hind-legs in anticipation of his daily snack. They eventually let him go next to a rill, a mile away.

Mice seem as inexorable as sunrises. As long as there are kitchens, and housecats, there will surely be mice. I am fairly certain that, should the day come when the Earth is no longer inhabited by humans, the tiny feet of mice will continue to scamper across the landscape.

June 4, 2008. Cape Town, South Africa

On a visit to South Africa in April, I went on a Baboon Walk with Jenni Trethowan. A dedicated protector of animals, Trethowan launched Baboon Matters in 1998 to help improve relations between human residents and the wild baboon troops that live on the peninsula that juts south from Cape Town. Predictably, as humans moved in and began to build houses, grow crops and plant gardens, conflicts with the baboons grew. The baboons were labeled as “problem animals” and common “solutions” were to trap, shoot, poison or run over the baboons. Though their numbers declined, the wily baboons adapted to the persecution and their populations persisted. Today, Baboon Matters hires baboon monitors who move about with the troops and intervene to keep them off people’s properties, where the baboons may damage eaves and windows, strip trees of their fruit (can one blame them?), and occasionally break into homes to dine on easy kitchen pickings and leave smelly “gifts” for the home-owners. The monitors’ presence has reduced conflicts by about 85 percent. Most residents are tolerant or even welcoming of the baboons, but there are still those who angrily try to hurt or kill them. One of the females in the troop we followed is missing her right hand from an evil trap set many years ago by a resident, designed to amputate the hand as it was put into the trap for the bait. Four females lost their right hand to this trap. Slowed by their disability, the other three were killed trying to cross roads with a baby in their whole arm; the remaining survivor, Penelope, is currently raising her third child.

The baboons are wild but habituated to humans. We could stand or sit within two meters of some of them, and more than once I felt the fur of an adult brush against my leg as s/he ambled past. For most of the time they were relaxed, and one could hear individuals making reassuring grunts which appeared to function to let others know that they were nearby when out of view. I watched various foraging techniques, including swiping brush aside to find seeds beneath, pulling out roots to pluck burrowing insects (I think—their hands move so fast), digging in the dirt for some other buried treasures which were deftly plucked up and eaten, and sitting in trees leisurely sampling fruit. One juvenile near me spied a fat spider, calmly plucked her from her web, and bit off the body like a berry, leaving three or four twitching legs in the grass.

One of the females was pregnant, and her flat rump was bright red. Two or three other younger females were in estrous, as indicated by the shiny red swellings wobbling beneath their tails like oversize tomatoes. These damsels were quite solicitous of the two or three large adult males, who seemed mostly to ignore the ruby hindquarters presented to them by a standing female just a meter away. One of these females chased off another and while there was much yelping by the pursued one, there was no violence and little interest from the others. A more intense dispute with intense shrieks brought several troop members to their feet to see what was happening. A large male chased a screaming female who took refuge in a dense thicket while he barked menacingly at her. He looked very intimidating but we saw no incidents of physical violence. The only blood-shed witnessed was from my shin which I scraped during a clumsy descent of a large boulder.

By far the most joyous sight was the rambunctious play of five youngsters on a grassy hillside at the end of a residential street. They would scamper up the 10 meter slope then leap, roll, tussle or summersault their way down again. Flying ambushes, play bites and limb-tuggings were part of a stream of play that went on for at least 10 minutes. One could hear the thuds of their little bodies hitting the ground as they hurtled down the slope twisting and rolling in a grappling heap of as many as four individuals at a time. A leafy branch became the object of a three-way tug of war. The winner was soon left holding the branch while the other two scampered off; the branch lost its prize-status and the youngster dropped it to follow the others. When they ran back across the road a minute later, he once again grabbed the branch and the tug was on again. Animals at play are one of the most beautiful things to behold, for me. I was transfixed, and uplifted.