It saddens me

I love nature, but I hate the cruelty of it.
Even more, I hate the interference of Man in upsetting the balance, from the felling of trees and destroying habitats to the introduction of some manufactured disease.

I saw a rabbit the other week taking shelter by the wall up by the shower block. It wasn’t raining, but it was huddled as tight into the corner as it could go and didn’t run for cover.
I called Maggie away.

Two days later on our final walk, I saw it again (or another one infected), and it turned, running straight into the concrete BBQ stand, stunning itself. It was totally blind, confused, unable to eat or drink and probably in terrible pain.
This picture is not as heart wrenching as some I found, but Myxomatosis is a terrible disease, developed by a Frenchman and introduced to ‘control the rabbit population’.
I find it sickening to inflict such suffering on an animal, though I understand the need for pest control, especially as Hubby used to do it with a rifle.
This past week I witnessed a young rabbit kitten ‘flipping’ under a bush, having no control over it body movements whatsoever. By the time we came back from our walk, it was dead, and by morning the carcass gone, so probably some fox or other opportunist animal had taken it.

There is also enough Road Kill without culling badgers.
I have never seen these beautiful creatures at close quarters, though I have heard them in the woods where we used to go in Lincolnshire. In the days when we had TV, I found programs on them fascinating, and it saddens me when I see one dead on the roadside, especially when there is another not so far away, as I wonder if any young will survive.
To me, culling is unnecessary, as cattle can be inoculated against the TB they are supposed to carry. The approved cull of some 70% of mainly healthy animals last year appalled me.
Brian May (Queen) has been championing the rights of British animals for years.

Extract from Telegraph report 1 Dec 2012:
Last week, I was accused of being “utterly hypocritical” because my land management agent had licensed a gamekeeper to cull deer on my forest land in Dorset. The gamekeeper in question, no longer employed by us, boasted that he had killed 23 young animals purely “for sport”. The part about deer control is true – but the latter claim is shocking to me.

For years, I have been a staunch opponent of the proposed badger cull, and I am firmly against all forms of cruelty to animals. But there is a vast difference between culling deer and massacring badgers. The two have very different aims. I acted on the best available advice in allowing deer culling for a limited time on my property, for the health and safety of the herd – and, as an animal rights campaigner, I certainly have no reason to apologise.

Other road kills are hedgehogs, foxes, pheasant, deer, owls, ducks, rabbits, and any other creature that doesn’t get out of the way of traffic or doesn’t understand the danger, including domestic pets.

And finally, perhaps the saddest of all, was a pigeon chick I found on my last walk with the dog 2 nights ago.
It was ugly and very dead, having probably fallen out of the nest a few hours before as it wasn’t mangled or decaying, but sad nonetheless, even if it was Nature’s way.
Although we had pigeons in our garden and we found egg shells, we never saw any babies.

According to the internet (source Guardian.co.uk extract) this is why:

Because you haven’t looked in the right place. They are in the nest making feathers which will give them the appearance of an adult pigeon.
Pigeons don’t fledge (leave the nest) until they are almost adult-sized and those that don’t know what to look for can’t tell a baby pigeon from an adult one. In the case of Woodpigeons (the fat ones that you see on your lawn), the young ones are those without a white flash on the neck.

so I’ve learnt something today.

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