SHEBA® With Venison in Meaty Juices Food for Cats
RECCOMMENDED BY MARTIN WHITESHOES, CHAMPION MOUSER OF LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA
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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Help the Environment, Kill Lots More Deer.... Please! |
| 2004-12-01 |
| Landscape Architects: Deer Are Designing Future Look of Forests Abundant Whitetails Munch Through the Underbrush; 'Like the Serengeti Plain' From the Wall Street Journal. Subscription required, so here's the whole thing.... I saw a little of what deer can do in the little 5 acre nature preserve I managed for several years for my children's elementary school PTA - wildflowers devoured as soon as the buds opened, few bushes except Chinese/Bush honeysuckle and a few other exotic invaders. We only had a 6-deer herd living in the preserve, and coyotes had been seen there by some of the school's neighbors. The deer rose out of a distant swamp before dawn to browse in a hay field on a recent day. Then, as the sun came up, they made their way into a hillside forest, looking for concealment. But the forest offered few hiding places. It has lots of tall, mature conifers and hardwoods, some 100 years old. Under them, virtually nothing grows -- no seedlings, no saplings, no bushes, and only a few ferns. The floor of this forest, like others around the country, has been stripped clean by whitetail deer. It's deer-hunting season across the land -- a time when Americans are reminded that bountiful whitetails have their costs. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said earlier this month that animal-vehicle crashes, mostly involving deer, killed more than 200 people last year and caused an estimated $1 billion-plus in property damage. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says deer cause more than $400 million in yearly crop damage, not including home gardens and ornamental shrubbery. But below the radar of most people, whitetails have been eating their way toward a more lasting legacy: They are wreaking ecological havoc in forests across the nation. They have become de facto forest managers, determining today what many forests will look like 100 years from now, say forest experts. "Deer have stopped the regeneration of our forests in many areas," says Peter Pinchot, a Yale-educated director of the 1,400-acre Milford Experimental Forest on the Poconos Plateau in Pennsylvania. That means little trees aren't growing up to eventually replace big trees. Example: oaks. Deer love acorns. Surviving acorns sprout seedlings. Deer love them, too. Surviving seedlings become saplings. Deer strip them of leaves and bark. They die. Result: no young oaks. Deer also love hickory and white ash, and eschew black birch, American beech and black locust. If they get hungry enough, they'll eat almost anything, and their victims aren't just trees. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #10 Frank, your cat (or more) is not well behaved. My cats at least leave it on the mat of the front door, neatly stacked. They know not to bring it in. Yes, it often looks like some kill-the-mouses jihad is going on, the heads separated from bodies (if it is a squirrel, then head and tail is what's left). Fortunately my postie is a brave woman--rural area--so she may have to butcher a deer or a bear once a while. Oh, the snakes? They are sorta cat gummi bears. Have you seen a 5 lb rat? Neither did I until recently. Not sure which of my critters did the kill, but it was a mother of all mothaf..ing rats! |
| Posted by: Conanista 2004-12-01 11:58:34 PM |
| #9 great - mouse flavored cat food? They'd be dragging it in the bedroom so proud of what they killed... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-12-01 10:25:35 PM |
#8 ..wildflowers devoured as soon as the buds opened, few bushes except Chinese/Bush honeysuckle and a few other exotic invaders. We only had a 6-deer herd living in the preserve, and coyotes had been seen there by some of the school’s neighbors. Not to mention stuff that happens off preserves, such as bent autmobile front ends, trashed motorcycles, and road-rashed skin.... |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-12-01 9:32:31 PM |
| #7 Fred, why would they if cats can have the real things? And squirrels and snakes. SPoD, spot on. |
| Posted by: Conanista 2004-12-01 8:56:48 PM |
| #6 I've often wondered why they don't make mouse-flavored catfood, myself... |
| Posted by: Fred 2004-12-01 8:24:29 PM |
| #5 Send in the Mountain Lions! |
| Posted by: Charles 2004-12-01 6:41:35 PM |
| #4
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| Posted by: BigEd 2004-12-01 6:32:23 PM |
| #3 It is called poaching. It works really well too at control too. Just get yourself a 22 magnum and get good at head shots up close and personal. Hillbilly welfare, side hill salmon, wild goat meat. Shoot does without young. Since you don't have natural wild preadators you have to be the preadator. QED. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-12-01 5:13:07 PM |
| #2 "Today, Pennsylvania has an estimated 1.6 million whitetails." We seem to be Ground Zero for these damned overgrown, hooved rats. They are EVERYWHERE: in the fields, on the roads, in backyards and gardens, and one time, even on my porch. Ten years ago the deer population in PA was about 850,000 and the situation was deemed an emergency; now it's almost twice that. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-12-01 4:57:22 PM |
| #1 I live 30 miles north of NYC and I see at least 1/2 dozen deer on my drive home every night. I also see deer in the woods behind my house pretty frequently. While I do see wild turkeys now and then, they are only in groups of 2 or 3. They don't destroy cars when they get hit like some deer do. White tails delenda est! |
| Posted by: Tibor 2004-12-01 4:43:38 PM |