Helping Wildlife

I really can't imagine going through life without doing my best to offer some help to wildlife.

My mother and I lived alone during WWII. Our total income was $2.00 a week for a bushel basket of washing and ironing my mother did for a bachelor. With that $2.00 and our vegetable garden we had enough to eat most of the time. Mom bought chicken "peeps" from Sears and Roebuck and we raised them for the eggs they produced. We traded eggs for things we had to have at the little grocery store. We lived.

Mother would not kill a chicken to eat unless it was an old hen that had stopped laying eggs. Sometimes we had no meat and mom would be hungry for some meat. So I would pick up my sling shot and some rocks along the railroad track and go hunting for something to eat. Sometimes I would actually kill a rabbit (and not always in season) but often I killed doves and several of them would be enough meat for a meal. I would also go out to the local farmers and ask if I could get some pigeons out of their barns and they always said I could.

I would take a burlap grain sack and climb high up above the haymow close to the window where the pigeons came in and went out. Then I waited until I could see one coming back into the barn and I would throw the sack at them which always knocked them down to the hay below. I would jump down and kill the pigeon and when I had several I took them home to clean and eat.

When I was older I used a bow and arrow to hunt rabbits and other game, including squirrels. I was always able to find something to kill for meat for myself and my mother to eat.

I would also fish in local creeks and take home everything I caught for meat to eat.

That is my debt. I have to pay back for what I took.

Wildlife supplied our meat needs all through the second war and I am not sure we could have made it without the animals I killed.

I have devoted nearly all of my adult life to paying off that debt. I have always given food and shelter to anything that needed it or looked around my property for it. I have also tried to provide shelter and water for wildlife

I love to go fishing and even took the barbs off of hooks to prevent as much damage as I could when I caught a fish. Then I thought I don't need to fish for food so it is the fun part I was still enjoying and I flat out quit fishing.

I used to find birds along streams and lakes that were caught up in fishing line and would spend hours until I was able to unwind it and free them. (People still leave fishing line all over the place and it is a real hazard). I picked up a duck that had itself tied up in fishing line and the line was cutting into the joint where its wing attached to the body. It could no longer raise its head up to eat without the line cutting deeper. I took this duck to my vet and had the line removed. The duck got back to health in my garage. It had water, feed and shelter there until it was well. This story made local newspaper headlines.

I also found a duck that I called "Quackers" that had a twisted bill. It was a cute little fellow but had a terrible time eating. In those days I carried 50 pound bags of shelled corn to the park and dumped it on the ground every other day for anything to eat that was hungry. Quackers had a time trying to eat so I would get him off to the side and keep the geese and ducks away until he had gotten some corn to eat. I watched him grow up and then when the time came for ducks to leave the park, he left and I often wonder if he made it on his own. I have a picture of him that I drew.

I used to carry water to the park and pour it out in pans beside geese and ducks who were sheltering their eggs from instense heat. The ducks and geese would not leave their nests exposed to the blistering heat because it would kill the babies inside. So I poured water in little pans beside each nest and feel like that alone saved many animals. I did that during the nesting period and did it every day.

I have had to kill chipmunks that walked across lawns still wet with pesticides. The chemicals attack the nervous system of these little guys and they go into a miserable state of withering agony. The only solution is to kill them as quickly as you can. And I have had to kill more than one until I was able to convince my neighbor to abandon his lawn treatment program. He is dead now and so is his wife. I wonder what St Peter will say to him about the times he poisoned chipmunks -- not to even mention or think about how he ruined the lives of countless insects and soil bacteria of all kinds.

I am now 69 years old.* I have lived in this spot for 43 years and have had to kill several chipmunks, one raccoon and one squirrel. I hated to do it. It bothers me for days after I do it. I never can look at that squirrel box again without thinking of this pitiful squirrel that lived there with a terrible disease. I catch myself looking at the 4 inch diameter hole and wonder when the animal will poke its head out. Until I for that I won't forget what I did to the animal.

I felt so bad about our government policy about the slaughter of some 80 million buffalo that I wrote a book about it. Those animals were the PX for the Ameican Indians and it was a disgraceful slaughtering process that many of my ancestors took part in.

My debt to wildlife is not paid yet.

My kids are paying on it in Florida and Colorado and here in Ohio.

Maybe it will get paid off before I die but I hope not. I don't mind this kind of debt at all.

*I am now 78 and will be 79 in October of 2013. So, I wrote this piece 10 years ago.