They were here first

Living in an urban environment, one tends to forget that before all the houses and roads, this was open space. And such open space was dominated by wildlife. I’ve lived in Norfolk for pretty close to thirty years and I’ve lived all over the city. As a poor college student, I lived near the ODU campus, then Ocean View, then Ghent, and then back to Ocean View. I bought my first house in Fairmount Park, my second in Estabrook, and the one I’m in now near the Norfolk Botanical Gardens. Until I moved over here, I had no idea how much wildlife existed in the city. Sure, I read the newspaper accounts of rabies and such, but it didn’t register with me until I moved here.

Not only do I get to see the migrating fowl, but my backyard is like being out in the country. I get raccoons and possum and the occasional fox. Once, I saw a beaver. Another time, I saw a brown pelican. After eight years, I still find it all quite amazing that these creatures have managed to survive as their habitat has been slowly decimated. I used to see rabbits, but they seem to be gone now. The raccoon population has diminished, as trees have been lost due to Hurricane Isabel and the trapping. I’ve had as many as 45 Canada geese in my backyard. For about five years, one of the migrating fowl, a Muscovy I nicknamed Peg (very much like the one in this video), would return each fall and stay through the winter. (Peg got hit by a car.) My own sense is that part of the reason I chose to live here was the serenity and the wildlife is a part of that. After all, they were here long before I was. So I try to be a good neighbor to them.

When I saw this article in today’s Virginian Pilot, I was both saddened and angered. Another wild horse shot to death in Corolla, the seventh in the past six years. Now why would somebody want to shoot the horse? Oh, it probably wandered out of the reserve and ate somebody’s rose bush or something. While the horses are not native to North Carolina, they have been there some 500 years, long before the “come heres” even knew the isolated area existed. No doubt one of the reasons people were drawn to the area was the very fact that it was isolated and pristine. But some folks just can’t leave well enough alone. The “progress” of sodded lawns, urban landscaping, roads and such change the face of the area so dramatically that it no longer resembles what drew them there in the first place.

I hope they find whoever has been shooting the horses. And find a way to put them out to pasture.