A few years back, Woody, my favorite dog in the whole world, died at the age of eleven. Honestly, I was mad. I mean flat out, irrationally livid, I loved my dog more than words, and his breed (Miniature Pinsher) had a life expectancy of fourteen. So the way I saw it, I was cheated out of three years of time and memories with my buddy. It didn’t make sense to me. I decided the best way to avoid this horrible pain was to never have another dog..ever!
A little while later, we got a new neighbor behind us who had a dog named Sandy who was a way-crazy, floppy Labradoodle. Sandy was not my favorite kind of dog, and he sure wasn’t Woody. Nonetheless, we occasionally helped our neighbors by watching Sandy and even kept him on extended weekends if they needed to go out of town. For me, it was just a few days with a dog. To my wife, Sandy became a “therapy dog” helping her deal with the loss of Woody.
Then after about 2 years of random dog-sitting, our neighbors asked if we would consider making Sandy a permanent member of our family. They had some family issues that made having a dog, much less a wild floppy dog, difficult––to say the least. Obviously, we agreed, and kept Sandy.
That was like a year and half ago. Over that time, I’ve gotten to know him better and eventually he became my new favorite dog.
One day we were in the back yard of my house when I noticed that a bird had nested in our yard’s smallest tree. Eventually, we began to hear baby bird chirps coming from the nest. After a few weeks, I was in the back yard when I noticed a momma bird dive bombing my head. It was then I noticed her babies in the yard. Apparently, despite their being designed from birth to fly, their home tree was only 48 inches from the ground, which hadn’t given them time to flap their wings and learn. So now two or three of them were jumping up and down chirping for their mom. She, in turn, tried to protect them by attacking the gigantic human seemingly about to hurt them. Ironically, if the mom hadn’t acted so aggressively, I might not have even noticed they were there.
But then guess what? I wasn’t the only one who noticed.
Sandy ran out of the door, straight to some bushes where a lost chick was hiding, but Sandy has a good sniffer. He pounced on the baby bird and grabbed it in his mouth.
“NO!” I yelled at Sandy helplessly.
I grabbed him and tried to coax the bird from his mouth and finally got the bird out, but Sandy was going nuts. I held him back and then out of nowhere, he turned around and BIT ME! Right on my hand. Ouch! It wasn’t a playful nip; he drew blood. He wanted to eat the bird, but I’d gotten in the way. I wrangled him back inside and we set the bird free from our nightmare back yard.
Later, I got to thinking about how much “nature” I had witnessed that morning. The momma bird was trying to protect her babies and did what her instincts, or her ‘nature,’ told her to do. The chicks were chirping and jumping which just drew more attention to them, but they were acting on instinct. Sandy was trying to have a bird sandwich because dogs are opportunists when it comes to feeding. How could I be upset with any of these animals? They were all acting on instinct, and what their ‘nature’ dictated. It all lay at the root of a fundamental need: survival.
So what is it that makes us (people) any different from them (wildlife)? I mean we are all animals, right? Still, we have something that acts like a throttle or filter–as opposed to acting 100% on our instincts and our nature. While our basic nature may center on survival, we have the ability to see a situation and rationalize our reactions. A dog thinks every meal might be their last, so they never pass an opportunity to eat. But as humans, while we might be hungry, we know that dinner is a spatula or phone call away. Based on that, we can make decisions to share, or be compassionate with others, rather than completely driven by our nature to survive. Sometimes the momma bird just needs to keep her beak closed! Sometimes the baby birds just need to lie still. And sometimes, Sandy definitely needs to take a chill pill. I think we could all learn some reactionary behaviors based on the instinctual actions of these animals.
Just because you CAN doesn’t always mean you SHOULD!