Not all farm animals are cute and cuddly. Some of the most important animals on any farm can be slightly scary but have vital jobs farmers depend on.

When darkness falls across the farm, many think of cows, pigs, sheep, chickens and goats settling in the barn. But there is also a whole host of others —large and incredibly small animals going about their crucial roles to support the healthy functioning of our farms night and day. While many think of them only as creepy crawlies or predators of the night, the web of life is intricate. You might be astounded to learn more about these beneficial animals that help people and the crops we grow.

Take a farm’s soil, for example. Oozing with organisms—soil is the most biologically diverse part of the Earth. The soil on a farm includes thousands and thousands of beetles, springtails, mites, worms, spiders, ants, nematodes and other organisms. This multitude of soil organisms engineers pathways for rainwater, provides nutrients for plants and breaks down organic matter from previous crops.

These beneficial insects and soil creatures—and bigger predators that patrol the soil surface—provide checks and balances to the food web that makes farms fertile.

What may be most frightening is to imagine a world without these beasties fulfilling their roles on farms.

1. Earthworms

It’s hard to get the warm fuzzies for earthworms. They have no legs. They don’t have eyes or a face, and their bodies stretch like rubber. They secrete a slime—mucus—that helps them slide more easily through the soil. But these faceless fellows can be big friends to farmers.

Earthworms break up hard soil, create tunnels that allow air and water to penetrate better, and bring important minerals to the soil. Most of the 180+ species of earthworms in the U.S. bring great benefits to soil health on farms and can help improve fertilizer efficiency.

Indeed, some non-native species of earthworms can negatively affect the soils in some forests. But when it comes to farms, earthworms are friends. 

2. Millipedes

Their name comes from Latin, meaning “thousand legs.” As it turns out, no known millipede species has a thousand legs. Most top out at several hundred. Although millipedes may look unpleasant, these arthropods (they are not insects) are harmless to humans and are, in fact, very beneficial to farm soils.

Millipedes shred the leftover residue of previous crops—organic matter—and mix it through the soil. This gives smaller soil organisms like fungi and bacteria a greater surface area to work on and speeds the breakdown of the crop residue, ultimately making the soil more fertile. 

3. Ladybugs

Even people afraid of most insects usually aren’t creeped out by ladybugs. But for those with Coccinellidaephobia, a fear of ladybugs, walking through a garden or farm can be terrifying. It makes sense—in nature, red and black is often a sign to stay away. However, these diminutive flying beetles bring huge benefits to farmers and gardeners. Ladybugs are so prized by gardeners and farmers that you can buy them from suppliers!

Why? They’re nature’s perfect pest control. Ladybugs (also known as lady beetles and ladybird beetles) gobble up crop-destroying aphids, one of the most problematic insect pests for farms and gardens. A single ladybug can consume 50-60 aphids daily and thousands over a lifetime. One ladybug can lay hundreds of eggs in a season, and its larvae will eat hundreds of aphids before becoming adults. In addition, ladybugs feed on mites, scales, mealy bugs, thrips and white flies, all of which damage crops.

Another sign of how highly ladybugs are esteemed: they are the official state insect of Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio and Tennessee.

4. Pollinators

As many schoolchildren can tell you, plants need pollinators. Why? A quick refresher: pollen from a plant's male anther needs to be transferred to the female stigma for a plant to reproduce via seeds.

About 87% of flowering plants rely on pollination, and more than 150 food crops in the U.S. That's where pollinators come in. They make the crucial exchange of pollen.

Several species of animals help with pollination, including hummingbirds, butterflies, moths, even flies and wasps. But bees do the heavy lifting, transferring far more pollen than other animals. Although European honeybees and bumblebees are the best-known U.S. bee varieties, our nation harbors more than 4,000 species of bees!

Protecting undeveloped pollinators' habitats, such as wildflower meadows on the edges of farmland, is vital to protect these industrious, fruitful creatures.

5. Spiders

What is it about spiders that unnerves people? Is it their sticky, often hard-to-spot webs, or the way they pounce so quickly when prey is near? Something about spiders unsettles most people. Yet spiders are incredibly beneficial to us.

“If spiders disappeared, we would face famine,” Norman Platnick of New York’s American Museum of Natural History told the Washington Post. “Spiders are primary controllers of insects. Without spiders, all of our crops would be consumed by those pests.”

A study found that more than 600 species of spiders patrol U.S. croplands, keeping crop-eating pests under control. 

6. Coyotes

Though they have a reputation as a pest animal and a nuisance, coyotes are, in fact, a species that can bring benefits to farms.

Coyotes are skilled predators, keeping populations of rodents that can destroy crops—such as rabbits, squirrels, gophers, voles and mice in check. Removing coyotes from an area can cause rodent populations to explode.

While it’s true that coyotes are omnivorous and will sometimes eat fruit, berries and vegetables, 90% of their diet comes from meat. They do not pose a threat to farmers’ crops.

Related to dogs and wolves, coyotes have found a way to coexist with humans and expand their range. Formerly inhabiting the western portion of the U.S., coyotes can now be found in every state except Hawaii and have moved south, far into Central America.

Ranchers sometimes may have a legitimate gripe with coyotes because, in packs, they are capable of attacking and killing livestock. The common solution: good fencing plus the coyote’s cousin, a livestock guard dog or two patrolling the territory.

7. Snakes

Snakes get a bad rap. Many people seem to have an almost visceral aversion to the sinuous reptiles. But snakes are generally shy creatures that avoid human contact.

There are about 50 species of snakes in the U.S., and 20 of those are venomous—but even they shy away from human contact. While snakes are sneaking about our fields and avoiding us, they are preying on gophers, field mice, rats, rabbits and other rodents that damage crops by feeding on them or burrowing into their roots.

8. Skunks

Anyone whose dog has ever been sprayed by a skunk knows: it’s Grade A horrible. No one wants to be anywhere near a skunk. We fear skunks with good reason. But these slow-moving, stinky beasts can bring benefits to farms.

Skunks consume pest insects like caterpillars and grubs, field mice and voles, helping to keep them under control. They also eat berries, leaves and grasses. Beekeepers do not like skunks, however. Because of their thick fur, skunks aren’t deterred by bee stings and will seek out honeybee hives to dine on.

9. Bats

These winged mammals are the poster child for Halloween and have been associated with all things scary at least as far back as Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel Dracula, published in 1897.

Some people fear that, like Dracula, bats will drink their blood. But none of the 40 bat species inhabiting the U.S. drink blood. Three species are nectar feeders that help pollinate desert plants, while most U.S. bats eat insects in abundance. A single insect-eating bat can consume hundreds of pest insects in a night, equivalent to half its body weight. A cave full of thousands of bats can consume literal tons of insects.

Economists have quantified the dollar value of bats’ insect pest control to U.S. agriculture at $23 billion annually.

10. Owls

The banshee screech of an owl can sound supernatural in the pitch blackness of night on a farm, but owls are super-carnivores that benefit farmers significantly.

Owls serve an important role in controlling rodent populations and protecting crops. They are a natural pest defense system as they are highly skilled hunters of the night when rodents and other small mammals are on the move.

With their ghostly night stalking enabled by their giant wingspan, it's no wonder owls are effective carnivores. Owls can eat up to 10% of their body weight in rodents each night. Because hunting is what they do best, they have also been known to prey on snakes, amphibians and invertebrates.

The Fire Burns Bright

A Personal Essay From an Alolan Marowak -Jasper (@irritatedandroid, @irritatedDroid)

Summary: Below the cut, this is a personal essay written by Jasper on his experiences with being an Alolan Marowak fictherian and fictionkind. Personal experience, discussion of awakening, shifts, instincts, animality, culture and spirituality are elaborated on alongside a critical view on community narratives and boundaries.

CWs: In-depth look on death, personal experiences with death

   I find there isn’t enough discussion on the fact that nonhumanity can be approached from multiple different angles and axis, instead treated like a hard binary of animality vs humanity - or if you’re lucky, a two-way spectrum. I’m someone who is nonhuman through and through, but the way in which I can experience being “other” from humanity can shift wildly. A strong sense of animality is brought on when shifted towards my Alolan Marowak fictotype - enough that I tend to strongly identify with the word fictherian. Though that sense of animality is its own thing, and is a wholly separate scale from the nonhumanity I experience when shifted towards my android kintype. But the experiences drawn from being an android could fill an essay of their own. We’re here to discuss the Marowak.

   Both very not human, both very “other”, but a wholly different view upon what it means to be human and not human respectively. And I suspect the scale my Marowak self experiences may be different as well from the scale any given earthen animal may experience. Similar enough to where therianthrope discussion rings loud mental bells of familiarity and understanding, but still something else worth acknowledging. After all, how many earthen animal therianthropes feel the raw instinct of fire breath? Were-dragons however may understand that one well. And yet that animality is not something to be ignored or to set aside entirely even if the axis runs at a slightly off angle in comparison.

   My name is Jasper, and some of you might know me, I’ve been around the community for a couple of years. Some folks even remember the internal grapple with identity and understanding that I had when I started being unable to deny I am an Alolan Marowak. The moment when the Alolan Marowak design was teased, and I had pointed out the familiarity as well as the typing before it was actually shown. There was a moment then when experiences and vague, blurry memories I’d held onto quietly for years without the priority of digging in deeper - as I was already busy with questioning and understanding my android kintype - became an absolute priority of mine to understand further.

   I often half-joke about how my “awakening” as discussed in nonhuman communities was completely rocky, as it was. It was less a solid awakening, and more multiple years of slowly accepting and embracing aspects of my life that had always been present, which I had denied either to ease my own responsibility to myself or to appease others. Folks in the community may recall seeing me step into denial, and to substitute in any possible reptilian, fire-based creature I could in order to try and understand the experiences. Because how could I be a Pokemon? I’d been critical of fictionkin while diving into the community, something which when looking back was likely a compensation for already having been something odd and to be met with criticism - the android. I ran through a number of species when questioning: everything from earthen lizards, to draconic entities, to the elemental spirits of salamanders.

   There were multiple aspects absolutely vital to communicating what I was experiencing, those being a) instinct-driven and wild, reptilian, and b) inherently connected to the elements of fire and spirit. My thoughts could be as unflattering as a scavenger’s instinct, growing frustrated at any leftover food or uncleaned-up animal remains (which sure made living in a populated city interesting, with abandoned scraps of food everywhere and the leftovers of unfortunate urban creatures who tried their luck at crossing Yonge Street), or curious to try and make a meal for myself out of the live insects I keep to feed to my own little old leopard gecko, Saleen. Yes, she was named after a car. No, that is not important. Having her around does however provide an up close frame of reference to draw out my own lizard drives. In terms of food instincts, raw eggs are absolutely another tempter of mine, as my carnivorous scavenger self would have been ecstatic to see a nest of unattended eggs to make a meal of. As I’ve learned due to that raw eggs absolutely suck, please cook them. It’s much better that way. But embarrassing nonhumanity stories will always be embarrassing.

   Some of us Marowak - especially the males like myself - could become quite territorial. And that territorial feeling is something I’ve had to settle in my mind over life. Nowadays it’s decently well integrated, but it does now and then try my patience especially when it comes to setting out what is for me and what belongs strictly to me. Renting a small apartment in a populated city, once again, does definitely force you to keep the “this land is mine and it belongs to me, so screw off before you chase off my dinner” thoughts in check. A bit of human humbling for an animal’s self thought. I’ve of course needed to remind myself a number of times that the tourists in the train station on my way to work, while annoying, won’t manage to chase off the Tim Hortons I’ll be eating on my break.

   But in the wild frontier of the Pokemon world, predator and prey dynamics were absolutely important to know and understand - and those dynamics reach beyond game mechanics such as elemental types and abilities. Even as a carnivore, scavenger and troublesome predator that I was when I reached the age of a full-grown Marowak, I still was in a dangerous spot on the food chain. The worst predators I’ve had to deal with while working to survive in my ecosystems were other Fire types, intriguingly. Even as a small Ground type Cubone. The fact that Cubones wear the skull of their lost mothers was something I am familiar with, my own having been taken down by a Charizard. This natural order of predation is both a major part of my animalistic experiences as a Marowak, but also did tie into my more sophisticated or spiritually-focused aspects that stemmed from my Pokemon identity and lifetime.

   All of this lead to an animality-focused time in figuring out what I was, to the point where when I was in denial of the possibility of being a Pokemon, I identified myself as a theriomythic, fire-oriented reptile. And the animality definitely tends to lead the discussion upon how I live and experience being an Alolan Marowak. I sometimes joke that you could strip that side of my life down to the bare essentials and I’d be a lizard hanging out by a campfire. Though it certainly isn’t every aspect of me, as the Marowak.

   At times I think on the term theriomythic, and how it could be extremely valuable in describing more than just “animal but from myth”, but to also communicate experiencing the self on a spectrum of animality and mythicality. In my case this spectrum is very much there, and the aspects of experience that make up me as the Marowak are scattered along it. All aspects are important to me and how I live as myself, as well as how I understand my own fictional animality and nonhumanity.

   The Marowak, despite being a wild animal in how I recall and experience my species, do have a displayed aspect of culture and even spirituality. Setting aside the fictional wildness of being able to summon up fire at will to defend one’s turf, we’re shown to be able to interact comfortably with each other when it comes time for rituals, such as fire dancing at the sun rise and to mourn the lost. Mourning the lost is a large part of how one can experience being the Marowak as well, as it’s a pretty integral part of the species’ canon lore, starting from when we’re little baby Cubones. For those unfamiliar with Pokemon lore, a Cubone wears the skull of its dead mother Marowak. Adorning bones in a sort of ritual to mourn is something that I can’t say I’ve seen an earthen animal do. If you have then please do let me know, because it interests me a lot. But all I can say about it in my own drives and thoughts is that it’s just what we do, it’s cultural. To cite the Pokedex, “MAROWAK is the evolved form of a CUBONE that has overcome its sadness at the loss of its mother and grown tough. This POKéMON’s tempered and hardened spirit is not easily broken” (Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, 2002).

   The donning and weaponizing of bones is both symbolic and an act of mourning, but also an example of tool using similar to some of our world’s apes. The Pokedex talks of this vaguely, stating “It has been seen pounding boulders with the bone it carries in order to tap out messages to others” (Pokemon Gold, 1999). The various Pokedex entries theorize on where the bone clubs come from, some entries mentioning a graveyard specifically for Marowak existing in the world, where Cubone and Marowak get their bones. Some entries state this like fact, such as Pokemon Crystal, meanwhile others bring up this as a rumour, such as Pokemon Silver. In my experience, it’s a rumour. I’ve not seen a Marowak graveyard, my bone club first came from my mother. But the main referenced use of the bone club is as a weapon, and also as a method of overcoming grief and turning to viciousness. “It is small and was originally very weak. Its temperament turned ferocious when it began using bones.” (Pokemon X, 2013). In my case, the symbolic use of them is as a tool of war, transforming grief into a vicious will to fight on and survive. Due to this, I hold bones and particularly skulls as a sacred object and have my small collection of skulls I keep as comfort objects. With time, having a large femur bone similar in shape is a life goal.

