People and Animals

 People and Animals

                                                                      By

                                                               Mike Capron 

Man has been working a long time to get along with animals.  God said in Genesis 1:26, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.  

 I have been enjoying animals for a good long while. Some had problems from the beginning of our relationship. I always accepted this as an opportunity to learn a little something new. Cows were usually involved and this made it interesting and gave us a purpose to work together. Every thing usually worked out if we had plenty of time and enough work to keep us busy. 

Some of my buddies were more animal oriented than I am, some liked snakes and reptiles. Not me I was limited to horses, cows, dogs, ……no reptiles, cats, rabbits, hogs, chickens, I love to watch the wild birds and animals. But I just enjoy watching not feeding and managing.  

We had some friends who bought a golf course in a pine forrest high in the mountains. It was beautiful, the elk would come down and loved to graze on the golf greens. It made playing golf an interesting game. Squirrels were enjoying all the golfers, but the golfers were loosing some of their balls from time to time. No problem, the golfers had lots of balls.  Lately they were doing some landscaping and decided to cut down some old trees along the fairway. One they cut down was hollow in the middle and when it hit the ground it covered the fairway with golf balls that the squirrels had hauled to the hollow of that tree.  The squirrels were trying to let the golfers know that they were in their home territory and that the golfers should go play golf at their own home. 

I had a boss who loved to feed the deer. He could drive between the deer feeders in his hunting rig and shoot from his drivers seat. Easy hunting. The wild hogs and bear got to coming to the feeders also to raid the packrats nest close to the feeders. The hogs and bear didn’t have to mess with the feeders, they just went to the rats nest close to the feeders and got all the deer feed they wanted from the packrats nest. The packrats had hauled bushels of deer feed to their huge nest from the feeders and were stockpiling it. The deer hunter and his feeders changed the whole eco system. 

Man can have a huge effect on his natural surroundings………more and more people, bigger and bigger changes.