Could a skunk win an election? How about a snake? A spider? And how many of us would vote for a bat? Or a mosquito? An opossum?
Well, fellow Americans, today you are asked to reconsider, to make a fresh start, to see a new vision, to reassess where we have been and where we are going, to ask not what can a skunk do to you but what can you do for a skunk, to look down on no creature, not even a snake, to …
Sorry about that, but with the presidential election less than two years off, it is easy to get carried away with political rhetoric. And it is particularly easy when the cause is such a good one.
So we are campaigning here today to improve the images of some of the creatures who, through no fault of their own, have come to be known as the bad guys in the great scheme of things.
The image problem is especially serious now as more and more of us come to live in suburban areas that we share with a variety of creatures. And we come to this essential accommodation with wildlife attitudes that are increasingly shaped by the wild gyrations of television and slap shots from the print media.
A small cadre of naturalists, biologists, ecologists and teachers strives mightily to offset the bad-guy images that plague some of the creepy, crawly, odorous set. Their task may seem at times akin to ants trying to take home the watermelon, but they persist. In the words of one of them, Sally Joosten, who directs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center for the McHenry County Forest Preserve District, ”Every life is important, the uglies as much as the cute and the cuddly. They all have their place, and just because they are not pretty doesn`t mean they don`t do good for us.”
Frank Drummond, wildlife biologist with Lake County Forest Preserve District, said, ”We should show more tolerance toward all creatures. They were here thousands of years before we got here, and they have as much right to life as we do.”
With that introduction, let some of the candidates for image revision speak. Let them present their credentials, and then let us decide if they will get our votes:
– I am the skunk. You know me for my smell, which you say is stink but which I say is safety. If I am not called upon to use my scent defense on some snoopy dog or other threatening force, I am no more smelly than a rabbit and can live under your back porch without you even knowing I am there.
I am a relatively harmless fellow who leads a rather solitary life. I do most of my roaming at night when I dig for grubs, insects and other tasty morsels.
I am proud to boast of the endorsement of naturalists who say I am very adaptive, which means that I can fit into your community if you will leave me alone.
The reason I do not have camouflage colors like many other animals is that I want to advertise the fact that I am protected by my scent, which I can squirt into the eyes of attackers. That pretty much does the job for me except in the case of the great horned owls, which are not fazed by my scent apparatus and come slipping silently out of the night to carry my kind off for their lunch.
From a standpoint of humans, many of us are also killed by cars, which, of course, creates a big stink, and even though we are the victims in this, our image suffers as a result of it.
One note of caution: We have a problem with rabies, which is a disease that affects our brains and is ultimately fatal. When we have rabies, we do not act naturally and may wander around your yard in the daytime. Stay away from us then and call for an animal-control officer for help.
In fact, all that we ask is that you stay away from us all of the time. We are wild creatures, and if left alone we will harm no one or no thing.
In closing, we would ask that you consider that we have been around for a long time, and just because we don`t use deodorant and perfume that appeals to you, we think we deserve better than we have been getting in the arena of public perception.
So the next time you get a chance, vote for a skunk.
– Our next candidate is the snake. Please hold the catcalls and the hisses. The snake is shy about speaking and has been since that unfortunate incident in the Garden of Eden.
Some of the snake`s image problems probably stem from that biblical incident, Drummond said. In any case, without further fanfare, we present the snake.
My friends … Well, all you herpetologists then. We snakes would like to say at the outset that the reasons we crawl about on our stomachs has nothing to do with our biblical behavior. It is because we have no legs. If we had legs, we would be lizards, which is another story.
In asking for a reconsideration of our image, we would like to point out to you that we eat an incredible number of rats and mice. If there were a snake fast-food place, it would have a sign out front that said, ”Billions of rodents served.”
And let us understand that the reason we don`t live with you in suburbia very much is not because you don`t like us, it is because we don`t like you. There is nothing personal in that; it`s just that your lifestyle with its clipped, trimmed and rodent-free environment is about as inviting to us as the great dismal swamp would be to you.
