Andy Chase

As I headed out to work this morning I spied a red spotted newt crossing the road a couple hundred feet from the end of our driveway. I pulled over and took the necessary few moments to carry him the rest of the way across the road, rather than leave him to be squashed by other motorists who either don’t even notice tiny critters like that, or don’t bother to swerve if they do.

I’ve pulled over to escort turtles across the road too, and transported mice caught in the house a few miles down the road to release them. There are plenty of people who think nothing of leaving glue traps around for mice to get stuck in and starve to death.

A couple of years ago I came across carful of middle-aged ladies throwing their garbage into the woods at a Quabbin gate parking area… when I pulled over and offered to take their garbage for them, explaining that I’d rather take it home and put it in, oh, a trash can than have them polluting my neighborhood with it, they got back into their car (Scenic Cape Cod license plate and all) and left without a word, although I’m sure they were clucking to themselves all the way home about how rude I was.

The idea of not swerving to avoid salamanders, frogs, toads, squirrels, mice, shrews, voles, etc and the idea of treating the world like my own personal garbage can are so utterly foreign to me that I have a hard time imagining how such people relate to the world… and it’s troubling to think about the nurture versus nature question; were they brought up like that, or is it just in their basic nature? Neither option is very palatable.

Simple things like basic courtesy are probably safe to attribute to nurture; I always say my pleases and thank yous, hold the door open for people (or apologize if I don’t see somebody coming right behind me, or thank other people for holding the door). On the other hand, what about boys who delight in killing frogs with firecrackers or shooting small animals with BB guns? I never had even a shred of inclination to do anything like that. What are those boys like when they grow up?