Wonders of CO2, and Weird Gardener
A couple of environmental-type links for you today:
Some readers of this blog would be very interested in this article from the Financial Post, titled "In Praise of CO2." Not surprisingly, the article talks about the good that increased carbon dioxide levels are doing, mainly for plant growth. If you remember your basic biology, humans breath in air, process the oxygen, and out comes air with more CO2 in it. Plants, on the other hand, take in CO2, light, and water. Out come sugars and oxygen. I think the actual process is more complicated than that, but that's the gist.
So...maybe I'm just too much of a botanical simpleton, but wouldn't reducing CO2 levels be bad for plants?
The other article is a New York Times article titled "Peter Rabbit Must Die." It's about gardeners who are ruthless towards pest animals who think that the garden is a free salad bar. This time, it's not the subject of the article that I want to highlight. (In fact, I am pretty ruthless towards pest animals in our garden) It's one of the nutcases that is mentioned in it. The article first mentions some artist/illustrator guy who had moved to rural Pennsylvania. Woodchucks were invading his garden, and none of the "humane" methods (a.k.a. methods that don't work) were working. So here's what followed next:Finally, the artist decided he would have to shoot the animals. First, though, he went to each hole and made an announcement.
“I said: ‘I intend to kill you. You have 24 hours to get out,’ ” he recalls. “I wanted to give them fair warning. I said, ‘If I were you, I would find another place to live.’ I also promised them I would not take a shot unless I knew it would be fatal.”
He is making this into a funny story, he says, but when he killed his first woodchuck he “literally felt sick.”
“I went outside and knelt down to it and said a little prayer to whatever the powers that be that when my turn comes, I will do it as gracefully and uncomplainingly.”
^_~
...?
Is this guy joking? Do I just lack a sense of humor? What a weirdo. As if the woodchucks can understand English. Then he kneels to it and says a prayer. What a weirdo, twice over. I bet this guy owns or has owned a beret, has "Free Tibet" stickers all over his car, and will vote Obama for president.
Disclaimer before our resident leftist(s?) posts angry comment: owning a beret is not morally wrong, nor is wanting to free Tibet. The tongue is in the cheek ;*) See?
Categories:
environment
As your resident leftist I have to say, I think the man was joking. I read that article a few days ago and I thought it was clever that he said that. But I do have to agree with you on one thing: I bet he does own a beret! While I think nothing of Free Tibet stickers, I do have a problem with berets.
Go Obama! Free Tibet! :-)
(I'm just looking for trouble, huh?)
Have a great week! :-)
Samantha,
Nah, so far your comments have lacked perceived or real snark, which I appreciate. And so I see no need to shout you down ;)
Your definition of humane cracks me up!
Ugh. I know too well about garden/yard pests. We get rats under our deck from time to time because they like what I put in my bird feeders. We used to have a stray cat that we fed, and his food attracted opossums. Because I won't skimp on animal food and bought high-quality (meaning expensive) cat food for the stray kitty, I couldn't afford to feed him AND the opossums.
We borrowed humane traps from animal control and caught our possums. Animal control carted them away, supposedly to release them elsewhere. If they were lying to me, I don't want to know about it!
But now I kind of regret getting rid of our opossums because I think they were keeping the rats under control. Mousies came back after the opossums were taken away, so now I feed poison sticks to the rodents. I feel terrible in doing that, but they busted into my food supplies in the garage. I have a live-and-let-live attitude only to a point.
The guy in the article may have been exaggerating his talk with the critters and the prayers, but he may not have. I know I prayed for forgiveness for killing God's creatures and felt awful over it. But rat poop in my garage was not acceptable.