But there are some of us in the forest preserves, and so we ask that you ask yourself, ”What has a snake ever done to hurt me?” We are confident that the answer to that question will be nothing and that you will go on to form support groups if not political action committees that will have as their goal a new image for snakes, an image that everyone can be proud of and that will move the country forward again.
We might also point out that not only do we eat lots of rodents but we in turn are eaten by a variety of predators-hawks, owls and fox, for example. We are not asking for protection from these characters because we accept the fact that we are links in the food chain and that if we take from the system, we must expect to be taken. You humans might think about that because in a more indirect way it applies to you as certainly as it applies to us.
Joosten says the fox snake, which grows as long as 5 feet, has the ability to vibrate its body, and for that reason and because of its size, many people fear it even though it is totally harmless.
The only poisonous snake in the area is the massasauga rattler, which is found in the more remote regions of the Ryerson Conservation Area. Drummond said, however, that he has yet to see one and that no outdoor activities should be curtailed because of the snake`s presence, which will likely go undetected.
– The next candidate for revisionism is the bat. Let the record show that as the bat is introduced, half the listeners in the audience have crawled under their chairs so the bat will not get tangled in their hair. That is impolite, rather like falling asleep during a political speech, and it is totally unnecessary because bats do not get tangled in people`s hair. But let the bat speak for itself:
Friends, spelunkers and countrymen, I hang by my toes here before you in great sadness. For too many years, my family has been subjected to the outrageous slings and arrows of a cruelly vilifying public, led by misguided ghost writers and animators.
In the first place, we do not get into your hair, and we do not suck your blood. We do, of course, have those relatives in the tropics that live on blood, but they get most of theirs from cows and other dumb animals and rarely from a human. It might also be noted that we have relatives in other countries that are called flying foxes, which weigh from 2 to 3 pounds and which some people in parts of Africa and Australia kill and eat. So there, it all evens out.
We live on bugs. Billions and billions of bugs. We love mosquitoes and the moths of some of the most crop-destructive insects in the world. In other words, we are out there doing good for you.
Trouble can come, however, when we get rabies. Then we act in an unnatural way, perhaps coming out in daylight or acting unafraid of you, and should be avoided at all costs.
However, we healthy bats ask that you respect us for what we are:
harmless, ambitious bug eaters with a radar system that is the envy of the Pentagon and doesn`t cost taxpayers a penny.
Let me close with a quotation from Joosten: ”Bats are marvelous little creatures, and just one of them can eat 3,000 mosquitoes in your back yard in one night.”
– On the program next is the spider, the eight-legged relative of the insects, which is so numerous it could not only stuff a ballot box but spin a web around it and deliver it to the county clerk. So pull up a tuffet and listen to the spider:
First, let me tell you something about myself that might make it easier to understand me in a political context: I have no intelligence, and everything I do is done instinctively. If that reminds you of others who have sought your votes in the past, so be it. The truth is that I do not have to think about all of those intricate webs that I spin. In fact, I can`t think, period.
So you see, I never think to myself that I will bite you. I do it instinctively, usually for defense purposes when it seems to me that you are going to crush or otherwise harm me. Most of the time, I do not bite people, but instead spend my time spinning webs to catch insects for my supper. Once I catch an insect, I inject it with digestive juice and later suck out the resulting solution. If you find that offensive, consider yourself eating corn- on-the-cob as butter runs down your chin and your arms and salt gets into your mustache.
Thank you.
– The opossum had expected to make an appearance but has apparently fallen asleep somewhere. Suffice it to say that as ugly as some people consider it, the opossum is a fascinating creature, Joosten says, and as our only marsupial (having a pouch for its babies) and as an eater of insects and rodents, it deserves more respect.
All species deserve respect, say Joosten and Drummond, who lament that they most often get calls when there is a conflict between animals and humans. ”More and more people are moving out into suburbia and destroying natural habitat,” Joosten said, ”and it is important for them and for everyone to realize that the other creatures were here first, and they have a right to live, even the ones that may not be pretty.”
With that in mind, it turns out that in our review of the creatures with the negative images, we have omitted the ”ugliest” in terms of ecological disruption. As Pogo put it, ”I have seen the enemy and it is us.”
Vote skunk!
