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Posted by W von Papineäu on July 21, 2003 at 22:15:06:
TORONTO STAR (Ontario) 19 July 03 Tiny victims of our careless behaviour
Through an act of carelessness, we almost killed two black rat snakes.
They were lovely. One was about 1 1/2 metres long; the other was just over one metre. We had left plastic mesh, used for growing peas, wrapped around stakes and leaning against the barn, and the snakes had become entangled in the mesh. It was like whales or dolphins that get tangled in fishing nets.
The openings in the mesh were two centimetres square, and it was a wonder that the snakes were able to squeeze through so many, since in their middle sections they had the girth of a banana — about three centimetres in diameter. The mesh squares bound them so tightly that their flesh bulged on either side of the strands.
I suppose they were on the hunt for mice near the barn. When I first saw them, I thought they were dead, because I didn't see where they were trapped, and they weren't moving. Plus, there was a terrible stench. I had work to do, and made a note to come back later.
Later turned out to be three days. The stench, I discovered, was coming from a milk snake, which died higher up in the mesh. It took us about an hour to free the rat snakes, and when I took the larger one to the edge of tall grass, it quickly slithered off.
When we took the smaller one to the same place, it started into the tall grass, paused, came back, and stopped between our feet. It was as if it had returned to thank us before leaving. I know that's attributing human motives to a snake. But it sure lightened our mood.
Black rat snakes are the largest snakes in Canada, growing up to 2.7 metres long, although I've never seen one that large. They're on the endangered list as a threatened species, and exist in Canada only in the Frontenac Axis, that most southerly finger of the Canadian Shield that crosses the St. Lawrence River forming the Thousand Islands.
I've told neighbours about these two snakes and found some had similar experiences and felt similar, hand-trembling anxiety as they cut away the mesh. And that got me thinking of other examples of carelessness.
For instance, turbines in the hydroelectric dams on the St. Lawrence River kill roughly half of the eels leaving Lake Ontario to spawn in the Sargasso Sea.
Boaters driving too fast create waves that wipe out loon nests along shorelines.
One of the most lethal traps left by sports fishermen is the fine, plastic fishing line that breaks off when hooks get snagged under water or in a tree. The lines are almost invisible.
Kit Chubb, who runs the Avian Care and Research Foundation at Verona, north of Kingston, tells me that people bring her loons, great blue herons, hawks, cormorants, ducks, mourning doves, even grackles that are trapped by it, and often injured.
Then there is Highway 401 with its concrete median barrier in some sections that creates a death zone for animals who wander onto the pavement. And the thousands of birds that die each year crashing into Toronto office towers because they're attracted to the lights that are left on.
Probably the most notorious act of carelessness is the dragger fishing trawler that scrapes the ocean floor, destroying its ecosystem.
And probably the most common act of carelessness is driving so fast that it's impossible to avoid frogs, turtles, snakes, raccoons and other animals that are on the road.
Everyone will have examples to add, but these are enough to make the point: We can do better if we try.