To back up for a moment...
Bonaventure's second step in our journey to God was to judge those vestiges of nature, which we call animals.
When I posted on facebook that I had found a tick on me a few weeks back, a friend asked if ticks have any redeeming value.
When I see a tick on me, I am not joyous. When a bear stopped me one day while I was bicycling as a young man... I knew enough to avoid a close encounter.
I once read a book on places in the world where humans are not on the top of the food chain... places with tigers, brown bear, and a couple other critters. Not many such places left, which though I find sad, just doesn't shock me that humans have killed those that kill us.
So I feel we should be repulsed by the sight of certain animals, but are they are redeeming...
In the game of rock, paper, scissors; if you remove one item, you remove another because it will always lose. Nature is like that, remove one, and another will lose out.
It doesn't mean I will allow a tick to feed on me so that the bacteria that causes Lymes disease will not go extinct. But there was a day when ticks and tigers kept our population from growing exponentially and some may say that was a good thing. I just may agree with them, but be glad I can walk the streets without fear of being eaten.
Today two very young deer were dancing about in my vegetable garden at work. Were they cute, most definitely. However, so far this spring my lettuce, radishes, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans... all have been devastated by ground hogs and deer. It has never been so bad and what worked in the past is failing to protect the crops now.
and so I am ready to say, "you win," and quit trying to win the battle. I guess it is better than being eaten by a grizzly. and I do dig onions, garlic and herbs which the varmints do not like. Who knows, maybe I can use all my left over vegetable seeds to feed those dancing deer?
