Tuesday’s front-page article in this newspaper about gophers
caught my eye.
Tuesday’s front-page article in this newspaper about gophers caught my eye.
Apparently gophers are digging up school yards around the county and making it dangerous for kids (and teachers) to run around and have fun.
Gophers? I thought most of the burrowing critters around here were ground squirrels. Does this mean we have both? I guess there is more to learn about local wildlife than I thought.
I am more familiar with ground squirrels. They’re the ones that dash in front of my car on country roads, seemingly in some kind of pre-arranged frenzy since they always run in the same direction. They wait until I’m about to drive past, then run across. Perhaps it’s a ground squirrel coming-of-age ritual. The ones that don’t make it, well, don’t make it. (I am only personally responsible for one of them, on Del Puerto Canyon Road, not making it.)
I wonder if ground squirrels have evolved over the last 100 years so that the reproductive advantage goes to those who can successfully run in front of moving vehicles.
I do know that nature can be ruthless to those who don’t possess the basic skills needed to survive. Once, on our morning walk, my husband and I came upon a tree squirrel that had apparently fallen to its death from an overhead wire. Not to be harsh, but it does seem that running along wires is “Squirrel 101,” and this little specimen didn’t have what it takes.
Then there was the story I saw on TV on some animal stories kind of show. The segment featured a couple in South America who had made it their life’s work to run a center that rehabilitated injured tree sloths.
I don’t find tree sloths appealing or lovable, but this couple did, and insofar as sloths undoubtedly fill a niche in the rain forest ecosystem, rehabilitating them is a worthy occupation. Many of the sloths were injured in encounters with cars, or other forms of human encroachment into their habitat.
But some of the tree sloths had been injured when falling out of trees.
Tree sloths should not fall out of trees. It’s true that tree sloths are dozy, slow-moving, dare I say slothful-seeming creatures. And yes, they are ungainly, but they should not fall out of trees. It will not be encouraging the species to evolve in a useful direction if those that can’t stay in their tree are allowed to contribute to the gene pool. This is a simple but elegant example of what Darwin meant by natural selection.
I do see a moral dilemma in the fate of the sloth who falls and only has, say, a torn rotator cuff, or something painful but not fatal. I don’t want any creature to suffer. But we must also try to take the long view here.
In the meantime, I don’t know what to do about the gophers in the school yards. I fear that poisoning them will eventually produce a strain of poison-resistant gophers with worse habits than digging up school yards. But if there are inherent risks in gopher-hood that we could capitalize on, I can’t think of any.