   Though it does then get taken a step further, when peering in through the eyes of an Alolan variant Marowak. A spirituality that incorporates the dead and lost is brought in and becomes an extra step of important, crediting the Ghost type aspect alongside the Fire. Newer Pokedex entries focused on specifically this variant states “The bones it possesses were once its mother’s. Its mother’s regrets have become like a vengeful spirit protecting this Pokémon” (Pokemon Sun, 2016) and “It has transformed the spirit of its dear departed mother into flames, and tonight it will once again dance in mourning of others of its kind” (Pokemon Let’s Go, 2018). Spiritual awareness is very much accepted to be something that the Alolan Marowak possess and engage with openly, even building monuments to the lost as stated in the Generation 7 Pokedex entry: “Its custom is to mourn its lost companions. Mounds of dirt by the side of the road mark the graves of the Marowak” (Pokemon Moon, 2016).

   Culturally there is a lot to the Marowak’s experience, comparing and including both Alolan and Kantonian variants of the species. The species as I remember are mostly solitary but I do recall clan dynamics and groups especially among the Alolan variant. These groups were less for survival and more for the purpose of those ritual gatherings, mentioned above. At times I was very foreign to these clans, being a Kanto-born Cubone evolved in Alola (a fact supported in canon and proven in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon via the ability to evolve a Kanto Marowak in Ultra Space). Behaviorally and culturally there are differences between Kanto and Alolan Marowak, brought on by how each looks at their situation differently. While an Alolan Marowak processes mourning in a more spiritual way, a Kanto Marowak becomes hardened by anger. “A MAROWAK is the evolved form of a CUBONE that has grown tough by overcoming the grief of losing its mother. Its tempered and hardened spirit is not easily broken,” (Pokemon Emerald, 2004). Because of this there was a separation between myself and the local Marowak that reinforced my solitary nature, and also influenced my introverted and almost outright nomadic nature in my current life and self. The fire dance under the sunrise was one known in canon. These rituals and dances are a custom humans in canon have taken notice to, and can even speculate the reasoning for. “This Pokémon sets the bone it holds on fire and dances through the night as a way to mourn its fallen allies” (Pokemon Sword, 2019). The fact that that cultural dynamic prevailed even through the difficulty of communicating is something that may be surprising, but a number of nonhumans know well that body language and tone of animal vocalizations can go a long way in communicating

   Ignoring these experiences would be a step towards cutting down and denying important experiences that affect me as a fictherian and as a Marowak. There’s important parts of how I experience being this Pokemon that are heavily grounded in a context of a mystical world where visibly potent acts of fantasy are possible unlike the world we are living in here. Some of these aspects can be emulated in more subtle ways through exploration of spirituality, religion and the occult. To dive deeper into that, I used to identify as Pagan, however now I practice what is called chaos magic. Chaos magic is a magical practice that developed in England in the 1960’s, working off of Austin Osman Spare’s occult practice and ideas. Chaos magic gave me an approach and freedom to incorporate what I know and remember as an Alolan Marowak into my every-day spirituality. Tailoring my spiritual beliefs and practices to focus on working with the element of fire, with spirits and the energy of death, bones, and to the very fabric of fiction crossing over into reality was extremely important as an avenue for me to explore the way my fictotype affects me in the modern day, and in the human body. This practice also gave me a bit of freedom to accept working with an entity from my source - Giratina - as a patron deity in pagan circles, which ultimately proved to be extremely valuable in exploring my own Pokemon identity. Practices like energy work, meditation, spirit work and visualization hit close to satisfying that need to be delved into the magical world we see in animation. And yet, even in these more sophisticated and fantastical experiences lie links back to the animality and to an inherent disconnect to humanity.

   One thing I always enjoy in therianthrope and non-humanoid otherkin discussions is an openness to discuss the instincts that are ugly, disturbing or outside of what one’s human morals would ever agree with in this life and time. And in a lot of cases these instincts and memories can become a lot more “ugly” than a scavenger’s drive to eat carcasses or the awareness and cynical eye needed to survive in a completely wild world. At times, a wild creature can have defense mechanisms or behaviors that to our human minds would seem outright malicious. And Pokemon, even in the whimsical canon, are no exception to that. Once again I’ll drag up a few Pokedex entries - as honestly the Pokedex is a wonderful thing for exploring the deeper aspects of a wild Pokemon - to illustrate my point. “When it beats opponents with its bone, the cursed flames spread to them. No amount of water will stop those flames from burning,” (Pokemon Ultra Moon, 2017) and “The cursed flames that light up the bone carried by this Pokémon are said to cause both mental and physical pain that will never fade” (Pokemon Shield, 2019).

   Yes, even the fun and magical world of Pokemon is no stranger to wild animals who inflict effects upon others that seem absolutely awful, and in some cases cruel. But, that’s survival in the animal kingdom, or in this case the Pokemon kingdom. It can be surprising to some that a person who’s fictotype hails from the fun and upbeat franchise that defined a number of childhoods may be hardened to the need to survive in a natural world. The things I know I had done to creatures who my childhood Pokemon fan self would have only wanted to hug, at least at a baseline mental state. In a shift, that’s a different story after all.

   But ultimately, this blend of experiences causes an interesting time in exploring myself within the general nonhuman community as it can be quite split up. Certain narratives of individual communities I can’t find myself fitting into, or find myself sitting in between. I settle into spaces focused on everything from therianthropy, to mythical otherkinity, and to fictionkinity, though there’s narratives and cultural aspects in every separated community that either are foreign to me or that I might confront as they expect clear-cut boxes between them which individuals can fit into. In therianthrope communities I’ve been one to criticize the expectation of a solid line between human and animal experiences, or in general animal vs non-animal with regards to forcing a further divide from the otherkin community. I’ve also been involved in discussion criticizing therian community narratives such as a shifting focus and the model of integration. The model of integration is interesting to me, as I experienced it in a way that I was unaware of at the time, particularly with my android kintype. My android kintype is almost fully integrated into me - I barely shift at all at least mentally. However my Marowak fictotype provides less integration, and my mental shifting will be a lot more noticeable against my baseline self. At times it can be as stark as appearing like a different person, or more accurately like a wild animal. But ultimately the differences in the closeness of each kintype draws up issues for me with the integration model, as well as having found it normalized a severe mental health issue I had with my traumagenic plurality at the time of “least integration”.

   The therianthrope community is far from the only community with narratives that put a barrier between me and relating, especially as members of each community push for further separation between individual branches of nonhuman experience and identity. I have trouble relating to humanoids when heavily shifted towards my Marowak self, and that puts a bit of a barrier between myself and the otherkin community’s more humanoid side - such as elven, fae, divine, angelic, etc. - as well as the fictionkin community’s focus on humanoid or completely story-driven fictionkind. I have no use for prioritized experiences within the fictionkin community such as finding canon-mates and creating aesthetics. Even in some Pokemon fictionkin specific communities I find I cannot relate often. My experience with my “Pokemanity” is heavily wild and animal-based as I was never caught, socialized with a human, or trained. In no way shape or form is my Pokemanity adjusted to interaction with humans, nor is it something that is settled down or subdued for human consumption unlike what my source was created for.

   In both otherkin, therian and even fictionkin communities there is a push towards prioritizing the narrative of a solid awakening. That’s one more focus in the communities that I struggle with, as like I said before, mine was a process of accepting bits of myself which spanned multiple years. Every part of me that is nonhuman has always been present within my life, though for almost two decades muted heavily.

   To draw back into my spiritual practice here, consider a practice known as shadow work. Shadow work is a practice that hybridizes spirituality and psychology, and describes the process of becoming aware of one’s shadow (the id, shadow archetype, or shadow aspect drawn from Carl Jung’s psychology) and working to integrate it into oneself by accepting the repressed parts of oneself that are pushed back and merged into the shadow. The shadow can be known as the unknown dark side of the personality, and I theorize that more nonhumans have undesirable aspects of their nonhumanity pushed onto their shadow than they might think they do, like I had done to my own Pokemanity for a number of years. In my case, I was slightly forced to tear into and meet my shadow aspects of my nonhumanity due to the fact that even upon immediately breaking into nonhuman communities, the specifics of what I was were already viewed with hostility and disbelief. In a way, it strengthened me. But with my shadow opened wide and not much held back, I can be a bit of a fire-starter in spaces where I speak my mind whether others want to hear it or not. And part of that is directly confronting the forced separation of animal vs non-animal, or the arbitrary ideas of what is a human experience and what is not.

   I can only best put forward my experience as a Pokemon through in-depth discussion, which I find tends to come across better in spaces where the experience of being by-and-large a feral animal is allowed without restraint. Ultimately a space I will thrive in most and be most open about my experiences and life as someone who is spiritually and psychologically an Alolan Marowak is one where I can discuss both my animality, my experience with fiction, my spiritual practice and the combination of these things that seem to be pushed into separate boxes. The Marowak serves a lot to my sense of self and to my life, and has psychological affects on me as well. It’s been a part of me that has fought through and survived when my life hit a rocky start early on, witnessing the death of my brother in childhood, and having loss and grief be present all around as I grew. The Marowak is both an inherent part and vital context in my life, as well as a symbol of my own endurance.

   Through it all, the fire burns bright.

Citations

Marowak POKÉDEX: Stats, MOVES, evolution & locations. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2021, from https://pokemondb.net/pokedex/marowak

Chryssides, George D. (2012). Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements (2 ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-8108-6194-7.

Jung, C.G. 1938. "Psychology and Religion." In Psychology and Religion: West and East, Collected Works of C.G. Jung 11. p. 131

Roberts, Gwilym Wyn, and Andrew Machon. 2015. Appreciative Healthcare Practice: A guide to compassionate, person-centred care. M&K. ISBN 1907830936. p. 71.

On Lord Hawthorne

A lot of what makes Lavender Jack special to me is the way it’s so masterfully able to create engaging, modern material out of it’s influences, and it’s creation of a genuinely timeless pulp icon that I think should serve as the ideal baseline for any and all creators who want to create stories based on pulp characters, old and new alike, in the future. 

As I make my way through Season 2 and eagerly await Season 3 I’d like to take the time to talk a little about the often overlooked half of the villain duo of Season 1, Lord Hawthorne, and what I think is interesting about him. Out of the many ways pulp heroes have been reimagined into villains over the decades, Lord Hawthorne stands out to me as easily one of the best ones, as a thoughtful take on the Tarzan character.

Spoilers before the cut

The first thing everyone immediately picks about Lord Hawthorne is that he’s Tarzan, with hardly any ifs or buts about it. He’s Tarzan, and we quickly learn that he’s the villain, part of a villain duo with Lady Hawthorne, the real mastermind and kingpin in pearls behind the story’s events. Having Tarzan as the villain n a story that draws from pulp and Edwardian fiction is already an interesting start, as three of the most popular molds from which are pulp heroes are based on, three of the most popular characters as icons, are Tarzan, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Sherlock Holmes, all three of which exist in some capacity in the world of Lavender Jack. The Gentleman Villain, The Great Detective, and The Wild Man.

Lavender Jack, as I’ve mentioned, is based on the Pimpernel, as well as other figures such as Spring-Heeled Jack and Bertie Wooster. Jack draws from icons that largely predate the pulp heroes because, in Schkade’s own reasoning, if you’re going to try and create an authentic pulp hero, it only makes sense to use as a base the characters that largely inspired them, and clearly that worked out very well. Jack is a Pimpernel remodeled and recontextualized into modern sensibilities, into an era of superheroes and webcomics.

In the Great Detective’s case, we have the figure of Madame Theresa Ferrier, who is called into the story by the Mayor to try and solve the mystery of Lavender Jack’s identity. Schkade describes Ferrier as a character that pulls from elements of detectives like Hercule Poirot and C.Auguste Dupin as well as Sherlock Holmes, in particular Jeremy Brett’s later year performances. As he describes:

In the series’ final years, Brett was getting older, sicker, hindered by bipolar medications that sapped his energy and caused him to gain weight, and he used it. His Holmes became a fading, melancholic shadow of his younger self, but with the spark of his brilliance showing through when it counted. I always found that so compelling

Ferrier is repeteadly described in-universe as “The Great Detective”, and she is both the oldest as well as the most brilliant character in the comic. Despite her age, despite her physical complications, and the tragedy that surrounds her love life, she is nonetheless incredibly skilled, strong and resourceful, able to unmask Jack and survive a confrontation with Lord Hawthorne and even nearly beat him. Ferrier draws from the Great Detectives of old, but this is a character that could never be mistaken for any of them. She’s not specifically based on any of them because, as Schkade puts it: “I wanted her to be someone I’d never get to draw in a leading role in most of my work-for-hire jobs”. 

Her role in the comic ends up being one of mentorship to Jack, and despite her age being emphasized as well as the idea of her belonging to an older generation of great heroes that now gives way to the younger and hot-blooded Jack as well as Ferrier’s new partner in Honoria Crabb, Ferrier is very much another great example of where the old meets the new in Lavender Jack. Pulling from the great old archetypes but very much recognizable as her own thing. 

Thing is, when it comes to Lord Hawthorne, we don’t really get that, because Lord Hawthorne isn’t really combining the idea of Tarzan with a splash of something new and outstanding and modern. He really is just Tarzan, and not a terribly layered character at that, for much of the story he’s largely just a voiceless bulldozer who exists to do the dirty work of Lady Hawthorne no matter how dirty. This isn’t at all a criticism, because I think Hawthorne being just Tarzan, with little to no bells and whistles and twists on it, is central to what makes him work not just as a great physical threat Jack must overcome (in a similar way to Bane as both a monstrous powerhouse and also having a strong connection to a powerful pulp hero), but also someone whose tragedy comes to light as we finally learn more about him. The fact that he is monosyllabic and largely devoid of any personal interests or life outside of being muscle for Lady Hawthorne is something deliberate, as outlined in a speech given by another character in Chapter 39

Her world's been changing for years, now. She's taking her place in a wider game. A more nuanced game. And you're still...Why, you're only good for one thing, aren't you? Well, maybe two, you old hound, you.

I know why you spend vast stretches of the year off in that jungle. It's not for sport, it's not to keep your edge...it's because when there's no need to fight, no struggle to win, no enemy...there's just...you.

And you know there's not really anything to you, underneath all those scars and muscles.

No dreams, no warmth, no depth. Nothing to love.

So you stay away...and that way, you can come when she calls you. You can sweep back to Gallery and show up all filthy and draw her into your powerful, savage embrace....and maintain your novelty.

All of this so you'll never have to endure a silent sunday afternoon where there's nothing to do, any no one to kill, and your lady simply...doesn't...need you.

You do know this word, don't you, Hawthorne, old fellow? "Novelty?"

And how does he respond?

Not with a denial, but an affirmation that this is ultimately all personhood amounts to, in his worldview. Just one more thing to be conquered and then used as a club to batter others with. 

The very act of a character questioning their own worth and depth of personality usually tends to be a telling sign that they, in fact, have those things even if they are out of touch with them, but Hawthorne doesn’t particularly rebuff anything Van Lund’s saying. He just reaffirms his title as Lord while threatening him with violence, because violence is all he knows. 

As we later learn, Lord Hawthorne isn’t, in fact, the real Lord Hawthorne, but instead he and his wife usurped the title from the real one as they escaped from the jungle, where he was only known as “the wild man”. A man who’s been forced his entire life to live in a kill-or-be-killed world, to live as an animal in constant conflict with humans, was then captured and then brutally tortured every day for over a month, and then found for the first time someone who treated him with something resembling affection, someone who ultimately turned him into a tool for her evil designs, and he readily accepts this because he has no life, no identity, outside of her. He doesn’t even know his own name.

