So, on the birthday, I was greeted by the sight of dead hedgehog. How did it die? Or how did it die there? In the middle of the park? I don't know that I want to imagine.
No one was eating him. Too prickly, perhaps. Mountain lions who don't know how to peel porcupines suffer an agonising death. As if you wanted to know that little factoid.
I had been thinking about how we always and inevitably live at someone else's expense. We don't even need to eat other creatures. We are using food, air and water that someone else could have used. We are taking up space that can't be used by someone else. I mean, in the growing of my food, a section of land is no longer a habitat. It's where plants are grown.
In theory, we should also be creating niches for other creatures... or providing for them... like how my corpse could be food for corvids. The peel of my vegetables could be food for pigs and hens. My poo could be food for soil. The shelter I make could be home for bats and swallows and mice and spiders.
But, look see, my corpse isn't made maximum use off. My vegetables do go to compost in theory, but the majority of our food waste is just waste. My poo pollutes. My shelter keeps our creatures out.
The eating might be OK without all the failures to be giving. The take, take take and destroy is not balanced by any real service of giving, maintaining, creating. It's all Band-Aids over a lacerated, burned, stabbed body.
Goodness. One can only hope I am less dismal in 2022.
Huh.
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