Letter by Slim Wolfe
Wildlife – June 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
How much meddling is enough?
Editors:
I can’t decide between the lynx and the rancher. Both are ornery, predatory critters with a certain wild wisdom and grace. Legend has it that cattle people are on the cutting edge of ingenuity and perseverance, without which the rest of the white folks could never have overrun the west like some kind of kudzu, so why should they yelp about losing a few head of stock to the big cats?
On the other hand, I defy anyone to step away from their modems and calculators and take a good long look at the night sky. Considering the vastness of the universe, who among us pretends to enough wisdom to know what’s right for the lynx? We can’t keep our trains on track, and we damned sure can’t seem to come up with a sizable talent like a Beethoven or a Shakespeare. And maybe the lynx would just as soon hang out in Canada until the human finishes sinking in the tarpit of its own extinction. Maybe we’re messing up some Lynxian scheme of survival and/or revenge.
As long as we’re hell-bent on meddling as the antidote to previous meddling, maybe we ought to meddle our human brains back to a state where we can subtract six from five without microchips, and meanwhile let the rest of the critters look out for themselves.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove