Enemies in Combat - Animal Kingdom - Part II

(continued from "Enemies in Combat - Human World - Part I)

Though I declared a no-enemy-zone in the human world, and sided with Boris on the active flee strategy in combat, I have come face to face with the animal kingdom. The animals in question are not those endangered species which I am supposed to protect, like bald eagles and pandas; nor those dangerous species which I shall gladly flee from as with in the human world, like tigers and wolves. The poor animals that I've taken on as my enemy combatants so far are those defenseless, yet somehow know how to damage my garden or scare me off for no reason. They are listed here in an alphabetical order: bugs, carpenter ants, deer, frogs, possum, spiders,...

The number #1 enemy has to be deer. At the height of my scare and self yard defense, I have pointed my BB gun to them, execution style. They are the only type of animals who have evoked me to the degree of gun voilence. Deer are really cute animals, as long as they stay where they belong: the woods, the parks, someone else's gardens..., anywhere but my garden. I used to adore them. Once when my friends and I spotted a few of them at daytime in a campground in Texas, we went on searching for them with our flashlight at night. I used to greet a deer with the same great joy and excitement as I greeted a long-lost friend "Oh my dear (deer)". Not any more! Ever since I moved here, the deer are no longer a novelty species: they are everywhere. During the hunting season, you'd better wear something bright walking in the woods if you don't want to be mistaken as a deer by the deer hunters. Though I despise hunting as sports or entertainment as a whole, when it comes to deer, I sometimes don't have as much sympathy as I should. I beckon you to see things from my point of view. You see, the soil in my yard is clay like. Adding to it, I don't have green thumbs (only yellow thumbs at best). Do you know how hard it was for me to dig a hole, to shuffle the smelly manure into that hole, to water that hole, to wait for the bud finally blooming from that hole, and then one day to wake up seeing the plant being leveled down to the top of that hole? My yellow thumbs reached out to my BB gun. "Deer, consider yourself warned this time. Don't come back again!" I yelled at them. Next time, I repeated the same hole process, and then there were the deer again! They really knew how to test my tolerance. I suspected they were the same deer because they all looked alike (as the Americans say about the Asians in USA, and as the Asians in China say about the Americans). When they were caught red-handed at the crime scene, they carried on with their crime as if they were carrying on with their daily lunch routine. "Who are you? We are having our lunch here" - They raised their heads occassionally, staring at me during their lunch break if I just stood there still, stunned. "I didn't do nothing. What did I do?” - They gave me that innocent look, citing ignorance as their innocent plea if I tried to make a move; “We didn’t steal; We didn’t kill; We just had a decent meal” - They differed with my guilty verdict if I confronted them with rocks. When all those attempts failed me, I FIRED MY BB GUN AT THEM! That worked because they dropped their food and ran. However, after the gundown, I usually found myself apealing for the deer's innocence. One voice says "They are just animals. They don't know better." Another voice says "They must know they were stealing. How could they not?! Even if they didn't know, a crime against humanity cannot be justified on the grounds of ignorance"!

The next tough animals to combat are frogs. Frogs are traditionally considered good animals. They feed on other unlikable insects, some of which are the above mentioned other enemies in combat. I don’t mind frogs if they stay where they belong, such as rice fields, ponds…anywhere but inside my hot tub. Is that too much to ask considering I'm the one who bought the hot tub? In the beginning, I used some tree branches to direct them away. “You, please run away, far away, back as far as the rice fields in China”. A few times, we relocated them in the far-away corner of the other side of the house, thinking we disoriented them enough for them to find a new hiding place. But no, those frogs like the northwest migrating salmon, knew their way back. Next time I opened the hot tub, the same frogs were at exactly the same spot where they were hiding before. It was not that I was against them having a warm comfortable shelter; It was just that the same spot they liked happened to be where my head liked too. Even if I chose to give that spot away to the frogs, and to lay down my head at one of the other three corners, I couldn’t know for sure they won’t jump into the hot water. For their own sake, it was way too cruel. So I wanted them to leave and I also knew I couldn’t let them leave alive. Finally I resorted to the old trick as a co-cospirator: Every time I opened the hot tub cover and saw the frogs, I just screamed and pointed, letting the man in the house decide their fate. I excused my presence during their fateful moments, but I kinda knew what happened to them and where their new hiding place was. From then on, every time I headed to my hot tub, I passed by their new underground hiding place covered with dirt. I couldn't help paying a glance tribute for their sacrifice before I was about to enjoy my relaxing spa experience.

Spiders are the next in line. There were so many of them around the house last year. Like frogs, spiders are considered good insects too. In most instances, their scary appearances make their fate unfortunate to humans. One morning last year, I massacred at least 40 of them on the fence alone with one rock and one shoe. Some of them were the rather ball-shaped fatty ones. Only by killing them, I discovered they were pregnant spiders. As soon as I smashed their outer round bodies to juices, the skinny spiders crawled out. I felt so disgusted, at them for being pregnant with more disgusting spiders, and at myself for killing the would-be moms and the unborn babies. I remembered longing for a long hot water shower to wash away the spider crawling feel on my skin days after that combat.

Even if I have thousands of reasons to declare the above enlisted animals my enemies in combat, by being a meat eater alone, my crimes against animals are ten thousand fold greater than what a few animal species have done to me. If animals are going to seek justice one of these days, I'm really in trouble.

I remember in the movie “Legend of the Fall”, the 2nd son played by Brat Pitt fought with a hungry lion in the jungle and in the end was eaten by the lion. When his father learned about how his most favorite son died, he called it a good death. I think I know why. It was based on the notion that the animal life forms should be respected and appreciated as the equivelent of the human life forms. It was the same reason why the indiginous tribe people used to praise the sacrifice of the animals before they ate their meat. It’s good and only fair that we humans return some of the animals' favors when the time comes.

When I was in the middle of the combat with the enemies from the animal kingdom, I was aware that I was just adding to that unfairness of humans to animals, the way of life on earth.