¿Quién sabe?

After seeing this video:
http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/town-rattled-by-rattlesnakes/12117510

This family had all the permits to build on their property, and we built it where they wanted it.
After clearing the trees and brush, and digging the footers, I am convinced that we saw burrows of animals that would have fed many snakes, especially a big one.

It was late in the year, I had the best heat-signature in the forest, and I’m sure the recent lack of food had something to do with the snake’s curiosity, and it may have not been specifically following me, but I perceived it that way. I mean, my “friend” did.

I have had many experiences with Western Diamondbacks in Southern California, and I have never had one stick around in an area that I had entered into. The always run, and then run some more if you happen to be headed in the same direction as them. But if they stop, they usually seem pretty angry about being bothered, and they look dangerous enough that I have never stuck around to find out what would happen, but instead, I have altered my course to avoid them, or gone back out the way I came in.
This was the first time running into a snake when I couldn’t easily yell and be heard by neighbors. It was also the first time where it would have effected my job performance had I decided to just go away.
I still regret that the snake died.

All life is valuable. Poisoning, trapping, hunting, and making sport of killing animals really is wasteful, and it can even come back to ‘bite’ us. I don’t think that it is necessary to abstain from eating meat altogether, but a healthier diet is one with low amounts of animal products in it. Animals don’t have the same basic ‘rights’ as humans, they are not equal with us, and I don’t believe we are somehow enemies of Nature, which is why it is our responsibility to use our greater capacities to keep it that way. Limiting ourselves and making compromises is part of being human, some basic principles should never be compromised, but sometimes it makes sense for an individual to forego certain wants and desires, in order to diminish the impact on wildlife, as well as farm animals. We are the humans, we are the only ones with the mandate to be humane.

Making sport out of their deaths makes us LESS human.

Over the millennia, societies’ perceptions of these ethical questions have evolved. I am gald that there are no longer very many people who only eat meat that they knew personally when it was alive, nor have to hunt to find. I like enjoying a delicious meal, being several times removed from the animals that died to make me happy. Not that I like not knowing, but I like having the choice.

I wonder what the future holds, and how society will continue to evolve around these issues. We are not far from being able to grow hamburger in a lab, without it ever having been a part of a cow. There will be ways to make lab-grown meat that is indistinguishable from certain cuts of actual animals. I wonder how long before it is financially feasible, and how many will choose to eat it, instead of farm-raised meat?

Will I ever lament the possible side-effects of my grandkids eating lab-meat, the way my grandfather suspects that never eating the meat of an animal we hunted (or fished) for ourselves is the cause of general “wimpy-ness” among his grandkids?

I wonder.

Okay, honestly, he didn’t tell his wife until that particular house was finished, and he never had to go back, and only after she had been bugging him several times about being careful on distant job-sites, asking him what would happen if he was by himself and something dangerous showed up.

He kept the rattle. (His mother-in-law nearly kicked him out of her house when she came across it, as she was nosing through his belongings.) Served her right, if she really was as terrified by it as she claimed.

Do you mind if I join you at the table?