June
1996
Danger
in Paradise
By Antonia Gorman
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If, as the old adage goes, home is where the heart is, then my home
lies high in the Pocono mountains in a town called Honesdale, Pennsylvania.
Here a silent and empty house waits for me during the week while I toil
in New York City. Here it opens its doors to me late every Friday night,
calm and serene, as if to say, "I know you would be with me more
if you could." I love this house. I love its spaciousness and the
Victorian details. I love the satisfaction I get from the weekend projects:
the feeling of accomplishment when painting a bedroom, the gratification
of wallpapering a bathroom. I love the fact that my 93-year old neighbor’s
father-in-law built this house and so knows the history of every structural
and esthetic detail.
He knows that, in 1918, he himself helped plant the pine trees that
surround it; that his mother-in-law had four rooms torn down in 1940
so she wouldn’t have to clean such a big house; and that the ugly
dropped ceiling in the corner room was meant to create an office for
a dentist with the inauspicious name of Dr. Payne. He knows that the
handrails in the bathtubs were installed when the house was used as
a home for disabled women, and that the lack of shrubbery is a result
of a rapacious goat kept by the man from whom we bought the house —
the man who sold it to us for such a bargain because he was deeply indebted
to loan sharks (he told us this as we left the closing table) and who
managed to stay one step ahead of the law (the state trooper told us
when he politely knocked on our door in ‘89).
But if the house were to burn to the ground, or be lost in a flood,
or get blown away by a hurricane, my home would remain in Honesdale
because my heart rests ultimately not in the house, but in the nearby
woods. Every weekend, Ginger, my beloved golden retriever, and I wander
its trails and every weekend it gifts us anew. In spring, it presents
us with wood sorrel and honeysuckle, wild roses and strawberry. In
summer,
a heron returns and the ducks talk to each other at dusk with strange
little croakings that sound like tree frogs. In the fall, Ginger bounds
exuberantly down the trails, her golden-red fur making her invisible,
except for her movements, against the leaves that cover the ground.
And in winter, the snow-covered branches spin shimmering webs overhead
and the cold chases away the dirt-bikers, bringing a calm that beckons
the normally shy deer to drink, in full daylight, from the river’s
edge. Then fresh moss appears again on the rocky cliffs and promises
the return of spring weeks before the harbinger robins come.
The Sound of Displaced Air
But amidst the great natural beauty there lurks danger. Hunting is
a popular pastime in Pennsylvania and there is not a month during the
year when a man with murder on his mind can’t legally satisfy
his lust for blood. He can trap mink and beaver in January and fox
and
raccoon in February. He can shoot crow in March, fire at woodchuck
in April, and so on through the year.
But it is between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when deer season is open,
that hunters descend in force and life becomes truly tenuous. Ginger
and I are luckier than most who call the forest home; we have a house
into which we can retreat. But there are times, pushed by Ginger’s
restless pacing and my own inexplicable longing, when I chance a violent
encounter and take to the trails again, hoping that by staying near
the roads and houses I’ll stay far from the hunter’s bullets.
This is a precarious approach, though, for Ginger relishes her freedom
and often bolts off the trails to explore the world that greets her.
More dangerous than her wanderings, however, is the casualness with
which Honesdaleans hand out guns. For $5.75, a child of 12 can legally
purchase a hunting license if he has attended a two-day Game Commission
lecture and has the written permission of his parents. The price of
a license goes up to $12.75 for those aged 17 and over, but proficiency
requirements remain the same — a hunter needs only to understand
hunting and trapping regulations, and may have no experience with or
skill in handling his weapon. Add alcohol to the equation (Pennsylvania’s
laws against shooting while intoxicated are unreliably enforced) and
it becomes obvious why every year the local papers carry stories of
men who accidentally shoot themselves or others, either because they
were drunk, careless or inept.
Lest you think I overstate the risk, let me tell you that three years
ago, I had a bullet come so close to my head that I could actually hear
the displaced air as it passed. Let me also tell you that no one came
rushing from the foliage to express concern for my well-being because,
I am certain, no one had kept track of the path of that bullet.
My chance of being injured, however, is minuscule compared to the chance
faced by non-human animals. According to People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals (PETA), over four million animals are reported killed each
year by guns, arrows and traps, while an estimated additional eight
million are wounded by these weapons and die slowly and painfully later
from blood loss, wound infection and injury induced starvation.
Silence and Harassment
How is it that this vast carnage, which is perpetrated by a mere
seven percent of our population, goes mostly unprotested by the rest
of us? One of the reasons is that the Game Commission personnel (whose
jobs would not exist if there were no hunters to oversee or supplies
of animals to stock) have convinced us that, in the absence of natural
predators, hunters are all that prevent game populations from exploding.
What the Game Commission fails to acknowledge, however, is that their
policies not only encourage the destruction of predatory animals (there
is no closed season on coyotes, for instance), but also purposely promote
unnaturally high birthrates among those animals desired by hunters,
especially among the white-tail deer who are the target of choice for
93% of all hunters.
To raise deer birthrates artificially, the Game Commission intentionally
encourages the growth of browse food by setting forest and marsh fires,
clear cutting timber and mowing thousands of acres of land. With an
unnaturally high supply of food, deer herd sizes increase, creating
the appearance of a "need" for hunters to thin population
sizes.
Another reason for non-hunter silence is the impediment to speech placed
on us by state legislators. Currently, legislators in 35 states have
passed "hunter harassment" laws that provide penalties for
such activities as protesting on hunting grounds, making loud noises
or spreading repellents to scare away game, and interposing oneself
between a hunter and an animal.
What Can Be Done
The constitutionality of this legislation is currently being challenged
in some states, but until the laws are abolished, there are other ways
to combat hunting and trapping without risking jail. For example, private
landowners can post "No Hunting" signs on their land, witnesses
to poaching in national parks can report the crime to the National
Parks
and Conservation Association (800-448-NPCA), and everyone can write
to their Congressperson to protest the opening of national wildlife
refuges to hunting and trapping and the use of tax dollars to manipulate
habitats (a list of Congresspeople can be obtained from local branches
of the League of Women Voters).
Those who choose to write to their members of Congress can include
requests in their letters for a repeal or revision of the Pittman-Robertson
Act
of 1937. This act takes the excise taxes from the sale of guns and
ammunition and gives them to state wildlife agencies to help fund "wildlife
management projects"— almost always a euphemism for habitat
manipulation designed to increase game animal populations. Another
way
to protest hunting is to contribute to anti-hunting groups like PETA,
Friends of Animals, Greenpeace, and the Humane Society of the United
States. Be careful, though, to investigate charities before sending
them money. Some well known environmental groups, such as the Nature
Conservancy, Sierra Club and World Wildlife Fund for Nature are unopposed
to hunting, while others, such as the National Wildlife Federation,
Wilderness Society and Wildlife Conservation Fund of America actually
support current hunting and trapping policies.
As I watch Ginger burst once more out of the underbrush and onto the
forest path, I am reminded of the words of George Bernard Shaw: "While
we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts," he said,
"how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?" To
reclaim the paradise of our forests and mountain ranges, we must come
to recognize the joy animals have in their own existence and to respect
their right to embrace that existence, unmolested by us.
Antonia Gorman is a vegetarian who divides her time
between New York City and Honesdale, PA.
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