Varmints, vermin, property, damage?

When I started up the tractor this afternoon, a field mouse scurried out from under the engine cowling. The tractor had only been in its parking pace overnight since it had been visiting the Daughter Person and Son-In-Law for a week or so. Last year or the year before a mouse or mice had cost me about $400 to have the wiring harness repaired after they chewed through it and left me with no functional instruments in the dashboard. I've re-baited and returned to their place the mouse traps that now live near the tractor's tires. If the field mice stay in the fields and woods they won't be tempted by the peanut butter on the traps.

our last remaining pear tree, with fruit

Photo by J. Harrington

As far as I know, mice are unprotected animals that may, or may not, be a nuisance. This refers to the piece I posted Tuesday, fussing about the poorly crafted language Minnesota uses to distinguish game animals and birds from unprotected and / or nuisance animals. Then today, I read a blog posting by Angie Hong at East Metro Water, about Gophers and muskrats, oh why?, in which she notes:

... The plains pocket gopher is more common and is often considered a pest when it tunnels through our lawns and gardens. In a native planting or restored prairie, however, gophers should be considered a friend. Their tunnels aerate the soil and provide homes for numerous other wildlife as well. In other words, gophers are just as much a part of the prairie as bison, bluestem, and butterflies. Yes, the prairie will be bumpy instead of flat, but nature tends to be that way.

As with mice and wiring harnesses, and the red squirrel that gnawed through our siding around ten years ago, pocket gophers in our reverting to prairie hillside would be safe to happily aerate the soil if they hadn't destroyed, by eating the roots, almost a dozen fruit trees we've planted over the years. (We were trying for a savannah in which fruit trees took the place of oaks.) Now we also have a recently arrived woodchuck that's moved under the brush pile and a chipmunk living under the front stoop. Much as I'd like to live in peaceful coexistence with the critters around here, even with the deer that have eaten to death two of our Aronia (chokeberry) bushes, pocket gopher mounds make it almost impossible to mow and climate change seems to be bringing more ticks every Spring. Ticks don't seem to find short grass a suitable habitat.

I honestly don't know how to reasonably assess when a critter has done, or may do, enough property damage to warrant being terminated with prejudice, nor do I see much chance of being certain that the guilty culprit is the one so terminated. This is one of the quandaries that keeps me from seriously considering becoming a Buddhist. My compassion doesn't appear to extend far enough to let varmints and vermin get a free ride on my dime. Anyone knowing of appropriate and effective solutions to such a conundrum are invited to note such in the comments.

The History of America

By Alicia Ostriker

     —for Paul Metcalf

A linear projection: a route. It crosses

The ocean in many ships. Arriving in the new

Land, it cuts through and down forests and it

Keeps moving. Terrain: Rock, weaponry.

Dark trees, mastery. Grass, to yield. Earth,

Reproachful. Fox, bear, coon, wildcat

Prowl gloomily, it kills them, it skins them,

Its language alters, no account varmint, its

Teeth set, nothing defeats its obsession, it becomes

A snake in the reedy river. Spits and prays,

Keeps moving. Behind it, a steel track. Cold,

Permanent. Not permanent. It will decay. This

Does not matter, it does not actually care,

Murdering the buffalo, driving the laggard regiments,

The caring was a necessary myth, an eagle like

A speck in heaven dives. The line believes

That the entire wrinkled mountain range is the

Eagle’s nest, and everything tumbles in place.

It buries its balls at Wounded Knee, it rushes

Gold, it gambles. It buys plastics. Another

Ocean stops it. Soon, soon, up by its roots,

Severed, irrecoverably torn, that does not matter,

It decides, perpendicular from here: escape.

A prior circle: a mouth. It is nowhere,

Everywhere, swollen, warm. Expanding and contracting

It absorbs and projects children, jungles,

Black shoes, pennies, blood. It speaks

Too many dark, suffering languages. Reaching a hand

Toward its throat, you disappear entirely. No

Wonder you fear this bleeding pulse, no wonder.

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