Letter to the Editor 1/25/2012

Published: January 25, 2012

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Connecting the dots

EDITOR: How do the memory of Martin Luther King, the Geneva Conventions and Accords and the local trapping of coyotes connect? Or do they?

Monday morning, I was watching a streamed Democracy Now (democracynow.org) special on MLK where his April 30, 1967, Why I am opposed to the Vietnam War speech was "aired" - the one subtitled "the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism."

As a fan, almost worshipper, of the never-to-be forgotten man/icon, I was again struck by his timeless words, particularly those which indicted our military for violating the Geneva Conventions - the Mai Lai Massacre and the wanton application of Agent Orange being the most notable departures.

I mentioned MLK's timeless words. Without attempting to plumb the complexities of our government's current policy in the Middle-East, suffice to say that our current violation of the Geneva Accords through the use of torture and cruel or inhumane treatment in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are enough to haunt.

This brings me to the Bradford County connection and the apparent age old practice of animal trapping to which I was witness over the MLK weekend. And, while my connecting this practice to MLK and the Geneva Accords is admittedly a tad far fetched, as an animal lover and keeper of many of the same, I nonetheless made the link when I spent a good part of Saturday night and early Sunday morning listening to a coyote howling, crying, yipping while being constrained in a trap set on a neighbor's property. Being a veritable city slicker but for my recent four year stint as "gentleman farmer" and cabrero (goat herder), my sensibility about rural culture is admittedly naïvely shaped. For better or worse, my soft-hearted feelings about wildlife include caring about the (wily) coyote.

It turns out that I had a chance meeting with the trapper in question when on Saturday evening (prior to the coyote's entrapment) I was affording my small herd of goats their evening salad walk. I was approached by a quite cordial man, decked in a hunter's finest fluorescent vest, who warned me that he had set some traps nearby. Lucky encounter as my small troop includes an English shepherd who ranges into adjoining fields and woods and could very easily have found himself ensnared in one those toothy contraptions. Needless to say I was thankful for this encounter and didn't think much of it until the following morning when my wife and I compared notes on the ghastly sounds of the previous night.

As it also happened, during our Saturday afternoon encounter, the trapper had informed me that one of our neighbors had given him permission to set the traps. After a sad and harrowing night listening to an animal crying for its life, I contacted our neighbor to ask what he knew of the trapping phenomenon. My chief question was: Given the fact that we've had none of our goats and chickens attacked in the four years in the area and that there are no other nearby husbanded livestock, why trap an essentially innocuous animal? Paraphrased answer supplied by my neighbor: the trapper wants to mount the animal on his wall; moreover, coyotes are a threat to deer fawns and it is an old custom in the area. I'm all for customs that make an area proud. I'm all for preserving the deer population so that hunters have ample prey to feed their yearly ritual although I had thought that the deer population was still more abundant than deemed healthy for the environment. And, finally, while hanging a carcass on one's living room wall after gutlessly capturing a hapless animal may have some sort of perverted aesthetic value, I can't abide the reality of accomplishing these questionable ends through the use of torture - to wit the loose connection to MLK and the Geneva Accords.

In essence, are there not more virtuous, manly, if you will, acts with which Bradford County folks can disport themselves. Doing a thousand push-ups in front of the courthouse? I wish I knew - maybe celebrating MLK Day quietly in the woods while contemplating a more peaceful, humane world.

Tim Liveright

Wysox

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