“Uncle Robbie, I want to go and see the chickens.”
“Ummmm,” I reply, “let’s go this way, the chickens are out in the woods.”
My three-year-old niece looks disappointed but is quickly enthralled by Pepper, our cat, climbing up our apple tree.
It was not a pretty sight the previous day. A trail of feathers lead from our chicken coop to our lower pond and I have yet to clean out the chicken coop, which resembles a horror movie set. Swimming around our pond were three large river otters enjoying the spoils of their labour, 12 of our chickens. Wow, they have an appetite. Stories of interaction with our local wildlife go hand in hand with living on island. Whether it is the wolf dog of Mount Gardner, the deer that managed to sneak into the garden to help with some heavy pruning or the raided chicken coop, we all have examples of less than ideal interactions with wildlife. I consider myself lucky to live in a place that has lots of wildlife.
This brings us to the hot-button issue, what to do with negative wildlife interactions, especially when wildlife begins impacting our livelihood or enjoyment of the island? Should we even do anything? The three otters got some more attention the next week when they attacked a dog swimming in Killarney lake and then visited a number of my neighbors’ chicken coops. The story did not end well for them.
At the end of the day Bowen Island has three fewer otters, 50 fewer chickens and a dog that may need some trauma counseling before taking another dip in Killarney Lake. In this case someone did take some action and while I enjoy having otters in our local environment I wasn’t shedding too much of a tear at their early demise.
The image of the cute, furry, cuddly critters rolling around in the grass that we present to our kids is anything but reality. I am often struck by the surprise of individuals when an interaction with wild animals does not fall into this narrative. Just like our cute cat would have a field day with a mouse, so will otters with our chickens. We are quick to forgive our cat, maybe even reward her for getting rid of that annoying mouse chewing through the air vent of our dryer, but the otters, not so much. As I saw the three swimming around our pond, my enthusiasm for them was pretty much nonexistent. This disconnect was all too evident on the Everything Else Facebook page recently. A contributor had come across a young skunk along one of our hiking trails that had been terribly injured. Making matters worse was a pile of sticks close by and the assumption, which could very well be true, that the skunk had been beat by someone and left for dead. The reaction on Facebook was instantaneous, readers were disgusted (and this is using the term mildly) by the perpetrator, if there was one, and immense concern for the wellbeing of the skunk. The skunk was eventually killed, oops, I should say, euthanized, by a local vet but probably not after hours of suffering.
This is a very different reaction to the skunk emails I receive as a councillor, three this week alone. The emails have a familiar thread, the skunk population is out of control, one just did something bad that I didn’t like, usually it sprayed an off-leash dog that probably attacked the skunk, followed by a call for mass extermination of the entire population.
The contrast couldn’t be more stark. One group wanting to pull out all the stops to help the cute skunk, the other wanting a mass extermination of the vermin. One group could be criticized for having an overly romanticized image of wild animals while the other could be criticized as uncaring and self-centered. It is no wonder that this issue was avoided by every candidate like the plague in last year’s election. It is an issue that will chop your voter support in half.
Wildlife as the name suggests, is wild, “living or growing in the natural environment; not domesticated or cultivated” and here in lies the problem. Our definition of what is good or bad is often predicated by our needs, hence our domestication of animals. They only become cute and cuddly when they meet our needs or at the very least leave us alone. These three otters were definitely not meeting my needs. My sadness at the loss of our chickens, which supplied us with a steady supply of eggs, quickly outweighed my childhood image of cute otters sunbathing on the beach. Our attitudes on wildlife encounters also vary based on our interactions with the wild species and our willingness to cohabitate with animals who have different needs, wants and lifestyles.
So what is a balanced approach to cohabitating with wildlife? Do we turn a blind eye? Stop raising chickens? Exterminate every living creature that we deem a problem? It is an age-old question and one that can be very polarizing.
The middle ground may be found if we recognize that we are part, not in control of our environment. Not every living creature is here for our enjoyment or needs and trying to control our environment, the whole being more than the sum of its parts, is fraught with problems and unintended consequences. In my situation I have done a bit more work fortifying our chicken coop and ensuring we have a good quality deer fence surrounding our orchard. It means adjusting how we live, for me it is a worthwhile compromise to live in a place with so many wild animals. It also means accepting that at times a negative interaction will occur and accepting that, not expecting everything to go our way. I have accepted that wildlife “management” is a contradictory term, the whole point of animals being wild is that they are not managed and that is something we may want to keep in mind when calling for solutions to what is at the end of the day part of living on our unique island.