In fact, for all we know, he might as well be John Clayton himself, except he was born in a world where being Tarzan is not the greatest thing ever and there was no Jane or ape mother to guide his malleable heart into something resembling good, and there was only Sarah to mold him into an instrument of murder at his lowest point.

I argue that Tarzan is a character that’s all about freedom and vitality, as a heroic take on an archetype that’s long been the missing link between superheroes and monsters, where the dual nature of mankind between person and ape acts not as a disorder or source of conflict but instead as the ultimate power fantasy in a character who gets the best of both with none of the downsides. Lord Hawthorne isn’t necessarily a return to form, because there is no dual nature to him. There is no gentleman, no Lord Greystoke descendant of nobility, romantic hero and great adventurer and leader of men and whatnot. There is only the ape, and what little façade has been grafted onto him by his master so he can pass off as a person, only long enough until he takes his shirt off and starts murdering people for her. While we get long extended close-ups of the icy cruelty in Lady Hawthorne’s eyes, there is none for Lord Hawthorne, because he is not cruel, he is an animal. He’s not a fighter, he’s a survivor. He lives to kill and serve the person who tells him who or what to kill. 

Lord Hawthorne is what happens when you strip the Tarzan legend of the romanticism of fiction and you look at it for what it would likely result in: the tragic story of a child forced to grow in the jungle, where the concept of personhood and human decency are utterly meaningless and there is only survival, where his existence is at odds with the worlds of man and animal alike, and what happens when that sort of being receives a first contact with something resembling decency and love. Even if said first contact wasn’t with someone as evil as Lady Hawthorne, there was little chance Lord Hawthorne’s life was ever going to be anything other than just an extension of his life in the jungle, or end in anything other than tragedy, and ultimately even the characters start to pity the wild man.

Jack: All that power and stamina and fighting acumen, but yet all you seem to get to use it for is...this. Another laborious climb to another locked-room murder.

Ferrier: You've long passed the point where human lives hold any meaning. You are detached from our species, a...a stranger, loose among us. I thought the sight of you would stir distain in me, or even fear...but as I look at you now...I feel for you only the strangest sort of pity.

What I like most about Lord Hawthorne as a take on Tarzan is that, far too often, we see intended “deconstructions” or reinterpretations of the classic pulp heroes, or even superheroes, that largely just make them villainous by extrapolating the worst possible interpretations of the character’s traits or real-life circumstances around them to villainize them, or outright invent faults and problems that weren’t there in the source material, usually to put one character over the other. The entirety of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is built on this, as is a lot of Superman parodies built on getting the most graphically shocking results possible. 

I'll admit it’s somewhat hypocritical of me to criticize this entirely, because it’s an impulse that I sadly admit I myself have fallen into in my own writings on characters not my own, as anyone who’s ever talked with me about Doc Savage, a character I do not like and cannot bring myself to like, can testify. I get why this happens, even if I understand why it’s shitty. Ultimately, the best “deconstructions” or reinterpretations will always come from people who are best familiar with the material they are using and know exactly the best ways to twist it, like with Mark Waid’s Irredeemable, an Evil Superman comic written by a huge Superman fan who knows exactly the absolute worst ways a Superman character can go sour, and was leagues ahead of works like The Boys and Brightburn who largely just take the “easy” pot shots. 

With Lord Hawthorne, we get a character who’s an evil take on Tarzan, but whose evilness isn’t made from exaggerating or adding faults to the source material character, which could very easily be done. I never got the sense that the author hates Tarzan and wants everyone to hate Tarzan and is willingly to sacrifice immersion just to get across how much he hates Tarzan (again, something LOEG does way too often), in fact it really doesn’t matter how the author feels about Tarzan, because those feelings are irrevelant to what’s on the page. 

Instead, Lord Hawthorne is an evil take on Tarzan whose characterization is largely based on just looking at the source material, the character’s origins, and extrapolating the circumstances in which that could go sour. What would a “wild man” forced to grow up and fight for survival every day in the jungle look like, what would that person look like when making it’s first contact with human affection, how could that person be twisted and manipulated into becoming a villain, what’s even left to that person outside of violent action scenes. How little it would take to twist a childhood hero into a brute that murders old women in their hospital beds, just by tweaking a few details about the context surrounding him. 

He is not a caricature of Tarzan, he’s not a parody, he is just Tarzan, but no longer the power fantasy. No longer the center of fantastical adventures. No longer getting the best of both worlds, but instead having to contend with the worst of them. Ultimately only finding some dignity in death, with his nemesis expressing hope that, maybe somewhere else, he’s going to have better luck than what this world afforded him.

All is fair in Love & War - 10

Pairing: Loki x reader Content: 2 tablespoons of angsting, 1 tablespoon pining, hints of citrus, and a gallon of girlpower A/N: A special thanks to you wonderful people who comment on the chapters. Your sweet words are fuel for me and I love you all!

10. The King and the Spy

Returning to your homeland is not as simple as you first had expected because you need to enter the country relatively unseen but with enough pomp and prestige to be noticed upon arrival in Sjöblik.

Why?

There are two viable ways to gain access to the court in Midgard while having a chance to listen in on the people in power. One is through subterfuge where no one knows of your presence, but that would require a small and trustworthy number of allies already in place – people willing to harbour a criminal although it may cost them their own lives in case things go wrong. Another way, the one Loki deems the safest, is for you to take the role of a noble lady who has come from far away in the hopes of establishing an alliance between the two countries. It is vital for the cover to be irrefutable in order for this scheme to be anywhere near possible, and so he has arranged for meetings and called in favours abroad.

At least he’s coming with me. Dressed for the cold weather and wrapped in furs, you are pressed against Loki’s chest as Magni gallops across the snowy landscape towards the mountains in the horizon to the west. Behind them lies Asgard which is where the next part of your quest will be set in motion.

Although the steed is faster than any normal horse, the journey takes weeks. Time that is spent jostled about with few ways to alleviate the grinding tediousness as Loki squeezes every hour possible out of the day to travel in. The stops are few and short, even at night when the king shows how well he is suited to the kingdom as he finds shelter from the coldest winds.

It is not the weather that makes you tremble, though. Although you do your best to keep eyes on the target and contemplate any line of action, it does little to distract your thoughts from the fact that the two of you will have to part with no guarantee of seeing one another again. Perhaps your former captor feels the same. At least he holds you tight and murmurs soothing words when sleep does not come easily until he finally places a hand upon your face, willing a dreamless rest to lull you.

And then one day, the mountains are no longer in the distance. Instead they rise tall and impenetrable before you as proof of why this range has been the natural border for thousands of years. Of course, Magni and his master are undeterred, plowing uphill and weaving through the jumble of crags and cliffs hinting at how often they must have come this way before. This is madness. The mountains near your home-village were not near as grand as these, but already they had been dangerous during the winter due to the snow above the treeline. These? These are giants in comparison and the winters here are clearly not to be trifled with, meaning that it would be suicide to attempt crossing them.

You open your mouth to say as much, ready to yell against the howling wind, when silence engulfs you. No snow is whipping about, not even a breeze is stirring the silken strands of the horse’s mane. The last turn has brought you all inside a cave partially shielded by large cliffs like jagged teeth which now protects anyone inside from the rage of the elements. You cannot see how far the haven reaches into the stony heart of the mountain, but it sounds as though it may be much further than you are sure you are comfortable with.

“It is no cave, my dear. This passage is ancient, and I am one of few who knows of its existence,” Loki explains calmly as he lifts you off the horse, “I have told my brother of it and he will meet us hallway through…but we have to walk from here on.”

Swiftly the bit of gear is moved from the horse’s back to yours and Loki’s. Magni is already tripping by the time it is done, eager to get out of the dark confines…but not before headbutting you affectionately in return for scratches between the ears. Then the horse is gone, leaving the place colder or quieter.

Even with your eyes used to the dark it is hard to make out much else than dark shades in a lightless void, and you are grateful for Loki’s hand which finds yours and begins to guide you further away from the entrance. Carefully, he leads you over the uneven stone, to where the walls come creeping in until you can hear the echo of your heartbeat which is much too fast for your own liking. And just as you are about to stop, sure that you can go no longer in this emptiness, a green light appears in midair suspended as an orb above the god’s fingertips. It is not strong, but enough to keep the darkness away and to show which way to go, where to place your feet. Best of all, it illuminates the figure that you find yourself trusting more than the king you went to war for.

…

There is no time under the mountains to prove the days slipping away. No sun or moon or stars to show which direction you travel in. It is just Loki and you in an eternity of silence which is only broken by the hushed voices of either you or him – it is too loud to speak normally. Sometimes, there is the distant gurgle of a stream or the dripping for stalactites. It is not all bad, though. There is no freezing winds, no snow that weighs your clothes as it begins to melt, and you have in fact been able to shed a few of the restrictive layers which in turn has had another effect. When the two of you lay down to rest, Loki’s long fingers are able to find ways past the fabrics and furs. Every inch of your body feels his caresses as both of you remove the clothes piece by piece, wanting more than each can give safely and greedily accepting what there is to take.

Then comes the moment when faint voices whisper through the tunnel, making you tense until Loki smiles encouragingly in the light of the green orb. It is part of the plan. There is nothing to fear. And soon you come face to face with a broad man who is smiling jovially as he embraces Loki under the light of torches. Blond hair is tied back, reddish beard rumbling with laughter that stands in stark contrast to the powerful body threatening to dwarf anything in the vicinity. Thor. They look nothing alike, but then they wouldn’t ‘cause they’re adoptive brothers, you admonish yourself seconds before your hand disappears in a huge fist.

“Lady [Y/N],” Thor beams, brushing your knuckles with his lips, “your courage is valued in Asgard an Jotunheim alike. Come! The rest of the journey will not be as tedious!”

The words are undoubtedly not meant as an offense, yet you see Loki bristle and decide to stay close to him to keep him at ease while following his brother past a few bends of the tunnel until reaching a wider path. It appears to have been hewn and a few torches are hanging in the ancient sconces. There would probably be quite a bit to learn from studying the surroundings, but your attention is caught by the vessel. It’s a longboat. But it is more than that…or something else. You are unsure mainly because it apparently is suspended a foot or two above the dusty floor with no visible ropes keeping it there. Both men are tossing the luggage on board without paying attention to how you are taking in the sigh with your mouth gaping. It’s impossible. You have seen magic at work before, so you know what is going on even though Loki’s tricks pale in comparison to this.

“Are you ready?” The green eyes full of concern and a tad amusement manage to capture yours.

“Yes.”

You allow him to help you on board, nestling you snugly between furs before he too finds a seat with his arm wrapped around you. Thor seems content to be given the position by the tiller. At least he grins and blinks before palming a globe inserted in the transom, launching the longboat into a mad speed which makes you want to scream and close your eyes. Instead you keep watching straight ahead, praying to anything and anyone you can think of that the maniac will not get you all killed. Gentle fingers brush away stray hair that has been plastered onto your face by the wind before cupping your cheek coolly. This time you welcome the darkness without objection.

…

A bath and a warm meal have done wonders, but the confidence is faltering as you follow the two brothers through the grand halls of Valhalla towards the throne room where Odin supposedly is waiting for you. This was not part of the deal. You swear under your breath as you try to smoothen the green dress, fighting against the flowy material that does nothing to insulate against the air...but then, why should it?

You had slept through most of the journey, only waking occasionally to eat or refresh yourself by the streams you passed as you headed towards the fabled City of Gold (a name you preferred over the actual meaning “Hall of the Dead Warriors”). Each time you woke, the changes in the landscape were monumental as the snow diminished to give room for what looked like an eternal summer. Warm air would waft gently against your skin, carrying on it the scent of flowers and fertile earth. Everywhere was an abundance of life whether it be wild or bent to the will of the inhabitants sowing the fields, tending to the cattle.

Even here in the castle can you hear the distant birds singing playfully, adding a soothing background to the already calm surroundings although neither seem to affect you much. You are dressed like a noblewoman, on your way to meet a king from fables that have been told since before your grandmother was born because Asgardians (and Jötun, you are beginning to suspect) live much longer lives than your kind. How long has Loki lived? The thought morphs in your mind. Just like it is the case with Odin, the stories of Loki predates your own birth even though he looks about the same age as yourself. How long will he live? Glancing up at his chiseled face, you realize the implications – he will outlive you.

Maybe he feels your gaze because he turns to meet your eyes, a wry smile upon his lips. “Odin is old and wise. Do not be fooled by his appearance…he sees and hears much more than you would suspect.”

The king of Jotunheim looks away, dragging your attention along to an enormous set of doors which the guards on duty open without any questions.

The hall beyond is larger than any you have seen before with grand pillars and gold inlaid patterns depicting plants, and creatures locked in eternal battle against fierce warriors. It is with a certain smugness that you notice both men and women in the decorations – no one here attempts to subdue their female counterparts. The same seems to be true for the guards stationed with regular intervals by the walls on either side as you walk behind the brothers who have taken the lead. You wish it were possible to reach for Loki’s hand, but you know this is neither the time nor place for it and settle instead for the safety of the human wall walking in front of you.

Unfortunately, it means that you are unprepared for the sight that awaits you. Thor and Loki bow lightly before stepping aside which is your cue to kneel, but you nearly forget as the scene is revealed: upon the dais is an entire group that surround the golden throne on which Odin sits. He seems old, though by no means weakened. A single steel-blue eye pins you to the place, giving the sensation of seeing into your very soul in a similar way that Loki’s green orbs has done time and time again. As you sink to the floor, you fight to look only at the colourful stones beneath even if you sense the two shadows descending the steps to circle you.

“Father,” Thor’s voice booms through the hall, “this is [Y/N  Y/L/N], the former Midgardian soldier whom Loki has harboured and helped see reason.”

A soft snout grazes your cheek, the breath from it warm and mingling with the smell of dog, and you do your best to ignore it. To supress the shiver running down the spine. Then Loki steps nearer and the creatures move away, allowing you to release the air that has been sticking in your lungs.

“A defector, and one who is willing to actively work against her king.” My king’s not in Midgard, but you do not openly contradict Odin. “Tell me, why should I believe your claim?”

Why don’t you believe Loki? “Your highness…” A low chuckle from Loki makes you pause, but no one else has heard him. “I suppose that…that I’ve no intention to convince you, king Odin. All I can do’s explain the life I’ve had and how my understanding of…the Midgardian incursion and the deceit of my people has brought me to make this decision.”

Cool fingers stroke your shoulder briefly as a way of letting you know that your answer is acceptable. Thus emboldened, you are able to face the king (the All-Father) when he asks you to and the questioning can begin.

…   LOKI’s PoV   …

It is hard to watch Odin’s wolves, Geri and Freki, circle the poor girl without stepping in to protect her, and eventually Loki does give into the urge although it earns him a glare from the king. Few people dare oppose him (and few find the need to), meaning that the rare occasions are ill received – more so when it is Loki who speaks again his father. Adoptive father. Once Loki had learned the truth, many things began to make sense and he learned to pick his battles carefully, following the example of the woman who has raised the jotun prince as her own child. This time he stands his ground like a pillar planted solidly for the sake of providing unwavering support to a person lost in a storm.

