Nature Comic

My Forest

Sitting here in my forest, with my trees around me. Their leaves are ready to be reached and viewed and read. My trees grow tall and wide and long, forming rows of shade and shelter. Here i can hide my body and mind, buried away with the ideas shed from them. My trees can be dismembered and fixed. But of their relief to the soul is something new. They allow you to forget, to grow, to escape. How sweet it is to sometimes just forget. O, how I love my library.

Frass

It is squished, trampled, and pressed. After six years of steady use, the frass has been diminished to a feeble trampling. As it glistens it nearly reminds you of real grass recently wet by dew. But looking closer the stark difference is shown. These little, little, blades are as thick as a piece of lead and spiral like a steep staircase to nowhere. It is nearly a mockery of the real thing. Though not especially beholding to the eye this grass has the great talent of drawing nutrients from the rubber flakes that weigh it down. Despite the looks, feel, and smell, the most depressing fact of this catastrophe is the leaves, fallen to the ground, with the hope of returning to mother nature, being denied the sweet recoupling of nature.

Human Predator

Talking of the relationship between prey and predator got me thinking. In the Disney films involving animals there is an odd and improbable relationship between the prey and predators. In Bambi such a relationship is present. I’m sure that when you first look thru Bambi you wonder “ What predator is in here apart from man and his dogs?”, but you must remember the owl. Friend Owl is a ferocious predator. Though he proves no trouble to Bambi, Thumper, and Flower he is a large threat to the mice, chipmunks and young rodents. Though a threat he is still shown to be gentle around them. The way these characters interact is solely a fixation of man to force human thoughts onto nature.
His humane interaction is false. Just because it’s false doesn’t mean he is just waiting for his chance to pounce, instead there is just no way that he can be that close to prey and not eat it. This kindness is a strong human trait, probably the trait we are most proud of. To be close to vulnerable prey and resist is a feat that only humans have conquered, but we feel that everyone else can do it.
I do acknowledge that this is a movie and the characters must interact sweetly for the plot to continue without dramatic feasting scenes, but this isn’t the only time we place our own rules and actions upon animals. There is always a naturalist talking about animals as though they were human. These people have it a bit off. There are many animals that seem to appreciate the human thought process, but they are not human, so they do not have the same laws and regulations that we do. This is clearly a huge problem for humans. By believing wild animals act like humans they are just expecting too much safety.
Thayer had a great point on this. When he talked to us about his time with the jaguars he overly stressed that these animals are wild. He talked about no matter how human they seem that cat is still wild and has no problem eating you. To solve this flaw of humanity we really should just remember how different we are from the animals.