THE ECOLOGY OF ANIMAL CONTROL

It’s been a long time since I’ve really thought about animals on the animal control level. In the last decade I’ve thought more about environmental issues and things like “deep ecology,” which is about as unsentimental as a person can get. Deep ecology tries to understand how the world works AS ITSELF without any human preferences or controls. For me it was a good antidote for the constant panic over the world ending, at least as we know it. As legitimate and even desirable as it may be for big strong male enviro-writers to stand at the microphone and burst into tears, as they have been doing in the past few years, it makes me uncomfortable. I’d rather be a bit stoic and detached, but not tolerant of what is unnecessarily destructive

We’re obsessing about the nation falling to pieces, democracies dying all over the planet, global warming changing everything, plagues cutting the population in half (now AIDS in Africa, bird flu soon to arrive in America), and even asteroids hitting us. Even the people in denial about all that are busy maxing out their credit cards for status items, using up all the oil in the world before someone else gets it, eating themselves into diabetes, drinking themselves into comas, and destroying all their stable relationships by asserting their right to do whatever they want to. All because of knowing that dinosaurs came and went, glaciers came and went, and we, too, as individuals and as a species will probably come and go.

The Buddhists already knew this. But the big three Abramic religions are thriving on the promotion of escape through death to a Heaven they sponsor and control while all the time insisting on a bigger share of the real estate in this time/space continuum. They have a lot of stylistic similarities which is why, like sibs, they are often at war. It’s kind of nice to not talk about God but, in a reverse, talk about Dog for a while.

When I read through some of the NACA material (www.nacanet.org) I saw that, predictably, they are pretty much focussed on urban situations. Rural settings are a bit different but usually don’t have animal control as separate entities anyway. Rural deputy sheriffs function as animal control officers as well as pretty much anything else that comes at them. Livestock inspector. Midwife. Highway accidents. Welfare checks. The deputies here do a bit of teen counselling. More like the RCMP than beat cops.

It seems as though rural situations or just the idea of differing ecologies is worth looking at. For instance, here in the small reservation towns close to the mountains, loose dogs in the street help control unwanted bear and cougar visitors, especially at night. (But then some of these big ferocious dogs have been known to kill pets or even a child.) Helena, the capital of Montana and a respectable city; Missoula, a major university town; and Fort Benton, an historic river town, have become invaded by deer trying to survive the last six years or so of drought by coming to watered lawns. The deer have lived in backyards for so long, mating and giving birth there, that they have begun to think of it as theirs and try to run people out. People have been gored, slashed with front hooves, and chased under or on top of cars. Rather than hunting the deer, which has been tried to some degree, maybe it would be better to run a pack of Irish or Russian wolfhounds through the streets now and then -- tall dogs who can run fast.

NACA encourages the licensing and confinement of cats, but here in Valier where there are grain bins and elevators right in town and the wheat fields come up to the houses at the edge of town, small rodents are still best controlled by cats. They aren’t feral so much as they are a community service, a good alternative to poison. In nearby oil towns free-range cats might not be such a good idea, eating more garbage than mice. In Valier where a good share of the population is retired, small companion animals like cats or small dogs are a pretty good idea and tend to stick right around their owners who are always there. In the oil towns where there are many single men working, following jobs across the country, there might be a desire to keep big dogs as companions, but fewer resources for confining dogs since they may be living in motels or trailers. Heavy drinking and hot tempers can be hard on dogs.

I had not thought much about people who hunt with hawks and hounds until I began reading “Querencia,” Stephen Bodio’s blog about his birds and dogs. The hawks and hounds need open space but they are not out of control or preying on humans. (stephenbodio.blogspot.com) The government has somehow (homeland security?) developed a mania about listing and registering all these animals, forcing computer chip implants or tattooing on the birds of pigeon hobbyists. Other groups hunt with terriers, an old sport, which consists of the terrier chasing something down a hole and then the sportsmen digging up the burrow. Doesn’t appeal to me, but it’s certainly aerobic! I’ve never seen a law about it. Maybe something about the resulting holes as a hazard. The point is that a lot is going on out there that isn’t in the public mind at all.

Dogs that appeal to criminals are pretty hard to regulate by passing laws. If laws worked on criminals, the world would be quite different. The best approach is to eliminate the social niches where such people accumulate: rundown housing, bad economic prospects, ghetto enclaves, drug use hangouts, and so on: their ecology.

Recently there has been a fashion for very small dogs as accessories for women: held in the arms, carried in special bags, or possibly on leashes -- maybe more than one dog. I’ve witnessed several slashing, snarling miniature dogfights. I suspect any attempt at passing a law about such a phenomenon would be a flop, but pity the poor headwaiters.

When we overhauled the Multnomah County animal laws, we took a whole year and combed through (we thought) every possibility. Then we went to public hearings, thinking we could cruise through, but hit a speed bump: bees. It turned out that we’d left in some old-fashioned laws about bees and the beekeepers were “mad as hornets.” It didn’t help that they all seemed to be ancient former ministers of churches, virtuous and eloquent. We had some quick rewriting to do. We didn’t want to alienate the beekeepers, of all people, because every summer we got several frantic calls about bees that had swarmed, moving en masse to find a new home for a new queen. The beekeepers always came calmly, suited up in coveralls and veiled hats, and took away the menacing buzzing horde. WE didn’t want to have to do it!

The moral from all this is that a jurisdiction is usually drawn by law and has a clear edge. Who is in charge of what within that jurisdiction is also ideally determined by laws that are clear and appropriate. But real life is always an ecology and ecologies are dynamic, always interdependent and changing both creatures and the forces that shape them. What might be ideal here could create havoc there. And last year’s laws might not work this year.

Burgwin’s practice was to gather the 6 or 7 supervisors regularly to “download” them and brainstorm what would be an improvement. It worked pretty well. Years later I worked at the Bureau of Buildings, very similar except dealing with noise, garbage, slum landlords, weeds and illegal building instead of animals. That group was asked to meet as a whole, maybe thirty people, and was supposed to bring treats. (If you let secretaries have anything to do with anything, they organize the bringing of treats.) It was a disaster. The head manager was a woman who badly wanted to be liked. There were games, show-boating, punishments, and suck-ups. The only thing it encouraged was secrecy and avoidance. So the first ecology to be addressed is the one at home, starting at the top. If you don’t have a manager who inspires confidence, you have a garden without sunlight. Then nothing can grow to fit the space.