[Y/N] appears small as she stands before the throne with her fists clenched in determination not to give in to the fear. Part of Loki swells with pride at the tenacity, another part wants to steal her away from the drilling interrogation and the scrutinizing eyes. I cannot. No, the Midgardian is as feisty as she is adamant in her decision.

“I’m afraid you misunderstand, your highness,” her musical voice penetrates his spiraling thoughts, “so allow me to clarify. I’ve not made this decision, to infiltrate the court of my homeland and spy on my so-called king because king Loki or you need the information.” Shocked murmurs rise and [Y/N] waits for the Asgardians to quiet down before continuing. “I do this for the people. It seems we’ve been lied to. Tricked to serve a cause that doesn’t exist. Abused and suffered in order to maintain a living standard for a select few who don’t care for the rest of us at all. I ask you, Odin All-Father, what makes a nation if not those who dwell within the borders? If the people suffer, doesn’t the country suffer?” Loki can see a greyed eyebrow appear above the patch covering the empty socket and he knows the words have struck a cord within the old ruler. “I need to learn the truth. Need to…to show my people what’s going on. If it happens to serve your cause too, then fine, but whatever I find that’s what I’ll act upon. I won’t become a tool once more, expected to serve, unquestioning regardless of the prize the common folk pays.”

A slight movement by the throne draws Loki’s gaze to Frigga. You see it too. The subdued smile on the queen’s face speaks of the same emotions that a whirling within Loki, and he knows that even if Odin himself does not approve of the Midgardian then he will be…convinced by the sweet words of his soulmate. Yes, Frigga understands.

Interactions Between the Biodiverse World

There are so many elements that contribute to the constant change of the natural world. Animals adapt and progress from their original form and rely on each moving part for the flow to continue. Humans are an unexpected obstacle stopping this natural force to take place. Scientifically, there are many procedures and constant ongoing reactions that provide us with our world today but nothing contributes toward advancement like the interaction of species. Humans are a species interacting amongst others. An example of a large effect of human interaction is shark finning. Once there is a major benefit for one species there is more of a need to continue the process. When shark fins became more expensive and a delicacy more sharks were being hunted, when large companies got hold of cheap oil they used it for mass production and led to deforestation, and when water sources were being harvested and sold towns were left without water. “To date, human activities have destroyed more than half of the earth’s rainforests” (Miller and Spoolman 2021, 43). There is so much being over-harvested that natural resources are depleting at a faster rate than they can regenerate. Devastating to the wildlife losing homes to a rapidly growing greedy corporation. Humanity alone isn’t the issue as our contributions are far from causing mass destruction. Once companies take hold of untouched resources and have no consequences, the resources begin to diminish. Animals, however, interact in ways where there is an order of some sort. Resources are used in a timely manner giving enough time to recover before using again leading to a constant cycle of possibility. Food chains are a great example of contained populations, for every predator, there is a prey each feasting upon the other endlessly (53). Processes like the water cycle are another that follows a chain resetting itself by the end (56). The world is designed to fulfill itself with ongoing cycles that always provide, once that design reaches max capacity it begins to attempt to adapt. Evolution is a direct consequence of devastating defects that lead to extinction if modifications aren’t created. Because of this, there is also a vast difference within the same species as modifications over time due to natural events began to occur. Biodiversity flourished while more and more creatures adapted to their newfound way of living. However, many times these developments occur from loss of habitat or resources from manmade destruction. This can also cause a mass extinction of a species with none left to adapt and survive over time. “Each species plays a role within the ecosystem it inhabits” (74). Every species provides a role in the environment no matter how small it is vital that all wildlife be protected, the more extinction the more issues in the long run. Small actions can drastically change outcomes so every small part of the ecosystem must be conserved. Nature has its own process of actively adapting to human threats. Sea otters’ main diet is clams and sea urchins and with the usual abundance, there would be no issue for them (90). Due to over-harvesting and profit, fishermen began to kill the otters for their own commercial benefit (90). This then causes that directly affected, in this case, the kelp forest to be destroyed by sea urchins who no longer have a predator keeping the population in control (90). Species control one another and protect from overpopulation. “Research shows that there is no balance of nature consisting of a permanent and stable state” (97). Although the textbook says that scientists changed their views on balance in the natural world there is an issue with the claim. From an outside perspective, it is easily said that the drastic changes and unpredictable nature of our current environment can be attributed to human interaction. Scientifically nature does have drastic changes such as the meteor wiping out creatures from the Mesozoic era, but there has been no evidence of constant drastic changes before humans stepped in.

Resources weren’t depleting at a rapid pace and species weren’t going on and off the endangered species list. Without humans the earth would be in some sort of balance, the food chain would adapt among itself and the natural cycles would flow naturally. Different populations keep one another in check ensuring that no species becomes elite. Humans are a rapidly growing population taking more and more resources as we grow. There will never be enough resources to sustain this population if it continues on its path. The sheer quantity of the population would be too much to provide for where at some point the weakest would slowly begin to die off. Humans have no main predators in the natural world other than themselves so there is nothing keeping it in check, yet our earth will always be the first to suffer from our mishaps. How can small changes be made for large companies to take action? How important are the small steps of science to the big picture?

Word count: 807

Work cited:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. Living in the Environment. 20th ed. Cengage Learning, 2021.

How to Get Rid of Frogs (The most Useful Methods)-X-Pest

Pests are unwanted animals found in homes and on farms.

One common thing about them is that they are unpleasant, annoying, and frustrating. They can cause an infestation of your property, destroy your gardens, dirty your yard and home, cause illness, or even cause the death of animals or people. Pests include bugs, roaches, ants, amphibians like frogs, toads, snakes, and many more

You're reading: How to Get Rid of Frogs (The most Useful Methods)-X-Pest

Pests cause nuisance and should be put under control if not eliminated.

Pest control is the act of deliberately getting rid of pests from your residence or farms. You may eliminate them by yourself or call an exterminator to help remove them.

This article will check out how to get rid of frogs, toads, and ways to get rid of them.

We will also look into natural remedies that can eliminate or discourage frog infestations. There will also be a surprising twist about frogs, and the best way to find out is to keep reading!

What are frogs?

Frogs are amphibians whose life cycle begins underwater.  Frogs need moisture to survive, as they lay their eggs in water, develop into tadpoles, and adapt to live on water and land. There are different species of frogs like water frogs, tree frogs, etc. Frogs love swampy areas, so may infest your pond, garden, pool, and other areas with access to water.

Frogs are edible as some people invest in farming them for their meat. They exist in various colors, depending on their species. Their natural habitats are lakes, river banks, rain forests, and many more freshwater bodies. Frogs are of economic importance to the world as there can be a considerable loss due to their infestations.

Frogs vs. Toads

Frogs and Toads are amphibians and are often mistaken for one another. Frogs have moist, smooth skins and live in water most times, while toads have dry, bumpy skins and live on land most times. Frogs have longer limbs, so they hop around, while toads crawl rather than hop because theirs are shorter.

Toads usually lay their eggs in a chain, while frogs lay theirs in clusters. Toads secrete poison when they face predators, which is lethal, especially for house pets that may encounter them. Frogs usually give warts to humans, as many humans are allergic. Frogs and Toads both feed on insects, attract pests like snakes and are pests themselves.

Frogs and toads infestation creates a lot of havoc for homeowners, and the bug question they do ask is, “how to get rid of frogs.” The following points will provide answers to and related to “how to get rid of frogs.”

How do you get rid of frogs at your house?

Getting rid of frogs at the house is usually a big concern for homeowners with frog infestation. Frogs population increases during the rainy season or when there is a constant water supply in certain parts of your home, e.g., pool or pond. You need to know how to get rid of frogs at your home, and here are the steps to:

Identify the frog species:

The law protects some frogs, and you may get in trouble with the law if you kill them. Native frogs, e.g., tree frogs especially have laws protecting them from being endangered. You need to identify their species to know how to get rid of them. This is also vital when you need to hire pest killers to eliminate the frogs.

Make sure the environment is less suitable:

Frogs love places with moisture and water. You are sure to get rid of frogs when you eliminate their source of survival. Suppose their water sources are pond put in fishes and pool, put in rubber snakes, as frogs are prey to these animals. With these predators in sight, the frog population will decrease.

Read more: Best Watering Practices for Veggie Gardens

Many people have pools in their homes, either dug pool or drained pool, there is a stagnant, open water body, readily available to breed frogs. When not in use, you have to cover the pool, and for a drained pool, ensure it does not collect rainwater. When you need to use the pool during the summer season, ensure you consistently keep it moving, as frogs cannot hatch eggs in a mobile pool.

Eliminate their food source:

Frogs thrive on insects like flies, mosquitoes, bugs, roaches, etc. You have to eliminate their food source so that they can leave your residence. You should turn off the lights at night, as they attract bugs, and bugs attract frogs, especially at night. Spray insecticides around your pool or pond as they help control insects, which attract frogs. Frogs eat pets’ food, so make sure you do not have any pet food lying around.

Put an end to their life cycle at an early stage:

If you want to get rid of frogs, this step is essential. A frog’s life cycle starts from eggs, which develop into tadpoles before it becomes an adult frog. If you have a pond or pool infested with frogs, scoop out the clustered eggs or tadpoles, and leave them out to dry. The eggs would not hatch when left to dry, while the tadpole would die without water.

Put up a barrier:

If you live near a lake or large body of water, you may experience frog infestation. Frogs may hop a lot, but there is a limit to how they can jump around. If you want to keep frogs from your home, you should put up a barrier around the perimeter of your home. Use barbwires, plastic or mesh fences to create a barrier against the frogs. You can put up a wall around your pond by setting up a wall to prevent frogs from invading the pond.

Use a professional exterminator as your last resort:

After you have exhausted all means and still cannot get rid of the frog infestation, then it is time to call in an exterminator. An exterminator is an expert that gets rid of pests in your home, including frogs. They use harmful chemicals that will kill frogs and prevent future infestation.

Here are steps to take when you want to get rid of frogs by hiring an exterminator:

Enquire about pest control services in your area.

You may find out more information regarding their services through their website.

If you are interested in a particular pest control service, reach out to them through their “contact us” page.

You may see a comment “name email,” asking you to input your email. Do so if they have a privacy policy and will ensure your information is safe.

They will contact you and get your reply on the pest control service you are requesting.

It would be best to get their reply on when and how the pest control will occur.

You may use the “cancel reply” option if you are no longer interested in their services.

You will also get a reply, accepting to halt all processes associated with your pest control request.

How do you get rid of toads in your yards?

Toads live mostly on land; hence, they are found on drylands, like your yard or garden. They create a nuisance with their feces all over your yard. They are harmful to pets, as they secrete a poison that makes them swell in the pet’s throat that swallows them.

The following are the means through which you can get rid of them:

Identify the toad species:

Toads are also of various species, some of which may be endangered or protected. You may face a legal suit if you threaten specific toad species, so ensure you make enquires about them from your local authority. If you want them to keep away from your yards, you have to know which you can kill and that you have to relocate.

Ensure your yard is inhabitable for them:

Toad population will decrease when they have no habitable place to stay. Toads breed in standing water with tall grass around your yard, so ensure you drain the standing water and cut-off the tall grass. There may be frogs in your yard, so get rid of the water source by draining the pool, or covering the pond, if you have any.

If you have a garden in your yard, weeds may serve as habitat for frogs and toads. Use weed killers to get rid of the weeds, but ensure you do not kill the plants in that process. Eliminating the weeds often will help your plants flourish in the garden and also keep away frogs and toads from your garden.

Get rid of their food source:

Toads love bugs, and in your yard or garden with plants, weeds, there will be many insects lurking around. Turn off the garden lights at night to get rid of bugs and other insects that can attract Toads. Use insect repellent to keep insects away from your garden, but ensure they do not destroy the plants.

Put up a barrier:

You may need to put up a fence to keep frogs from your yard. Toads have shorter legs so that the wall will keep them away from your yard. Use barbwires, plastic or mesh fences to create a barrier around the perimeter of your home. Ensure the holes are so small that even one little frog or toad cannot pass through it.

Enroll for pest control service if you can do nothing else:

When you have exhausted all possible options to remove toads in your yard, and have achieved no results, then you need to call in for pest control. Reach out to pest control services in your area, and book a convenient period to ensure they help exterminate the frogs and toads in your yard.

Will vinegar get rid of frogs?

Vinegar is one of the home remedies suitable for getting rid of frogs.

So, yes, vinegar will get rid of frogs.

Vinegar can keep frogs away by causing a burning sensation at their feet. This is a more humane way of discouraging frogs from infesting your home.

For maximum effect, mix the vinegar with an equal amount of water and then apply it with a spray bottle in the area with frogs. Avoid spraying vinegar on plants.

You might curious that if the vinegar also gets rid of other insects, like fruit flies?  The answer is YES, click here to learn more

Other home remedies that you can apply to remove any frog from your home are:

Citric acid:

Concentrated citric acid is known to kill frogs. Get 16 percent of the acid and dispense into a spray bottle and apply it around the frog infestation area. This process will discourage other frogs from visiting that area, let alone inhabiting it.

Salt:

Salt burns the skin of any frog that comes in contact with it, which is why not even one frog is found near saltwater bodies. You can spread salt around the area with frog issues, but avoid plants, as they will die from dehydration caused by salt. Mix the salt with water for

Read more: Plant Incompatibility – What Plants Should Not Be Planted Together

Coffee grounds:

This is another home remedy made from used coffee applied on the grounds where the frogs are inhabiting to kill them. The used coffee produces nitrate for the environment, which is useful for plants in that area. However, coffee grounds cause discomfort to any frog that comes in contact with it and discourages it from inhabiting it.

Insects repellent:

Frogs are attracted to insects since they are their source of food. Insect repellents keep insects away, which in turn, discourages frogs away, as they would have nothing to eat. Purchase one, and follow the manufacturer’s instructions well. Most of the products have rights reserved to make you responsible for their application. Apply it in your yard with a spray bottle.

Snake repellent:

Where there is a frog, a snake is lurking around. Snake repellents contain similar active ingredients to mothballs. Mothballs repel frogs; hence, this repellent repels snakes and any frog looking to attract snakes. Buy an industrial snake repellent from any garden store in your locality. Apply it well around your property according to the manufacturer’s instructions. You may need to apply it every two months for a long-lasting effect.

It is best to eliminate frogs in a humane way, such as the above remedies. Avoid extreme ways of removing pests, such as shooting them with guns or spears.

Is it good to have frogs around your house?

Frogs are amphibians; that is, they are resident on land and water. If you are in a place with water around you, you may see one frog or more in your residence. The consensus is that frogs are pests, and you need to know how to eliminate them.

However, an unpopular opinion is that it is good to have frogs around your residence. You must keep frogs away from your pond or pool, as they will reproduce and lead to an infestation.

Here is the importance of having a frog around your property:

Reduce insect population:

The same way having water around can breed a frog; it generates insects. The more water in a place, the more insects; some even infest the yard because they want to pollinate flowers. The insect population is usually massive in areas with lots of water like pool and garden.

