The tale of the look-alike shoes

(Would you lower your young son into one of these to retrieve an expensive pair of shoes?)

In 1985, I took a bunch of grad students from Cornell to a big meeting on conservation biology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  This was the meeting where it was decided to form a scientific organization on the subject, to be called the Society for Conservation Biology.  So we piled into a 9-passenger van and off we went.

My first mistake was taking the "short-cut" from Ithaca to Ann Arbor, by crossing the border into Canada and driving through Ontario, rather than the longer drive to Ohio and then turning north by staying in the U.S. all the way.  When we got to the Canadian border, the border guard asked if there were any non-U.S. citizens in the van.  I proudly announced that we had a German, a Costa Rican, a Venezuelan, and two Colombians.  Big mistake.  "Pull over. Pull over there.", the guard barked, as I parked the van near the visitor station.  All the foreign students had to go inside and sing the Canadian national anthem in English or something, because it was two hours before we were back on the road again.  One of the foreign students mumbled something about hoping that guy had to cross from Nicaragua into Costa Rica some day when she was on duty at that border.  Get his name.  I thought I heard the words "strip search" in her Latino accent.

We arrived safely in Wolverine country and attended presentations for 2-3 days.  For the last evening, I had purchased tickets to attend the banquet.   I had even brought a suit of clothes and planned to make a good visual impression on my comrades in the fledgling society that was being formed that week.  Who knows.  Maybe someday I would want to be Supreme Ruler of the organization, and those kinds of potentates never wear jeans at formal dinners.  But that morning I realized I had forgotten my black dress shoes to go with my suit.  All I had were tennis shoes--not potentate footwear at all.  A couple of students suggested I go to a local thrift store and buy a pair of black shoes.  Great idea.  I went, I saw, and I purchased a pair of black leather shoes for $2 that looked very similar to what I had left at home. I attended the banquet and lived happily ever after, although I never became Supreme Ruler of anything.

But those $2 shoes never really fit.  It was painful to wear them for more than a few minutes, and they looked as cheap as they were if you really examined them.  So one evening on my way home from work, I dropped the shoes into one of those bins at a nearby strip mall where you can donate clothes you no longer want.  I always feel good giving to those who have less than I do.  But later that evening, I realized that the black shoes I was putting on were the cheap shoes I had bought in Michigan; I apparently had taken my good shoes by mistake to the Salvation Army bin and thrown them away.  Yikes!  Those shoes cost me $80, which was a lot of money to pay for shoes in the mid-80s.  Then, the idea came to me.

The following morning at 5am, I gathered up my 9-year old son Matt and we drove to the mall, and parked in front of the bin. The slot in that bin was pretty large.  And unless they emptied the bin since yesterday, my shoes should still be in there.  I explained to Matt what he was looking for as I carefully lifted him up and lowered him down into that large metal container.  To this day, I can hear his little voice from inside the bin saying, "Daddy, it's dark in here."  At that time I wanted to say something like, "Buck up kid.  You're the son of a wildlife biologist.  How large could the rats in there possibly be?".  Matt searched around as best he could, came up empty-handed, and I then realized that the bin was empty.  Shoes gone.  I hate giving things away of real value to those who have less than I do.  In addition, as I was lifting Matt out of that thing, I ripped my new jacket on the edge of the bin opening.  Kharma 2, DrTom 0.

I kept the $2 shoes around for a long time to remind me of this incident.  I guess I thought that maybe Matt would want to wear them when he got older.  And we could retell the story.  And we would laugh together like fathers and sons do in the movies.   Instead, all he remembers is the time that his father put him in a dark, scary can to look for something.  And I feel like a child abuser.  And a cheap SOB.  And not like a potentate should feel at all.

Cats: our feline friends, or are they?

(Cat eating a bird it has just killed.)

About a decade ago I had a student in my Conservation Biology class named Scott Boomer. We were discussing the problem of non-native organisms that week, and Scott told me he had kept some interesting records on the behavior of three cats that he and his wife had at that time. The cats (one male, two females, and all neutered) had access to food and water in Scott’s apartment around the clock. The three natural predators had the habit of capturing prey outside and bringing it back to Scott, often dropping it at his feet or putting it in their bathtub. Scott is a biologist and he was able to identify all the prey items returned to his apartment over a 2-year period.

The list included:

Mammals: 5 deer mice, 2 woodland jumping mice, 5 Eastern chipmunks, 4 meadow voles, 1 gray squirrel, 6 star-nosed moles, 4 short-tailed shrews, 1 cinereus shrew, 2 little brown bats, 1 Eastern cottontail

Amphibians: 2 green frogs

Reptiles: 1 Eastern painted turtle, 3 Eastern garter snakes

Birds: 3 common yellowthroats, 2 black-capped chickadees, 1 house wren

Total: 43 animals

Now, there are about 90 million cats in the U.S., according to the 2005-2006 National Pet Owners Survey. A certain percentage of those cats never go outside. But anyway you run the numbers, the collective mortality on native wildlife by U.S. cats must total millions of individuals of dozens of species. In some places in the world, feral cats, those that have gone completely wild, are responsible for the demise of rare species of birds. The Stephens Island wren (a flightless species) in New Zealand went extinct in the late 1800’s due to the island’s cats, or so that story goes. The wedge-tailed shearwater in Hawaii is also impacted by cats. Conservation biologists actively control cats (as well as non-native rats, mongoose, etc.) in such places today, especially on oceanic islands.

We hear a lot these days about our “ecological footprint”, or the impact that a human has on the earth’s natural resources and ecosystems. I doubt that our pet ownership is included in these calculations. Remember that I tend to think in terms of quantity and quality of habitat for biodiversity. I usually think of our “habitat footprint” as defined by the boundaries of our house and the lawn surrounding it. But the effect of that living space penetrates further depending on the chemicals we use on the property, how far away we or our children trounce on the environment, and the influence of our pets, of which cats are probably the worst offenders. There are zones of concentric circles beginning with the epicenter of the house itself, which include areas of decreasing influence on the fauna and flora that is there now, as one moves respectively outward. Cats probably have an effect in each of those zones, but they may represent the only threat in the outermost circle, which is perhaps several hundred meters from the edge of the house.

In fact, last year someone built a new house about 100 meters from the edge of my woodlot. For the past few months, I have had two cats roaming my property that I am sure live at that house. I have not had cats on my property in 20 years. And so it goes. We increase our collective ecological footprint, we chip away at the quantity and quality of wildlife habitat and, in my opinion, the quality of life is diminished just a little bit more---again.

In these few paragraphs I wanted to increase your awareness of an idea that perhaps you have not thought much about--- how that lovable pet cat of yours is possibly reducing the biological diversity in your neighborhood. I do not intend to explore a detailed solution to this problem, although attaching a simple bell to your outdoor cat would probably reduce its kill rate. You might be thinking that cats kill organisms that people do not like very much anyway, so what the heck. But I can assure you that every one of those species killed by Scott’s cats represents a unique and interesting biological story. Remember that not so long ago, nearly everyone thought it was fine to shoot, trap, or poison wolves, mountain lions, and eagles.