Urban Wildlife

Yesterday as I was leaving for work I witnessed an extraordinary event. As I slammed shut the front door, I heard the flapping of tremendous wings. When I looked up, I saw a large bird flying away with something white in its talons. It was a hawk, and when I looked toward the green across the street and saw the hundreds of white feathers strewn across the lawn, I knew that the hawk had killed one of the neighborhood pigeons.

The hawk landed on a fence at the end of the block, and dropped the white bird. I walked across the street to the scene of the killing and saw in the middle of that patch of white feathers six feet in diameter, newly spilled, red, red blood.

The hawk stayed on the fence for a long time. It was still there even after I went back inside to report the carnage to Calderoj. I drove by it, stopped, backed up, and attempted to take a picture of it with my phone. But it just stayed there, guarding its prize.

Calderoj reports that a dead, headless pigeon was on the ground next to the fence when he walked by on the way to the bus. Apparently, there was no hawk in sight.

Pestilence

So I am back to battling the Horseman of Pestilence. As alert readers will remember, I have been wrestling with God about this situation lately. Is my fitness, as demonstrated by my ability to use the information I read on the CSU extension website to defeat my enemy, moral? Am I justified in murdering moths and their larvae because that is the natural order of things?

This weekend at a family gathering, my brother and sister in law were talking about their mouse problem. They had mice last summer under their deck. They didn't do anything about the mice because, as they said, they thought they were "cute." Now that the mice have entered their home, B and S.I.L. don't think they are cute any more. They are, in fact, rather distressing. My brother put it this way: "They're not cute. Now when I set the traps I look forward to seeing their little backs broken."

Dear brother, I have felt the same way. Years ago in my married house, there were mice. They were everywhere. They ate the dog's food, they built a nest under the refrigerator. They darted out from dark corners when I was least expecting them. I was at my wit's end. But we had to live, and to do that, they couldn't live. We called in an exterminator.

Other "pests" have provoked reactions from me that are simply mammalian. At the same married house, there was a cactus in the garden. The puppy went out in the night and stepped on the cactus. We pulled the stickers from his paws. The next day I went out with rose gloves and pruning shears and cut the cactus to bits. Don't mess with my babies.

Recently, I came home to find wasps building a next just outside our front door. One came into the house. I panicked. I implored J to do something. He leaped to my rescue, smashed the inside wasp, then, using the only weapon he could find, sprayed WD40 on the nest.

Similarly, I do not feel sentimental about roaches. We don't have roaches, but occasionally I see a beetle that I've never seen before and imagine that we do.

So, here I am again, devising ways to conquer the moths. I am not sure what I am doing is right, I am only sure that it is animal.

Re: Of Moths and Fashionistas

My dear, dear, friend Herm commented that my victory over the fabric moths was somehow "decently Darwinian." I'm not sure I felt decent after this victory. Survival of the fittest does not leave room for a conscience. Why are my clothes (my shelter and my sexual allure, which might, at this point, aid in the conception of only one or possibly two human young) any more important than that moth's offspring, and, in fact, the work of her entire, short life?

Of Moths and Fashionistas

This past Spring I had a fabric moth problem. One day I just started seeing these tiny moths flying through my closet and I knew what I was up against. A few years ago moths had eaten through most of my cashmere and my response this time was sort of like the Bush administration response to 9/11: total war. I even demonized them. They were not an axis of evil, but they were certainly the Horseman of Pestilence.

I'm against mothballs -- you can't sell them in California because they're that toxic and not just to moths -- so I did everything else I could to make the environment in my home inhospitable to moths. I dry cleaned and laundered everything. I lined every sweater box with cedar and lavender. I encased the vulnerable clothing in plastic. I did this even as J was laughing at my quixotic efforts. Then I encased his jackets in plastic, as well.

It was months before we stopped seeing the little, plain creatures flying through the house the way they do -- like Woodstock on his way to see Snoopy. Each time I saw them I would seethe.

For a long time I couldn't figure out where the infestation was. I finally narrowed it down to the coat closet. However, I have not seen moths in a while.

The other day I was in the coat closet rearranging the towels and blankets when I found a dead fabric moth. The moths themselves do not eat holes in cloth, it is their larvae that cause the damage. The moths do not eat, instead they stay alive just long enough to lay their eggs and then die. Fabric moth larvae can only get adequate nutrition if they live on natural, animal hair-based fabrics like wool, alpaca, and fur itself. This moth laid her eggs on one of our cotton towels. I saw the tiny, glistening eggs not far away from the moth, whose body was so dry that one of her wings was barely attached. The cotton would not give the larvae the kind of food it needed, but she had no other place to lay the eggs -- all of the wool was packed in plastic. If that isn't tragic enough, I knew that the eggs would be destroyed as soon as I put the towel in the wash.

I was staring at a triumph of Darwinian proportions. I had done the things I was put on earth to do -- preserved my home and my ability to produce offspring. I was the fittest.