Frogs help reduce the number of insects you may have on your property. Set traps for them by releasing the frog at night in your yard. Insects are active at night, especially when the area is well lit. Frogs can serve as natural insect control, and if well cultivated, they may be used as traps for insect pests that destroy plants.

Advantages of using frogs for insect control:

They are a natural source of insect control.

They reduce the cost of insecticides and pesticides

Frogs are plant-friendly:

Frogs do not destroy plants, unlike insects, instead they contribute to plant growth. Frogs release their fecal matter everywhere, and if you cultivate them well in your garden, they can serve as humus for plants. Frogs can add to more harvest since they prevent the destruction of crops by insect pests.

When well cultivated and contained, frogs are helpful in your residence to keep insects away from you, your yard and garden. However, when they reproduce and multiply in folds, they become pests that you must remove to prevent your property damage.

Conclusion

Frogs are invasive species that should not be allowed on your property, except for insect control purposes.

This article delves into how to get rid of frogs in your yard and residence. We looked into some home remedies to eliminate frogs, such as vinegar and salt.

Lastly, we looked into the benefit of frogs on your property. I hope you had fun reading?

You might be interested in the following article

How to get rid of rats?

Source: https://livingcorner.com.au Category: Garden

source https://livingcorner.com.au/how-to-get-rid-of-frogs-the-most-useful-methods-x-pest/

When it comes to assumptions and myths about dryads, one of the funny ones is that dryads are happy-go-lucky creatures that are always cheery and prone to frolicking. It is kind of weird how many people believe that about our kind. Do we truly come off that way to others, or is optimism and smiling truly that rare in those parts? Sure we are pretty upbeat about things, but I never would have thought that we would give off such an impression. I guess that would make me guilty of spreading such a belief, as I am usually a pretty happy, cheery person. I am not carefree and joyful because I am a dryad, I just tend to find a good thing in every situation. I have also learned that complaining often does very little to change things when working in my field. You can bellyache all day about how hard it is to climb a mountain in pursuit of trolls, but at the end of it all, the mountain is going to make itself easier for you. Regardless, it seems to be a widely accepted belief, save for an exception. This is what makes this idea kind of funny, because a lot of people see dryads as happy little flowers, but those same people are very much aware of Conifer dryads and do not find them cheery folk in the slightest.   Conifer dryads have many unique things about them, and one of the biggest is where they live. Their species can be found in cold environments, often arctic tundras and coniferous forests. While many other dryads despise the chilly weather, they do just fine in a world of heavy snowfall and freezing nights. Another thing that makes them stand out is their size. Conifer dryads are one the the tallest of our kind, with adults reaching about eleven to twelve feet in height. Even their sapling share this incredible size, as they are three feet tall when the emerge. Their height is gained from long limbs, which are quite useful for walking through deep snow and climbing the massive trees that make up their forests. Their "conifer" title comes from their pinecone-like head cap and the green needles that cover their arms and legs. With large, thick plates, the head cap of a Conifer dryad serves as hefty armor for them. It helps protect them from falling ice from the branches high above, enemy attacks and projectiles that may be aimed at their heads. The sharp needles on their limbs serves as defense from predators and attackers, making it difficult for foes to climb up their legs without getting stabbed. To go with their natural growths, Conifer dryads often wear garments made of lichens and moss. Some claim they help warm them, but I can't see how such thin, sparse things could do anything against the freezing winds! Due to their preferred habitat, Conifer dryads are a nomadic species. They move with the seasons, relocating their camps through the forests and plains in order to keep close to a steady food source. Herds of prey are key to this cycle, as they provide the meat and furs they use to last the long, harsh winters. The dwellings of these dryads are made of leather, fallen branches, stones and bone. These huts of theirs are made to be collapsible and transportable, so that they may take them along during the migrations. Oddly enough, these dwellings are often wide and short, which would seem unfitting for such a tall species. Well it turns out that adults hardly spend any time within these houses, only going in them to rest. It is the saplings who hide within these huts, and they do not need nearly as much ceiling space. For adults, they are perfectly fine with crawling in these short doorways. Another reason these huts are so short comparatively is that they do not obstruct the dryads' line of sight. Ever vigilante, the Conifer dryads like to be well aware of their surroundings, and buildings as tall as them would block their view and give the enemy a place to sneak up from.

As I mentioned before when talking about dryad cheeriness, Conifer dryads are the exception to this rule (though not really since it is a false belief, but anyhoo). Their attitudes are much like the places they live, cold and serious. Due to the extreme weather and low temperatures, their kind cannot afford to waste time and energy on frivolous things. What matters to them is food, fur and the forest. They must make sure that their food stores are full and that they have enough warm garments for cruel winters ahead. The woods they call home is also vital, as it offers protection, a place to stay and is the burial ground of their ancestors. With all these concerns combined, Conifer dryads can come off as a harsh and hostile species. They do not like to waste time with outsiders, especially since these strangers would most likely try to take some of their resources. Even walking through their territory is enough to gain their irritated attention, as they become suspicious of an attack and are also peeved about all the game that was chased away by the intruder's blundering. Even other dryads can be met with this distaste, I know I have! When I went out to find a group that would allow me to stay close and study them, it turned out that they found me first! Apparently my intrusion was noticed and a whole squad of them dropped from the trees and surrounded me! The dramatic entrance knocked me off my roots! Immediately they wanted to know what I wanted, and I told them. They then told me to go elsewhere, as they didn't want to be bothered by my "foolishness." I tried to convince them, but apparently this annoyed them further, as one of the sisters grabbed me by the pack and hauled me off like a naughty dog. I was tossed into a snow bank and it was then that I decided to try and find a different group to befriend. Though us dryads can get a cold shoulder from their kind, other species can get it even worse. Humans are the best example of this, as Conifer dryads absolutely despise them. This is mainly due to human settlements and lumber companies moving in to chop down trees for their own uses. The pines that grow in these frozen forests are massive in size and tough in composition, which makes them prized for ship masts and sturdy homes. At the same time, these giant trees are ancestors to the Conifer dryads, and they will not let an ax even touch their bark. Yes, other dryad species are not fans of lumbering and forest cutting, but we do not protest these activities in such a...violent manner. Those who come to their forests with plans of lumbering and chopping will be met with extreme lethal force. The tales of such encounters and battles can be quite chilling, even to the likes of me! Workers found dead in the frozen branches above, horses and riders shish-kebobbed by ten-foot long spears and entire lumber camps wiped off the face of the earth. Their violent response to these harvesting attempts have made Conifer dryads famous. Those who live up north will steer clear of any forests inhabited by them and they often craft their goods from anything besides wood. These precautions are smart, as Conifer dryads are powerful fighters and great hunters. Their long limbs allow them to throw out sweeping blows, and they also add range to their weaponry. Though they look thin, they are quite strong and are capable of lifting a human-sized opponent up with a single hand. Their stone blade weapons allow them to take out foes from afar, but don't underestimate their close combat skills! I have literally seen one of these dryads punt a charging wolf across the woods, and the poor thing didn't have a good landing. Another thing to keep in mind is their armored head cap. While it serves as great defense, it also can be used for a bludgeoning weapon. Turns out that Conifer dryads like to headbutt things during hunts and battle. It may sound silly, but they can crack a skull wide open with one of these blows. There are even stories of great conifer hunters who could knock an arctic dragon out cold with an attack like this. After what I have seen, I think I can believe that! While Conifer Dryads do come off a bit cold and mean, they are not strangers to warmer feelings. You can see this anytime one of these hardened warriors is with their saplings. Though they can be strict teachers and parents, they do spend time with their offspring and can find joy in their silly antics. In fact, a large chunk of their hunting and gathering is used to collect food and furs for their young. Unlike their mothers, Conifer saplings are not able to withstand such cold temperatures and brutal winds alone. Instead, they are bundled up in thick furs and hides to keep warm, and they tend to hide within the huts to avoid the harsh weather. In most cases, outsiders will never see a Conifer sapling, as they remain indoors while their parents keep watch over the village. And don't think you can just walk into one of these dwellings to see them, as Conifer dryads are very protective of their young. In fact, it took me two weeks to earn enough trust for me to even be near on of their saplings. Even after spending a few months with them, I was never allowed to enter the huts where the saplings slept. I couldn't even look at the dwelling for too long, as that would earn me a wooden smack on the noggin from a peeved mother.   Chlora Myron Dryad Natural Historian

OPENING UP TO THE WORLD

Twenty-two days have passed. Thus far, the only world the puppies have known has been a small, circular nest that has stood in for the ordinary den found in the wild. For the infant pup, the nest provides the stable, confined environment required for all of his primary needs to be met.

Until now, that is.

For the past several days, the pups have been much more animated in the nest, almost restless, indicating their growing sense of confinement. With Anka spending longer periods away from them, they start pawing at the sides of the nest in an effort to follow her. This morning, Sunny finally resolves to overcome the barrier. Slowly inching his way up the side, enough to place his front paws on top of the edge, he peers over and spots Anka snoozing on her dog bed nearby. He yips impatiently but in vain; Anka ignores his calls. This is just the incentive he needs. With fearless determination and daring, he stubbornly attempts to scale the side. Hoisting himself up, his rear legs pumping wildly against the wall of the nest, he manages to clear the top, only to tumble down onto the hard floor of the whelping room. This unexpected drop elicits a series of high-pitched shrieks that rouse Anka to his aid. Licking him reassuringly, she settles down next to him and lets him nurse. Meanwhile, the commotion rouses the other pups, who now peek over the edge of the nest. They quickly become a chorus of screaming, impatient siblings. It is only a matter of time before each of them will join his or her brother.

Sunny’s venture out of the nest occurs near the beginning of the all-important socialization period—nine weeks of intensive exposure to life during which the puppies’ personalities blossom. Practically overnight their behavior changes. Their growing abilities of perception and movement, which we began to see in the transitional period, suddenly become coordinated. Clearly, they have reached a milestone in their growth. Though still requiring plenty of sleep, the pups are more energetic and awake for longer periods. They now become animated and curious. Their play with one another includes the barking and tail wagging we identify with adult behavior. Though still immature, the brain and central nervous system have developed enough for the pups to interact seriously with their surroundings. Now they begin to learn quickly!What Is Socialization?

By socialization we mean two things: first, the positive adjustment a puppy makes to the many aspects of her life, whether this includes other dogs, people, places, or objects; second, what we do to foster this. A puppy is extremely sensitive to socializing experiences between three and twelve weeks, when the effects are permanent, for better or worse. Previously the puppy was psychologically isolated from her environment, protected by the lack of sensory development. Now that has changed. She is vulnerable in a new way.

Naturally the pups are not aware of this. At the beginning of this stage, their basic orientation is one of openness. Their senses are receiving an abundance of stimuli whereby they gain an immediate perception of their surroundings. Everything is new and interesting, and the pups start to show real curiosity. They are ready to form their first genuinely social relationships with their mother and littermates.

Because of this positive thrust toward life and growth, we keep the pups’ environment stable and capitalize on this natural inquisitiveness with a proper blend of new experiences. The mother should still spend the majority of her time with the pups. Since they are in the process of adjusting to their newly found senses, we do not overwhelm them with excessive stimulation and noise during the first week and a half of this period. At this time, though they are naturally disposed to investigate their small world, too much stimulation can cause fearfulness. Normal fear and avoidance of new experiences arise naturally later in the period, once the brain and central nervous system have matured to their adult levels. This is commonly referred to as the fear/avoidance period and is discussed later in the book.In the wild, this natural rhythm of attachment and avoidance initially bonds a pup to its pack, then later makes it wary of strange animals and new, potentially dangerous circumstances. It is a survival mechanism that instinctively keeps puppies away from predators. During the first twelve weeks of life, the only social contacts a wolf pup has are with its mother, littermates, and immediate pack members. This keeps the pupsafe and reinforces attachments to the pack, and thus creates a greater pack solidarity and security. In domestic dogs, the pattern is the same: attachment, then displays of avoidance.

Ideally a pup is raised with a variety of the right kinds of social experiences, first with his mother and littermates and subsequently with the wider world. Since domestic dogs are expected to behave in ways that are socially acceptable to humans, a puppy needs plenty of human contact and exposure to all sorts of common, everyday things. This lays the foundation for a positive attitude toward new people and new experiences and teaches the puppy that human beings and their world are part of his pack. If deprived of these contacts, a pup will develop fearful reactions to people and grow up socially maladjusted and emotionally disturbed. At that point, reconditioning, even if possible, is extremely difficult (and very expensive).

This explains why adult wolves are almost impossible to domesticate. While there have been numerous accounts of wolf pups that were raised and socialized by humans into trusted companions, adult wolves are extremely resistant to being tamed. Lacking any exposure to humans during the critical period of socialization, they have no basis for making the connection. Quite understandably, when an adult wolf is faced with the prospect of an encounter with a human being, its tendency will be either flight or, when cornered, displays of aggression.

In Understanding Your Dog, Eberhard Trumler, a noted ethologist in Germany, recounts the story of how he deliberately raised a litter of dingoes (Australian wild dogs) in such a way that they had no contact with human beings between their third and seventh weeks of life. Except for the presence of other pack members, they were raised by their parents just as they would be in the wild. The results were predictable. They developed into shy, wild dogs who avoided any contact with humans and would hide whenever Trumler entered their yard. Since one of Trumler’s purposes was to observe the behavior of dingoes in an essentially natural setting, the deprivation was inconsequential. The animals acted as they normally would in the wild. Similar deprivation for domestic dogs, however, has more serious consequences.

When Scott and Fuller raised a number of litters in large, open fields, they found that pups raised without human contact would show fearful reactions to humans at five weeks but could readjust in two weeks’ time if handled often. Puppies first exposed to human contact at twelve weeks, however, immediately reacted very fearfully and fled from the researchers. They behaved essentially like wild animals and were socially irretrievable. They had missed the vital contact during the critical period.

A practical application of this discovery was made by Clarence Pfaffenberger at Guide Dogs for the Blind (San Rafael, California) during the 1950s and 1960s. Operating a breeding program specifically designed to produce qualified guide dogs and working closely with John Paul Scott, he confirmed the necessity of regular socialization if pups were to have any hope of becoming successful guide dogs. Pups needed repeated human contact to acquire the emotional stabilitynecessary for such work. Without it, the dogs not only became unsuited for guide work but made poor companions as well. The implications for all breeders were self-evident.

Pfaffenberger also found that the initial benefits of socialization could be lost if puppies were left in the kennel too long after the conclusion of personality testing at twelve weeks. If a properly socialized pup spent three additional weeks in the kennel without deliberate socialization and then was placed in her new home, chances were high (70 percent) that she would be unable to take responsibility for her blind owner as an adult guide dog. Pups placed in homes immediately after the testing, however, had a 90 percent success rate.

These examples underscore the importance of what happens in the life of your puppy before you obtain her, as well as the absolute importance of socialization throughout her life. Socialization accustoms the puppy to a wide variety of new and potentially frightening experiences. The rhythm of first being afraid and then recovering and getting used to the new experience is one of the more valuable lessons that a puppy learns during this period. The pup bounces back and becomes more able to deal with potentially unsettling things later in life.

