Return to Nature

For me it started maybe five or so years ago.  First, it was turkeys walking down a main street in Oak Bluffs.  Then, it seemed as though the deer appeared in our yard just about every morning.  Stories about coyote sightings were next.  When I moved to Connecticut, it was the sighting of bears that made the news.  Soon, the cougar who traveled over 1,000 miles to Connecticut was the subject of the news for a week or so. Clearly, 'wild' animals are getting closer and closer to our cities and towns.  Jim Sterba has written a book about this invasion - "Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds" - which Russell Baker reviews in the NY Review of Books. 

Sterba attributes this growth to a couple of changes that have occurred in the past fifty years.  Chief among these changes: we do not rely on hunting for our food or wood for our heat and buildings; we've moved further and further away from town centers; the forest has regrown; the demise of the family farm.  He thinks we should have more hunters and should be more aware that nature is really not benign but Darwinian.