Feed the wildlife! (a radical imperative)

I set out natural stone salt-licks year-round for deer on the perimeter of the land I occupy [I’ve witnessed birds, and I suspect other wildlife enjoy/require them too].

I buy bags of apples on sale and try to set out 5 lbs a couple evenings per week for the deer during winter; I cut up a few for possums and rabbits nightly. I set out all spent fruit too, rather than composting.


Deer in the full Wolf Moon’s light
January 28, 2021
A deer foraging not on apples I set out, but on “weeds” – wildflowers, herbs and grasses
just beneath the triptych picture windows of my living room as I went to open the drapes to let in the Full Moon’s light – just before retiring to bed.

I feel like the salt lick, the small sweet apples and fruit scraps are my insignificant attempt at respect, alms, honoring and reparations for all we have destroyed — and for the survivors who endure and remain in the middle of a cold winter. This is agro country, and not a speck of corn or fruit is left behind for wild animals in the barren cornfields and orchards that were once forests filled with acorns, walnuts, pine nuts, pawpaws and twigs — and prairies filled with grasses, herbs, seeds and wildflowers.

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residuum

“The Distances They Keep”, Howard Nemerov, the blue swallows, 1967


this is no time
to evict
centipedes,
spiders,
the occasional, lone
boxelder bug,
dozens of out-of-season ladybird beetles
or
the almost-always odorless stinkbugs

from
our houses

to do so now means certain death, outside

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