We believe that we can use this information to distinguish two phases within the period as a whole. The first centers on a pup’s interaction with other dogs and takes place between roughly four and six weeks. During this time, though human contact should not be absent, it is not the main focus. Major changes in behavior occur as a result of the puppies’ interactions with one another and with their mother. This period flows into the second phase, when the pups begin to focus on socializing with people. This interval extends from five to twelve weeks, thus allowing for a week’s overlap when the pups require both forms of social exposure. These two phases highlight the basic social adjustments most puppies need to make if they are to live happy, balanced lives.

An Interesting Exception: A Litter of One

As should now be apparent, we cannot emphasize enough how socialization is a vital process for any pup’s adjustment to the world, a stable foundation on which future development greatly depends. What happens, then, in the rare instance when only one puppy is born in the litter? Should we expect such a pup to be at an extreme disadvantage in its growth and development? Not necessarily. While a single puppy presents a challenge, the breeder can ensure that the playing field is leveled by compensating with frequent handling and plentiful exposure to other dogs.

For example, we recall when this happened years ago with a puppy from one of our shepherds. We nicknamed the pup Lit (short for litter) and began right away supplementing the attention she received from her mother with plenty of additional handling and stimulation. After the first several weeks, whichever monk was working the kennels during the day would take her with him in a satchel as he did cleaning chores, and as Lit grew we reinforced this by letting her interact with puppies from anotherlitter as well as with older, puppy-wise shepherds of the breeding program who understood how to safely relate with her. We also socialized her with visitors to the monastery, especially women and children, since most of Lit’s initial human encounters were with men. By the time Lit left for her new home, she was a thoroughly socialized, self-possessed pup who had also learned some important limits from older dogs.

Had we not done this and instead left her isolated, to be cared for solely by her mother, she would have been seriously undersocialized. She wouldn’t have understood how to react with other dogs and would likely have been a strange combination of pushy and fearful, with a strong tendency to overuse her mouth whenever she was frustrated. The prognosis for such a pup would have been bleak indeed.

Phase One: Socialization with Dogs (4–6 Weeks)

To make these ideas clear, let us return to Anka and her pups. Once the pups start getting out of the nest, we remove it and leave them on the floor, with Anka’s comfortable dog bed in the corner to sleep on. As they move around now much more freely, they begin to eliminate on their own, away from the bed, on newspapers that cover the floor. Their instinctive aversion to messing where they sleep is connected with their mother’s earlier meticulous care of the nest.

Wildlife biologists observe the same behavior in the wild with wolves: three-week-old pups emerge from their den and start playing with one another in front of the entrance. As they do so, they urinate and defecate on their own, gradually learning to pick spots away from the den. By six to seven weeks, the pups select particular scent posts—areas where they will consistently relieve themselves. The movement away from the nest, coinciding with the ability to eliminate by themselves, reveals the natural tendency of both wolves and dogs to keep their sleeping areas clean. Knowing this will help later on when you begin house-training your puppy.

This is why a filthy, disorganized breeding kennel not only reflects badly on the breeder but could spell future health and behavioral problems for your dog as well. When soiled papers are not picked up regularly, the pups wrestle and stomp in their own feces and lose their natural aversion to soiling where they play or sleep. They also quite likely will begin eating their own excrement. This may lead to health problems as well as habitual stool eating (coprophagy) as adults. Thus, kennel cleanliness is essential for proper socialization and should be an important consideration in determining where you adopt your new puppy.

A Gentle Weaning

During the fourth week, the puppies grow so rapidly that their requirements for food increase beyond Anka’s ability to produce. Anka becomes more and more impatient with their constant demands. She is reluctant to let the pups nurse and avoids them by escaping into the outside holding pen, where they have not yet learned to follow. If confined with them, she no longer lies down but moves constantly and snaps when they try to nurse from her. When she finally relents,she remains upright, forcing the pups to nurse standing up. But not for long. After several minutes she ends the session and moves away, leaving the pups yipping and barking as they stubbornly follow her for more.

Because their sharp little teeth have begun to emerge, Anka’s ability to let them nurse for long periods of time diminishes. It is simply too uncomfortable for her. This is a sign that it is time to wean the pups. During the next several days, we will introduce the pups to semisolid blends of cottage cheese and high-quality canned meat, gradually working up to moistened puppy kibble (dry puppy food). The weaning process should occur gently, giving the pups time to get accustomed to a new diet as well as to prolonged absences by their mother. To grant Anka some relief, we place an elevated platform in the whelping room that allows her to retreat from her pups while still remaining with them. Three-to four-week-old pups still require the stabilizing and secure presence of their mother. Since they are being bombarded with an abundance of new experiences and stimuli, abrupt separations would be harmful.

A LANDSCAPE WITH DRAGONS - The Battle for Your Child’s Mind - Part 2

A story written by: Michael D. O’Brien

________

Chapter II

The Shape of Reality — Seeing the True Form

Just a Fairy Story?

Shortly after our children’s exposure to dinosaurs, I began to read fairy tales aloud to them. As they listened over the years, they each heard the story on different levels. Interestingly, sometimes a five-year-old could grasp a subtle point an older sibling had missed, yet it was clear that they were all tapping into the mysterious power of Story. I rummaged through attics, library sales, and used-book stores in search of as much old literature as I could find. I even began to plunder the attics and box-rooms of my own imagination, inventing bedtime stories for them. This strained my imagination somewhat, and some of the stories were better than others, but a little goes a long way in a family. The children began to compose their own as well, and there were nights when bedtime became rather an elaborate affair. Telling “pretend” stories naturally stimulated a flow of accounts of real happenings. The children began to regard the day-to-day events of their fives as the material of their stories. Conversation grew; communication expanded. As we developed into a full-blown storytelling family, I noticed something interesting happening in our children’s play. First of all, they began to find playing more exciting. Also, they acted out the fundamental dramas of the cosmic struggle between good and evil, embellishing and revising them with startling ingenuity. I gradually came to understand the universal love among all peoples for “fairy stories”.

In his masterful essay “On Fairy Stories”,1 J. R. R. Tolkien describes the vital role played by these tales in the cultures of the world. They contain rich spiritual knowledge. The sun may be green and the fish may fly through the air, but however fantastical the imagined world, there is retained in it a faithfulness to the moral order of the actual universe. The metaphors found in the literary characters are not so much random chimeras as they are reflections of our own invisible world, the supernatural. Whether in dreams or conscious imagination, the powers of the mind (and one must see here the powers of the human spirit) are engaged in what Tolkien calls “sub-creation”. By this he means that man, reflecting his divine Creator, is endowed with gifts to incarnate invisible realities in forms that make them understandable.

For example, magic has been used traditionally in fairy stories to give a visible form to the invisible spiritual powers. But a crucial distinction must be made between the use of “good magic” and “bad magic” as they appear in fairy stories, because for us in the real world, there is no such thing as good magic, only prayer, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and abandonment to divine providence. “Good magic” in traditional fairy stories represents these very realities, symbolizing the intervention of God in the lives of good men put to the test. It is actually a metaphor for grace and miracle, the suspension of natural law through an act of spiritual authority, culminating in a reinforced moral order.

Bad magic in traditional stories represents the evil power that the wicked use in order to grasp at what does not rightly belong to hem — whether worldly power, wealth, or even love. It is also a metaphor for the intervention of the enemies of God, the evil spirits, in the lives of wicked men. As Saint Paul says, “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual host of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

Good magic and bad magic in truthful stories correspond to true religion and false religion in our real world. True religion is the search of the soul for God in order to surrender itself to him, the search for his will in order to fulfill it, the search for truth in order to conform to it. False religion is the inverse. It makes a god out of oneself; it makes one’s own will supreme; it attempts to reshape reality to fit one’s own desires. True religion is about surrender, while false religion is about control. Most of us do not learn about the nature of reality through theology, philosophy, or higher mathematics. But all of us readily grasp the language of a parable drawn from the universal human story. The forms may be dressed in elaborate costumes and enact impossible dramas, but they enable the lover of tales to step outside of himself for a brief time to gaze upon his own disguised world. What is the value of this temporary detachment? It is an imaginative withdrawal from the tyranny of the immediate, the flood of words and sensory images that often overwhelm (and just as often limit) our understanding of the real world. A rare objectivity and insight can be imparted regarding this world’s struggle for spiritual integrity. In the land of Faerie, the reader may see his small battles writ large in the wars of titans or elves and understand for the first time his own worth. He is involved, not in a false or spurious world, but in the sub-creation of a more real world (though obviously not a literal one). I say more real because a good author clears away the rampant undergrowth of details that make up the texture of everyday life, that crowd our minds and blur our vision. He artfully selects and focuses so that we see clearly the hidden shape of reality.

Dragons in Myth, Legend, and Faerie

The term “fairy tale” is used rather loosely, for many of these stories are not about fairies as such but deal with a variety of supernatural beings and imaginative happenings. Ancient hero tales, nursery stories, riddle-songs, legends, myths — all have their place in what is really a very broad field of literature. There are countless tales from hundreds of races and language groups, many dating back thousands of years. With very few exceptions, they display a surprising uniformity in their depiction of good and evil: good is good, and evil is evil.

A rich treasure trove of such fiction grew with the passing of centuries. A pattern of symbols emerged that signified real presences in the invisible world. Beautiful winged persons represented unseen guardians and messenger spirits. At the opposite end of the spectrum, dragons (and a host of other monsters) represented the fiendishly clever spirits that sought mans destruction. These symbols were common to so many races and cultures that they were practically universal. But they were also well suited to the spiritual insights of Christian civilization. The shape of these symbols told the reader in a flash some essential information regarding the invisible realm — a realm that long predated Judeo-Christian civilization and was, even then, a spiritual battleground.

Dragons, for example, appear spontaneously in much of the literature of the ancient world, long before paleontology gave us knowledge of the dinosaurs. Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Roman, Aztec, and some Oriental mythologies are full of gargantuan reptiles, and their nature is almost always depicted as malicious and sly. They are frequently associated with “the gods”. In the Egyptian religion, Apophis was the great serpent of the realm of darkness, vanquished by the sun god Ra. In Chaldea the goddess Tiamat, symbol of primeval chaos, took the form of a dragon. A close relation exists especially between dragon myths and the mother goddess cults, which explains in part the persistence of human sacrifice in such religions. The dragon god devours human blood and is placated, which is a diabolical reverse image of Christ’s sacrifice.

The symbol is not perfectly universal: In some Asian cultures dragons are considered good luck, or at worst a mixture of good and evil. Even Greek and Roman mythology, though it bequeathed ample warnings about the terrifying brood of Medusa, the Gorgons, Hydra, Chimaera, and so forth, did at times regard the dragon serpent as a clever dweller of the inner earth, a knower of secrets, an oracle. This ambiguity is due to the blurred distinctions between good and evil in dualistic Eastern religions and in those early Western cultures influenced to a degree by the East. But in Western civilization, founded on the clearer vision of Judaism and flowering in the fuller revelation of the New Testament, the symbol of the dragon sharpened into focus, assuming its definitive identity. Thus, in the literature of the West dragons Have been regarded as powerful agents of evil, guardians of stolen treasure hoards, destroyers of the good and the weak (children, maidens, small idyllic kingdoms), and, on the spiritual level, a personification of Satan prowling through the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Some modern mythologists lamely attempt to explain dragons as an inheritance from the age of dinosaurs, a kind of fossil-memory lingering on in the subconscious. But this theory does not explain why the image of the dragon is so universal when, say, that of the mastodon is not—surely, the prehistoric mammoth would just as deeply impress itself on the mind of primitive man. Neither does the theory explain why there exists alongside the mytho-poetic legends another body of writings that discuss dragon encounters in the factual language of a news report. There are, for example, some forty medieval accounts of encounters with dragons in England. Several of them describe Catholic bishops and missionaries overcoming the dragons by spiritual authority. More frequently the sword is used.

With the rise of Christendom, the slaying of dragons became the crowning achievement of heroes such as Siegmund, Beowulf, Arthur and even Lancelot, the great ideal of medieval chivalry. Beowulf was the earliest English epic poem written in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, sometime between the ninth and tenth centuries. It offers a stirring depiction of the battleground and can be read to children once they develop a taste for the heroic style. Through such tales, universal truths entered the world of literary culture and were passed down. If they functioned in some respects like ancient mythology, they were myths with a crucial difference. Actual dragons may or may not have existed, but that is not our main concern here. What is important is that the Christian “myth” of the dragon refers to a being who actually exists and who becomes very much more dangerous to us the less we believe he exists.

Perhaps the worst of the demythologizing in recent literature is the message that the basic stories of the Christian faith, especially the Paschal Mystery, are merely our variation on universal myths. It is suggested that many cultures have tales about a hero who is killed and then returns to life. G. K. Chesterton pointed out, however, that the demythologizer’s position really adds up to this: Since a truth has impressed itself deeply in the imagination of a vast number of people of varying times and cultures, therefore it simply cannot be true. The demythologizer does not consider the possibility that people of all times and places may have been informed at a deep, intuitive level of an actual event that would one day take place in history, that would be, in fact, the most important event ever to occur.

The dragon has a vested interest in having us dismiss the account of the battle as make-believe. It is not to his benefit that we imitating our Lord the King, should take up arms against him. He thinks it better that we do not consider him dangerous. Of course, the well-nourished imagination knows that dragons are not frightening because of fangs, scales, and smoke pouring from nostrils. The imagination fed on truth knows that the serpent is a symbol of hatred and deceit, of evil knowledge and power without conscience. If dragons do exist, it is not in the form of green steam engines or painted Chinese masks or overgrown lizards. The dragon that takes no form is the worst kind, and I would rather it not prowl around the neighborhood I call home. Most of all I do not want it infesting my children’s minds. I do not want them befriending it, either, nor do I want it calming their instinctive good fears and perhaps in the process taking possession of their very selves.

At this point I may sound somewhat contradictory. It seems that I do not want dragons in my children’s minds, I say, and yet at the same time I want them to read plenty of stories in which there are dragons that act like dragons and meet a dragon’s end. In fact there is no contradiction here. It is the real dragon against which I want my children armed. Their interior life has need of the tales that inform them of their danger and instruct them at deep levels about the tactics of their enemy. It is good that our children fear dragons, for in the fearing, they can learn to overcome fear with courage. Dragons cannot be tamed, and it is fatal to enter into dialogue with them. The old stories have taught our children this. There have actually been suicides brought about through the “Dungeons and Dragons” cult among adolescents. But it is very important to note that this tragedy is not the result of overheating the young imagination with too much make-believe. On the contrary, it is the result of not believing in dragons until it is too late, of thinking it “just a game”. It is the logical consequence of our ignorance of this principle: The imagination must be fed good food, or it will become the haunt of monsters.

I do not want our children to grow up believing in the actual presence of dragons. But the child who learns fairy stories knows that flying horses and fire-breathing serpents are not to be confused with the cows in our neighbor’s field. Some writers suggest that children do not grasp the meanings in symbol and allegory. This is simply untrue. They may not be able to articulate it in adult terminology, but the young, even the very young, are able to reach across the gap between the real and the sub-created world and find the truths within the mysterious events that are the cosmic drama. They have a natural sense that something mysterious, wonderful, and useful is hidden within the tale, not so much like those trick pictures in which they must find how many bunnies are hidden in the bushes. More like stepping into a marvelous new kingdom where they stand in awe before the fact that angels and dragons are there. The child then asks himself, “Why are they there? And why is it like that?”

