SNAKES

by Helen
(Bakerstown Pa)

Last summer while I was weeding my garden a little wren, who had built a nest in our bird house, was fussing with me. I kept telling her we would not botter her babies but she just reallly fussed and kept getting louder.

I went over to see what her problem was and there in a hydragea bush was a snake. The snake had climbed to the tip of a branch.

I immediately did the smart thing .... went and got my husband.

He chased the snake away and the little bird was happy with me being in the garden then.

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SNAKES

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To "help" or not to "help"...
by: Ferne, Kamloops, B.C.

Very diplomatic Don

It is hard not to "rescue" cute critters....I found myself doing that recently too, quite instinctively. Just have to remind myself that nature has it's own harsher (in the short term) way of doing things.

A cute little bird isn't more necessary or valued than a snake or hawk in the natural world. In fact, predators help to maintain or even strengthen the intelligence (or at least survival instincts) of most creatures over the long haul. If one does something stupid or isn't as alert as it should be, it it soon becomes food for another creature. The strong, the smart, and the lucky survive longer and pass on their genes. The sleepy, slow to respond, those with poor judgement and sometimes the just plain unlucky, don't have as long a life span or produce as many babies. So goes the evolutionary theory at any rate.

I confess to feeding birds, also unnecessary and unnatural. Sometimes we just decide to indulge ourselves, because it does make us feel good. Some of us humans are born with a strong instinct to "rescue"....we just can't help ourselves. Another kind of balance.