Shooting stuff, YAY!!

So, Idaho is shooting wolves. Why? Because it’s fun. Okay, actually it’s because they were reintroduced to the area with great success and now they’re screwing things up again. Sure you might argue- who’s really screwing things up, us or them? I might counter that animals drive each other to extinction too. The wolves are not sitting there thinking, “boy we should probably cut down on the deer we eat. Their numbers seem to be thinning.” There’s a natural ebb and flow to the world, and unfortunately we are part of that natural ebb and flow. We are not some great, guiding force. We are not shepherds to the world. We are in it. Just b/c we have guns now does not separate us from it in the least.

Sometimes I watch these things and I think, “How full of ourselves have we become to think that we are like Gods?” Sure, it seems we’re the smartest on this rock, but are we driven by different forces than anything else? I was definitely raised with the idea that we need to save the whales or the polar bears or the…ug…panda bear, but I start to wonder are we trying to keep the planet the way it is out of nostalgia? Why do we think we know so dang much? Isn’t this planet a dynamic system and hasn’t its life been marked with violent upheavals, destructions, rebirths, and extinctions of which we’re a friggin blip?

You know what? I started this post so I could make a joke about wolves bringing about beavers. And who doesn’t like beavers? But now I’m stuck in this spiraling conundrum- if you have the vision to see there’s an issue that you need to fix, don’t you have an obligation to fix it? At the same time, how do you know what you’re perceiving is correct? Is this an issue of how can you guarantee you’re correct? Probably. I guess you never know. You just act and hope for the best.

Anyways, happy Friday. Who doesn’t like Beavers?