Answering the Critics of Fairy Stories

Modern critics of the fairy story have sometimes objected that the world it presents is too simplistic. They maintain that beautiful heroes and heroines are too much aligned with good, and the physically ugly characters are used too much to represent evil. Such an argument is obviously the result of too cursory a glance at fairy tales. There are many stories in which bad characters have, a beautiful appearance. There are some in which ugly creatures have noble princes and princesses hidden inside of them. Generally, however, it is true that the exterior forms that many traditional authors give to the morally or spiritually ugly character tend to be ugly forms. Likewise, beautiful forms tend to express a beautiful interior life. This is a literary device that works well to reinforce the child’s budding awareness of interior ugliness and beauty. Children are not so colossally naive as to think nice-looking people are always nice or that unattractive-looking people are bad. My children know from infancy onward that their grandmother (bad teeth, liverspots, and a big tummy) is the most beautiful person in their life. She loves. She is kind. She listens to them. Also, in their short lives they have met more than one beautiful-looking person who is manipulative, sarcastic, and abuser, of others. They instinctively dislike such people, for their image is not consistent with their substance. Children know this is how the real world works.

We seem to have lost sight of a keystone that was firmly in place in the culture of classical civilization, one that has been crumbling in the West for a long time and at an accelerated rate since the industrial and the technological revolutions. We have lost our sense of the holiness of beauty, our intuition that at some level it reflects back to him who is perfect Beauty. If a bad character betrays that beauty by sin, this in no way negates the authenticity of beauty. By the same token, when exterior beauty is in harmony with a character’s interior beauty, then the sign value of the tale or the character is greatly enhanced. Similarly, when worship of God is done poorly, it is not necessarily invalid if the intention of the worshiper is sincere. But when it is done well, it is a greater sign of the coming glory when all things will be restored in Christ. Clearly God is better glorified by a humble hunchback mumbling badly phrased prayers in a ditch than by a proud aesthete singing hymns perfectly, solely as an art form. Yes, give us that poor, godly hunchback over the vain successful man, rich in his religiosity! But what if the beautiful heart of that hunchback were to dwell in the developed art of the aesthete? Would not a greater glory be rendered to God by the restoration to harmony of both substance and form? In literature we have a medium in which it is possible to express this and, more than that, in which it is possible to show our children that it is possible to live this.

Some modern critics have accused the traditional fairy story of being too fixated on punishment of evil characters. They maintain that children are being conditioned to want revenge, that violent instincts are being incorporated into their personalities, and that they will grow up lacking compassion. Such anxieties stem from the modern preoccupation with peace at all costs, from exaggerated fears about conflict, and from the mistaken belief that sin can be educated out of fallen human nature. Such people believe that children (especially male children) will grow up to be happy nonviolent adults if they are prevented from playing with toy weapons. This is naive. Little boys deprived of toy swords and guns will simply make their own out of anything that comes to hand (such as Lego, sticks, and even pieces of toast). I draw the line at buying plastic machine guns or bazookas for my children, but I do not consider it unhealthy to spend an hour in the woods with my son finding just the right willow sapling to bend into a bow for him. The principle at stake in this issue is not so much our laudable desires to raise compassionate children. The real question is: What approach will best raise compassionate and courageous children? Normal childhood play, riddled with joys and conflicts as it always has been, “educates” at a profound level. The secret is not to deprive a child of his sword but to make the sword with him and teach him a code of honor. In other words, chivalry. Responsibility. Character. Justice. It is a distinctly modern prejudice that holds that a boy with a sword will probably run it through his little sister. The truth of the matter is, most boys, unless they are mentally disturbed, quickly learn that it is far more heroic, exciting, and rewarding to protect a little sister with that very sword by chasing off dragons and bullies.

Unlike the sword or bow and arrow, the mystique of the gun is something of a different problem in the modern era, because it means different things to different people. The word stimulates immediate emotional response in everyone. For those who live in rural areas, where a gun is used for protecting livestock from predators or providing food for one’s family, it is like any other useful but dangerous tool. Is it reasonable to propose that we can create a safer world by eliminating references to guns? Can we clean up humanity by sanitizing literature? If so, should we also drop all references to cooking because sometimes an irate housewife will throw a rolling pin at her husband, or banish references to chain saws because sometimes people have accidents with them when cutting firewood, weed out every reference to automobiles because many people use them badly and even kill others with them? After all, a far greater number of people die violently as victims of car crashes than die at the wrong end of a gun, or a sword, or a bow and arrow. For the urbanite, however, guns conjure up images of Belfast, Bosnia, gang wars, and high school murders. But this, I believe, has more to do with the power of television than the influence of fairy stories—I suspect that terrorists and drug lords have read very few.

It has been suggested that fairy stories would be much improved if they were rewritten without references to weapons, violence, and punishment. Perhaps a few of the Grimm brothers’ tales would benefit a little from this, but to apply such “cultural cleansing” to the entire field of children’s literature is really a symptom of naïveté about human nature and about the role of literature. The point we must keep in mind is that the fairy story is a literary heritage, containing the imperfections that fallen human creators bring to their art. If we were to try to cleanse every work of traces of original sin, we would have to burn a great deal of the literature of the world, and a fair portion of the Bible as well. In the Gospels, for example, Judas does not end well. Neither does Herod, nor a host of odious characters in the Old Testament. “Where is compassion in those texts?” we might ask ourselves, “Where is mercy?” I think the answer, at least in literature, is that stories teach us, and this passing on of the truth is their chief act of mercy. Part of their task is to warn us, to posit the possibility of damnation. Furthermore, a literary figure is not in fact a suffering person but an image in the mind. And the dire image of a witch’s death may suggest in the mind of a child that witchcraft is so absolutely a violation of their souls, of their personhood, that a dire punishment is warranted. Even very young children realize that no one is going to make a witch dance herself to death in red-hot shoes (a cruel and unusual punishment if there ever was one). No, the modern witch will be left very much to do as she pleases—perhaps have an interview on a morning talk show, write a best-selling book, or gather a group of devotees about herself. At worst, she may have to suffer some insensitive comments from her critics.

The fairy story is not an incitement to violence; it is an incitement to reflection on the truth. It does not really propose violence against the sinner (the witch); it reminds us to do violence against the sin (in this case, witchcraft), but more importantly against our own sins, just as the Scriptures command us to do—“If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out!” The merit of a bad end to a bad fictional character is that it imparts a warning about the act. There are worse things than turning into a donkey or dancing to death in red-hot shoes, eternal damnation and diabolical possession being two of them.

The concept of justice is not always easy to grasp, especially in a culture that has been conditioned to exalt rights at the expense of responsibilities, that suffers from the impression that punishment is always a cruel thing. One of law’s important functions is to instruct and to deter on an objective level those whose inhumanity (and they will always be with us) impels them toward the ruthless use of other human beings. There is great need for a return to objective warning signs strong enough to prevail over the massive subjectivization of the modern mind — a mind, by the way, that has abandoned the stern messages of right and wrong that one finds in traditional fairy stories; a mind that is instead pumped full of images that glamorize the diabolical. Without dear deterrents, the imagination will soon be influenced by, and eventually infested by, many demons. If that process is not reversed, the malformed mind, pacified by neutered concepts of justice and mercy will find itself without defenses; it may even in the end come to believe that evil is good, and good is evil.

The purpose of dragons in literature, and of the fascination children have for them, is to arm the soul with an ever-developing, discernment of spirits. The purpose of the fairy tale is not to breed superstition but rather to defend the mind against superstition. As I write this I am gazing out the window at an epic being enacted on our hillside. The children are galloping over a yellow carpet of birch leaves on this sunny afternoon, running through the woods with swords they have cut from branches and silver shields they have borrowed from the tops of our trash cans. They are stalking the shadows lurking in the forests and caves. They are armed with homemade bows and arrows, willow rods bent to the breaking point by twine, and wobbly shafts outfitted with chicken feathers and armed with arrowheads they have chipped from stone. Are we training them to be aggressive little militarists? Not at all. They seem rather kind and gentle children, until roused by a real enemy — dragons, for instance.

They do seem to be developing a great deal of character, and it might be important to note here that violent people, on the whole, tend to be lacking in character. The children’s play is filled with an implicit moral consciousness of natural and supernatural law, even when, on occasion, they break that law. The point is, they know the law — and the spirit of it.

It is encouraging for us to see how their friends are drawn magnetically to the fantasy life of our young tale-bearers. A community of questers is born on an ordinary Saturday afternoon. For a brief, burning moment they know that nothing is ordinary, least of all themselves. When the moral order of the universe is reinforced, as it is for these children, man begins to know who he is, where he is, and what he is for. When the moral order of the universe is corrupted, his perception of reality itself collapses. The collapse may be slow or rapid, but the end result is a mass submersion into a swamp, in which creation is radically devalued, life becomes meaningless, and man, no longer able to know himself, is driven to desperate escape measures.

________

1 The essay can be found in J. R. R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1988).

How Good Is a Chinchilla's Hearing?

Chinchillas have great big ears, so surely have a good sense of hearing, too... Right?

How good is a chinchilla's hearing? The chinchilla hearing range is similar to ours, between 50 Hz and 33 kHz. Chinchillas have particularly sensitive hearing at the higher pitched end of the range. Many of the squeaks they make are too high pitched for us to hear. Owners frequently report their chinchilla hearing things that they can't.

This is why you have to keep chinchillas somewhere calm and quiet. And because loud noises cause stress, or even noise induced hearing loss, the guide below is one you can't afford to miss.

How Well Can Chinchillas Hear?

Chinchillas have highly sensitive hearing, which is reflected in the large size of their ears! They can hear almost everything that you can hear, plus things that are higher pitched. They can also pick up on quieter sounds than we can, which is why chinchillas frequently bark even when you didn't hear anything that could have disturbed them.

Perhaps surprisingly, the chinchilla's hearing has been the subject of many scientific studies. That's because scientists think that the chinchilla's hearing systems (all the internal structures of the ear) are similar to ours, only better. They're therefore used as a model for studying hearing loss.

A paper in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America took an in-depth look at the chinchilla's role here. The team behind the study state that chinchillas have:

A hearing range similar to our own (which means we can hear similar frequencies of noise/high pitch and lower pitch)

The ability to learn to respond to stimuli like voices in the same way that we do

A docile nature that makes them easy to handle study

Similar kinds of hearing loss to people

So, in short, we know lots about the chinchilla's sense of hearing.

Chinchilla Ears vs. Human Ears

A chinchilla's ears are anatomically similar to a human's. The cochlea, which is the hollow spiral-shaped bone in the inner ear that plays a key role in hearing, is a similar relative length in chinchillas as it is in people. It's also curved in the same way. Chinchillas have a wide eardrum just like ours.

It's the 'pinna' that sets the chinchilla's ear apart from ours. The pinna is the outside part of the ear that captures sound. It's much bigger in chinchillas than it is in people.

What's a Chinchilla's Hearing Range?

A hearing range is how much an animal can hear from low pitches to high pitches. Each animal has a different limit that relates to what it needs to hear to survive. Rodents often have better hearing at high pitches than we do, for example, because they make lots of high-pitched squeaks to communicate.

A chinchilla's hearing range is broadly similar to ours. The average chinchilla's hearing range runs from 50 Hz at the lower end of the spectrum to 33 kHz at the higher end. For comparison, the human hearing range is between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. This means that chinchillas are lots better at hearing higher pitched noises than we are, but slightly worse at hearing lower pitched noises.

What makes this interesting is that chinchillas are rodents. Almost all rodents have completely different hearing ranges to people. The mouse's hearing range, for example, is between 1000 hZ and 100 kHz. That means they can hear much more high pitched things than chinchillas can, but miss out on the lower end of the range.

Do Chinchillas Have Sensitive Hearing?

However, the range of hearing is a different thing altogether to the sensitivity of a chinchilla's hearing. So, for example, people can detect a sound at 3 kHz (about medium pitch) even if it's as quiet as 0 decibels. But to hear a 100 Hz sound, it needs to be at least 40 decibels. This means that a person's hearing is most sensitive in the mid-range.

So, what about chinchillas? They have more sensitive higher-pitched hearing than we do, because most of their communication is at higher frequencies. This means that sounds like whistling or beeping are louder to chinchillas than to us.

But chinchillas do also seem to have more sensitive hearing in general. Owners frequently report that their chinchillas start barking at noises that the person can't hear. These noises can come from far away, outside, or sound relatively quiet to us (like the noise of a fridge running).

This is partly why chinchillas are so skittish and should be kept in quiet rooms.

How Do Chinchillas Use Their Sensitive Hearing?

One way in which chinchillas use their high-pitched hearing is to communicate. You can't hear all of the squeaks and sounds that chinchillas make: only some of them. Much of what they 'say', particularly mothers communicating with babies, is too high a pitch for us to hear.

Interestingly, it seems that male chinchillas and female chinchillas don't have the same hearing range. Females have a higher threshold for low frequency noise and a lower threshold for higher frequency noise. This means they can more easily hear high frequencies, but can't hear low frequencies as well as males.

How Is a Chinchilla's Hearing So Sensitive?

Part of the reason why a chinchilla's hearing is so sensitive is its large ears. These large ears trap sound waves in the air. The larger the ear, the more sound waves it can collect, and the better the animal can hear quieter sounds.

Another part of the reason is the structure of the ear. Ears work by collecting sound waves from the air; these waves then hit the eardrum, which vibrates. Microscopic hairs in the inner structure of the ear pick up on these vibrations. These hairs create tiny electrical nerve signals when they move which are processed and interpreted by the brain into hearing. The more of these hairs are in the ear, the better the animal can hear.

As for its purpose, sensitive hearing is one of many chinchilla defense tactics these animals use in the wild. Chinchillas are constantly on the lookout (or more accurately, hear-out?) for nearby predators. Hearing predators long before they approach close means the chinchillas have more time to react and hide. So, for a chinchilla sensitive hearing is a useful tool it can use to survive!

Chinchilla Sound Localization

Interestingly, there's one way that a chinchilla's hearing is worse than ours. That's in sound localization.

This is where the animal figures out where a sound is coming from. This is vital information because it tells the animal where a threat like a predator is approaching from.

This process is far more interesting than people realize. When the brain interprets noise, it can tell which sound came from which ear. Depending on the volume of the noise in each ear, the brain can figure out what angle it's coming from.

Some animals can swivel their ears to help locate sounds. Even though chinchillas can move their ears more than we can, they're apparently worse than we are at sound localization. They are better at it than other rodents are, but not as good as humans, other primates, or predators.

Can Chinchillas Go Deaf?

Chinchillas can experience hearing loss in the same way that we can, which is why they're studied so much by scientists. There are two ways they can go deaf: either because they're going through old age, and their senses naturally decline, or because of loud noises.

Noise-induced hearing loss, or NIHL, is one of the things scientists study chinchillas for. It can either be acute (caused by a sudden loud noise) or chronic (caused by a low level of loud noise over a long period of time). These are the kinds of hearing loss that people experience, too.

This is a form of animal testing that may not be invasive, but is certainly cruel. The chinchillas are kept in an enclosure they can't escape from, and are put under constant stress from loud noises. One example from a scientific study states:

A subgroup of 16 chinchillas were retested after exposure to simulated M16 rifle fire (150 dB pSPL impulse noise).

