Beech Tree News Network

One Sunday night at our church small group, my friend, Brenda, said she had always wanted a pig farm but could never convince her husband, Bill, that it was a good idea.
“Why a pig farm?” I asked.
    “I’ve always loved the idea of seeing a mama pig with her little babies,” she said.
    “She never lived on a farm,” Bill said, with a knowing look.
    “We raised a garden,” Brenda protested.
    “Let me put this pig farm notion to rest for you, once and for all.” I said.  “When a sow has a litter of pigs, she nearly always lies on a few of them, crushing them to death then she eats them, because pigs will eat anything.”
    One of the other women in the group nodded in agreement then told the story of how on their farm, a sow would follow a procession of a mama and baby ducks in order to eat the stragglers.
    “I no longer want a pig farm,” Brenda said.
    “You can thank me later, Bill,” I said.
    When most of us hear the word “nature,” the pictures that spring to mind are of things like beautiful sunsets, calm ocean breezes or baby animals wrestling in tall grass.  Those things do exist, but I tend to lean more toward the P.D. James school of thought: “A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death.  There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city.”
    It’s easy to see the violence in the hedgerow James is referring to just by looking at insects in our own yards.  There are dirt dabbers nests filled with the carcasses of fellow insects ready to be devoured by emerging larvae; the black widow’s web waiting for the unsuspecting fly; and the female praying mantis that pivots her head in order to bite off the head of the male as they are mating.  
    Years ago, long before I understood about nature and her course, I saw my cat crossing under the nearby barbed wire fence with a half-grown rabbit in her mouth.  It was still alive and kicking furiously.  I was horrified, and I wrested the rabbit from the cat’s mouth and held the cat at bay until the rabbit could hop safely away, forgetting that the cat was a mama and that she had a litter of kittens to feed, giving them a taste for wild game and the desire to hunt for themselves one day.  Later that summer, I complained to my husband that the runners on my green beans were being eaten by a pesky rabbit.  Late one afternoon, he lay in wait with a shotgun and killed the rabbit then threw it in a nearby brush pile, where it was devoured by insects then picked to pieces by buzzards, teaching not one feline offspring how to hunt for herself.
    I did grow up on a farm.  I’ve seen bulls attack bulls, dogs attack chickens, chickens attack chickens—the term “pecking order” didn’t stem from someone’s imagination—and horses bite and kick one another.  It is an idealistic concept that puts forth the idea that nature without man’s interference would be a balanced and peaceful place. 
One of our friends stopped by the shop last week and told us about a bazar event that happened when he was turkey hunting.  He had called in a big Tom and as he prepared to shoot the bird, a bob cat came out of nowhere and pounced on the turkey.  It was a fight to behold, the turkey finally freeing itself from the cat’s clutches.  Neither animal paid any mind to the man with the gun. After everything I’ve seen over the course of sixty years, I’ve reached the conclusion that Mother Nature is more akin to Mommy Dearest than she is to Mother Teresa.