Sarah’s mom, Maureen, emailed from her office to ask who to call about a hanging bird her daughter had found. I know them both through a mutual friend who works in the same office as Maureen. They live close to me. I immediately called Maureen at her office. “Is Sarah home now?”
[teaserbreak]
“Yes.”
“Call her and tell her I’ll be right over.”
The bird, a female robin, was dead. She had a cord noose tight around her neck and under one wing, and was hanging, eye-level, from a branch, more than a meter above her. Sarah was near tears. Who could do such a terrible thing?
No one. Not intentionally. The far end of the cord was attached to a broken plastic clip, part of a clothespin, perhaps. The loop had probably been quite large when the bird, intent on searching for food for herself or her babies, put her head and part of her body through it. It would have tightened against her throat and torso, like a noose. Flying off her fate was sealed with the dangling end snagged in the branches of a shade tree, pulling the noose tight. She almost certainly struggled a long time, possibly through the previous night. It was nearly noon and I could tell by the condition of her body that she had been dead for several hours.
The cord itself was worn and weathered, and probably was once used in a nearby garden, perhaps along a line of planted vegetables, or part of an arrangement to support spindly flowers. I have used similar cords for such reasons in my own garden. The bird had a “brood patch,” a bare area of thickened and highly vascular skin that develops on the belly to press against the eggs to keep them warm. It meant that there had to be a nest nearby. A male robin, possibly her mate, was scolding close by. The female alone incubates the eggs but it takes both parents to feed the youngsters. We searched the neighborhood for the nest as best we could but to no avail.
Hunters, trappers, and others who bring suffering to animals for fun or profit like to point out that nature is cruel. No, not cruel, just utterly indifferent. I’ve seen a bat dead after becoming stuck in burrs, and I’ve seen similar fates befall small birds, such as kinglets and hummingbirds. Once, driving through rural Ontario in the winter, I found a ruffed grouse hanging, dead, from one foot that somehow had become trapped between two branches that were rubbing together. Like Sarah upon finding the robin, my first thought was that someone had hung the bird up, but a close examination showed it was just a statistically improbable accident.
Countless other forms of prolonged death are lurking even in pristine environments. Paleontologists’ careers are punctuated by the twisted remains of creatures who died a long time ago, but often died in the clutch of mud or mire, a slow and surely agonizing end that left behind the bones and fossils scientists now study. Visit the famous Rancho La Brea tar pits of Los Angeles where the remains of animals who lived and died 25,000 years ago until the present are on display, and ponder the enormity of so many millennia of suffering.
Suffering is intrinsic to the ability to live and feel but it does not excuse cruelty, which is something we can control. You could probably leave long twines with loops at the ends all over the place and not cause the kind of suffering that robin endured, but then again, the likelihood of not causing such a problem is greater if you do no such thing. Remember the children’s movie, Happy Feet? It features a cartoon macaroni penguin ensnared in one of those plastic holders of soda bottles that are so often discarded into the environment. Yes, the chance of any one of them causing such suffering is slight, but millions and millions are produced, and discarded, winding up in landfills, all too often, which are frequented by scavenging gulls, crows, and other wildlife.
I don’t want to sound preachy, but I try to never discard such holders without cutting through every single opening in them. I cut string and twine into small pieces before confining them to the garbage — hence landfill (unless they are organic, in which case they are still cut up, but recycled). Where does your used dental floss go when discarded?
Many such materials we use and discard are made of synthetic materials that last for a long time. Anyone with a trace of concern for the environment is aware of how synthetic driftnets that break loose will continue to trap fish and other marine organisms, including seabirds and marine mammals, until the weight of dead bodies sink the nets to the bottom. Scavengers and decay remove the bodies and the nets float up to entrap still more animals, sink, then rise, again and again in a deadly cycle that kills year after year, because it takes so very long for the material to disintegrate. Our own household waste is far less deadly, but there are so many of us that the accumulative suffering we so casually, carelessly, and unknowingly impose on others reaches staggering numbers, one poor animal at a time.
I recall baby chipping sparrows brought to me encased in hardening plastic. A factory worker had carelessly dumped some leftover liquid plastic into a weed patch behind his factory, never dreaming that there would be any animals in such bleak environs that could suffer as a result of his action. He had meant no harm; the plastic, once hardened, would be harmless. The problem was that the fledglings, their first day out of the nest, fell in, and it hardened on them, slowly suffocating them. And a friend tells me of a baby robin she found in a nest, dead, although its siblings had survived. Close examination showed that the one baby had become entangled in nesting material made of some sort of synthetic mesh, far tougher than the natural grasses and stems normally employed.
I live near Toronto, and I rarely visit its long waterfront without finding the odd gull, goose, or duck with a foot or wing entangled with discarded fishing line. I’ve saved a few that I could catch. Often the line will cut off circulation, with disastrous results for the bird. There are local wooded areas well off the beaten trail where I would love to walk my dog off the leash, and could, but for the ubiquitous hazard of broken bottles and shattered glass. On more than one occasion I’ve followed the blood trail left by an unfortunate raccoon or fox hurt by such sharply-edged debris.
Years ago a major yogurt company designed a plastic container that was narrower at the top than at the bottom, unlike their competitors’ products. When the containers were used and discarded, they inevitably had traces of yogurt in them. The food attracted the attentions of skunks, squirrels, and other small mammals, who, having thrust their head into the containers, could not extract them. Crushing the containers before discarding them (into garbage receptacles or recycling containers, never into the environment, please) rendered them harmless, but too few people bothered to do so, and did not notice, or heed, the written instructions on the container’s bottoms.
It’s seldom that our carelessness is deliberate. We are technologically dependent; we all use, and discard, things. The statistical probability of any one such careless disposal causing some innocent creature prolonged suffering may be slight, but that is no consolation to the animals who suffer. We can’t eliminate the problem, but those of us who care; who really don’t want to be the cause of an animal’s grief, can at least all do better. Set an example. Teach kids about the problem. And clean up after others. They don’t know or care that they are putting animals at risk of suffering. Do you?
Blogging off,
Barry