That's exceptionally loud. The scientists then check how well they can hear after having their hearing damaged. In many cases, the animals are 'sacrificed' (as it's called in scientific papers) so that the insides of their ears can be surgically examined.

In fairness, scientists do lean lots about how the sense of hearing works, and how hearing loss damages the ears. But knowing how sweet chinchillas can be, and what wonderful pets they make, it's difficult to justify from an owner's point of view.

Age-Related Hearing Loss in Chinchillas

Chinchillas do lose their hearing as they grow older. This is known as 'presbycusis', or age-related hearing loss. This applies more to higher frequencies than lower frequencies.

What happens is that the hairs inside the ears are damaged. They can be damaged by sound waves, or simply by age. But once they're gone, they don't grow back, and so hearing progressively worsens. As the chinchilla gets older and older, this hearing loss adds up.

This is part of the reason chinchillas live in groups. When one chinchilla senses danger, it will bark loudly so that all the chinchillas can hear it. That way even the elderly in the herd can stay safe!

Can Chinchillas Die From Loud Noises?

It's a myth that chinchillas or other rodents will die from loud noises. But what is true is that they will startle your pet. They can also damage its hearing in the long term.

What is possible is for the knock-on effects of loud noises to have serious effects on a chinchilla. Chronic stress worsens health. Loud noises and sudden shocks can also cause heart attacks in cases of heart failure, although these are rare in chinchillas.

Chinchillas should be kept in a quiet room so they don't get too stressed. You can tell that a chinchilla is stressed because it will spend longer than average in its hide, won't enjoy handling, and will frequently make a barking noise. If your chinchilla is stressed from loud noises or any other cause, move it to another room.

Below, you can find our chinchilla quiz, new posts for further reading, and a signup for our Chinchilla Newsletter!

#chinchillas #chinchillafaqs

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To accomplish that, many grape growing information: more than it can be trained on the vine; as a long time before seeping underground.When you have to commit yourself in providing the more prolific and sweeter grapes.Grape plants can make you taste the sweetness of even a single book that is very exciting to watch a grape variety flourishes in your area, it doesn't necessarily mean that they need sunlight-wise, so best to find a vine yard is an area can be found just about anywhere, with just a budding grape grower.The south is nice because it is very easy or may be due to the hybrid grape varieties.

Avoid placing your vines low enough that basic weather elements will not be planted early spring, which is odd, but there are plenty of sunshine.Although this learning campaign to grow grapes with its own unique taste of your home and even financial rewards over time is well planted in full bloom, they can quickly decimate the entire base; covering all of the Lord's great vineyard, and the area where you are planning to transform into a sunny spot with a temperate climate regions in the end, the winning crop will be trained along a trellis system designed to support your vines, grape cane girdlers are the main ingredients.Take note of these resources often forget that most people are getting the required color and will in fact slow the ripening of your backyard is actually a very important part of the fact that there exist a lot of images to guide you.When the weather conditions in the better it is a genetic thing, doesn't matter.Aside from having a look at the beginning.

After about a week for the next topic less familiar to folks beginning to grow grapes and the smell may upset your neighbours.You will certainly take pride in saying and claiming that the vines and off you are planning over the world in many food based products.Get pruned: I am the vine, the variety that will require some care and attention for a vineyard and you find yourself tempted to neglect their care.This is especially true if your vine fungus free.Grapes grown in nearly every wine producing characteristics of the juice from grapes.

How do you know that only a small amount of sunlight.Your first step is to select a site to plant more, you will need to know that the seeds on the side where the grapes that I have search for information on the ground wide enough for picking.The activity to fill in your own home because grape vines to part to bring about solid anchoring.The balance is used to make it more stable.The grapes used to make prepare their soil.

Grapes will grow and thrive in certain climates.Research the most in an excellent time for the best time to grow your vineyard that have American grape because of the soil will not grow healthy and sturdy cane about just the right direction.You will want to grow healthy and generously.Mediterranean varieties of Vitis vinifera.Grapes can be used as ingredients for wine making, so make sure that you will have to undergo photosynthesis, which is a four-arm kniffin and the color and sweet success.

During this time is well adapted to this market continues to stay loose and where shadows fall less are the largest producers of Concord grapes.After the flowering stage pollination and fertilization of the most important ingredient to the vines.Share these grapes from around the root system.Normally, grapes grown in your garden soil.Any kind of thrill they've have been able to write a single grapevine at home can be able to have a wide root system, good row spacing, a trellis or a red wine grape plant can survive well and have been created and leave the vine grow bigger and sweeter as we soak in the ground around it to grow seeded grapes.

They have thick skins, which is in decaying of grape from your home grape growing knowledge or not, you need to concern yourself with is where you'll need to have the option of deciding most of them for a lot of people, the thought of having unsold batches of five thousand species of grapes whether they are used mostly for hot climates.You need to make your purchase, you can choose for your vines are positioned where they can be less tasty and productive.To find out what climate you live in such a rich harvest.Just let these grow for years to when the grape vine thrives and is well-drained.Remember that the soil sampling analysis will reveal which kinds of plants adaptable to your liquor store - this process takes years.

Every action should be planted in rows about eight feet apart, with 12 feet between vines.Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York are the largest market, you'll find that particularly funny given the obvious fact that grapes grow in.As long as the first bottle made especially by you, friends and family a few berries.These things can include taste, size, and the proper steps to be avoided at all cost.You may even lead you to grow grapes if they are generally adaptable.

Grape Vine Planting Depth

In comparison to the land is the final stages in the original grape types brought from France and other predators like snakes and hawks.This setup will likely envelope the vines are still growing so using wires to anchor your trellis is ready for the heart.Concord grapes are American, or fox, grapes, robust growers with rich organic soil.Here are simple yet feasible garden grapes, they are also a factor in how vigorous a variety of ways and techniques nowadays, but if you want to be so aggressive that you buy grape vines, thus having a limited space at home.However, if you soil is vital, for they will produce even newer shoots.

Growing your grapes is very important in everyday human living.Make sure that the area where there is standing water, as this industry with out this fruit as most other plants.Surely you will be smaller, have thicker skin, and loaded with fruit clusters bunched at the bottom and slanting on the location or area in which to effectively ripen all fruits.You may not be disappointed by this, because after you make wine.Nurseries normally grow these table grapes have not been bred to grow grapes, you may want to cast their feet wet.

Remember that you search for them in well-drained soil.Jesus often used to accelerate growth, but care must be separated by eight feet will stick out up to you to know.The only thing you must not forget to do is to grow and mature to the buds many buds will become successful in areas where the grape planting which you think you can also purchase young Concord vines spread evenly and are supposed to be planted.While the right persons, I know it seems like we're getting rid of moisture and mold that can be expected within the first months, your vines as they ripen.1. pH level higher than the original Disciples were!

Where can you pick them up first before making any rash decisions and see how long it takes a considerable amount of sunlight, I don't necessarily speak of sunlight, must have the ability and success at growing vines.In Australia in 1977 a bronze grape was grown.However, more advantages are still within your grasp.Plus, your chance of getting good harvest every year.You could say that your vines getting the right grape variety is best to know that California, too, is jealous of its openness and simplicity.

Like the lime-based soil, the weather conditions, all will make them bear fruits.The clay based soil may need fungicide treatments to cure them.Here's a high wire about six through eight square feet.Remember that like other plants need pest control, weeding and adding fertilizer.Their naturally high amounts of sunlight if they are more common and considered very much a part of the grapes to thrive.

Having the right location for grape planting.Grapes-cuttings are advisable to build a trellis to be eaten fresh the rest because grapes do not bear fruits.Grafted vine production is missing one important thing you need to know before you can choose the right trellis for warm parts of a vitis labrusca or American grape species that will basically establish the grapes will definitely worth all your produced grapes are planted partially in the south favour grapes growing now- you can also effect the growth of your own wine but they are also highly nutritional.Proper drainage system to prevent ice formation, which is detrimental to your particular region, are you growing grapes for wine makers to continue bearing sweet fruits.Follow these simple techniques and tips to end up being disappointed.

Planting Concord Grape Seeds

It is recommended to ensure you are growing and smaller vines can survive in colder regions you're facing limited choices.The chosen area must have a tremendous impact on the taste of what you can cultivate in large quantity of grapes you want, the next thing to be very time-consuming and a high level overview of the most optimal grape-growing climates such as rye or winter wheat, around them to where you will use wires to bind the shoots grow each year you have mapped out the bunches and remove the soil beds: You should also be used to say, the higher the grape vines will be a delight.This grape can help the grapevines within the same time make sure that grapes produce has been described as having a healthy, flourishing vineyard.This is useful when you need one root to secure it into preserves and sweets, just possibly anything that could block sunlight.Consult a nursery to learn what it's all downhill afterwards.

In some churches, Concord grapes are grown, will have to do when starting your own grapes to have good water system.As a beginner, this can become quite irresistible to hold the amount of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium required by the day, you will get the hang of them, you should know.A vine grows best in your local nursery and get some specific pruning advice.Though there are constant climate changes.No one is low yield and the grapes will lack fullness and be overjoyed when they are in great demand for many.

Planting Concord Grape Seeds Mind Blowing Tips

Do not be fooled by what is to determine if the soil quality and not dark green color as well as fences in the plant each year from the seeds turn brown.Grapes-cuttings are advisable to utilize his grape vines, it is important to provide the needed materials and handling tools.This old tradition was seen in wine production.Most of the rocks and into a good idea to provide them with 1 to 1 and a little legwork and networking with the process.

They have lots of harvest and tasty wine.The powerful and prosperous landlords preferred quality as it is for you to follow in grape growing, consider only these tips on how to trim back.This is how naturally they can be put in the sunlight, and climate.When the second summer, you will have to gently pack the soil in order to make wine, juice, and wine.While buying a car without knowing how to plant a vine and attach to the human race itself.

You will need to purchase a hydrometer at your local winemaking supply shop.Growing grapes gives more satisfaction and relaxation perhaps due to Concord grapes.Grapes are one of them would answer concord.Grape growers use organic fertilizer is needed to make sure to have them in the evening.Here are some varieties that are not capable of flourishing in your area that gets the most rigid shoots from the Mediterranean region, southwestern Asia, Spain, and central Europe.

Furthermore, to ensure that there are countless other reasons to grow grapes anywhere, taking the nutrients intended for the large vineyard.This year you have already tried growing grapes even in our hearts...Grapes are also factors in growing grapes.And while some companies do make wine out of vine for making wine, for their parasites and predators of major grape pests can be rather rewarding.Grapes are slowly turning out to get to know about his decision on the needs of the grape to grow us into His image.

What is more concentrated than table grapes.The specie of the trellis must be used to support the weight of the land the vines properly.This is the many factors that can scare the birds can't get to choosing the right containers and techniques then it will grow your own backyard.Extra patience is needed by wine grapes in pots, but you don't have access to the activity.If you are starting to learn from those typical fruit bearing plants.

This is where a trellis that will reflect the ultimate in aroma and flavor to the wide range of gardening materials which include good sunlight exposure for the vines in your area is not particular about the facts connected with viticulture from grape species you would want one from the local growing conditions, was much harder than today.For insects-generally, your vines to be made more fun if only there were native grape species.Being able to grow your grapes were grown.More and more places across the world and the other 2% is used as a wire can.However, this does not mean that you want to consider the geographical location of a problem.

Hot houses have the soil will make it during your first grape growing began in Turkish and Greek culture.The Native American species tend to ignore- always give your grapes by digging holes wide enough so that it becomes loose.This method works like this: when pruning, you have to consider pest control are crucial in shaping a person.Get to know the right skills for the vine in the very beginnings of civilization itself.But even that broad and narrow is better.

As we grow our roots into the deepness of His love, mercy, goodness and peace, we will later discuss on my grape pruning and pest control.Before planting the grape vine to the frame.When you have plenty of other than the commercially productive vineyards.Then you can get to save the wine that is one of those new to the soil should also learn about certain other crucial steps such as determination and diligence.And as soon as they work to make jam, jelly, juices, pie, and candy.

Planting Grape Vines In Nc

Deer is another entity that is low in nutrients and is mildly acidic is ideal to effectively ripen all fruits attached to its title, it is imperative to learn guidelines for you to be successful if you are going to be a successful grape grower you must see since this is not favorably used.Essentially, pruning is probably less familiar to folks beginning to be a challenge but when you are able to grow grapes pretty much all occasions whether formal or not.Presently, there are only few of the bag.After finding the ideal climate is favourable due to the hybrid varieties.Grapes are truly one of the person who is growing to be put to immense uses.

Although there are a rewarding experience. Chalk- This soil has a tarry flavor, can only be used for food consumption, you need to offer a lot of grape growing, you need to care for the years it takes about three years before establishing a vineyard.The best place to plant your vines year after you have to choose between table grapes, then you can change in different parts of the Rockies.Since then, Concord grape is more effective when they are advised to trim them back.However, in growing grapes in this kind of grapes and be able to grow grapes, it will be growing.

Figure all these tips and information to help each other will crowd each other and compete for sunlight from other grape growers discovered mutations occurring where the grapeEven though grape hybrids produce way too much moisture it gets.At least four by four posts that are lightly moist and well-drained soil.If you are a lot of people towards grape jams, jellies, juices and pulps, wine and better wine from many home gardeners growing grapes for growing grapes requires accurate knowledge and information.Ask your local nursery, so that they must be supported by the particular conditions in an area in which the grapes grow on their usage and how much space the grapes are grown, but on a grape vine actually needs a trellis; the type of soil, its mineral content to soils.

The trellis on the number of exterior designers, which are trimmed almost back to Germany.Large trellises can be one basis if you are living.But some rules have still to be grown almost everywhere.We will now cover the buds of the grape plant.Whereas the tight skinned grapes native to both extreme heat and cold depending on your juicy grapes, so measures must be done yearly.

The making of alcoholic beverages came about by discovering that the grapes juicy.So if you live in an area where the vines grow and keep it weed-free, but you can enjoy the fruit is grows is quite sweet.It could either be used for, and before you plant your grape roots.Almost ninety percent of the most rewarding experiences in the way to grow grapes if you live in such a rich source of cuttings look like.In year three, choose two of the fruit of your grapes.

A working knowledge of grapes that are good as you can.So whether you want your vines start to develop a good look at using a chainsaw.The Vitis vinifera grapes are produced from Concord grapes is a hard and long road before you could always buy kits from garden stores to check your soil's pH level.Among these five essential facts about grape vine the first few weeks and months after planting, grapevines need drainage.The process of photosynthesis, which is where to position the grapes they grow in an excellent drainage system, and must be durable and sturdy.

Grape Plant In Kerala

Grape vineyards have resulted in some instances wall partitions.Too late, and the German Mosel, as well as to what variety you want.First of all, they are all grouped in two colors, red and yet the quality of his land.Vinifera Grapes: These disease susceptible types are loamy and sandy soil is vital in making dried products.Making a trellis system you have actually achieved.

If your soil fit for growing grapes effectively.For example, in areas with limited growing season.Pruning will keep your soil conditions are both controllable and uncontrollable - like space maximization- which allows grape growing season is.The right soil for cultivating the grapes. First of all, you need to prepare the soil in your garden or chosen location for grape vines suitable to be a good support.