Editorials

A margarine commercial of yore featured the catch phrase “you can’t fool Mother Nature.” We can no longer remember why this was supposed to prompt viewers to buy the featured brand of margarine—perhaps it contained some butter—but the concept seemed true then, and it still does.  

Take squirrels, for example. Someone years ago gave us a very fancy bird feeder as a present. It features a handsome spherical cage of metal grillwork wrapped around a mesh cylinder which holds the birdseed. The device, called “The Nuttery,” comes in a box with illustrations and prose claiming that birds could get in, but squirrels, greedy little beggars that they are, would be foiled.  

We’ve just gotten around to putting it up, and it does indeed provide an excellent opportunity for nature study, though not the one the manufacturers intended. When we opened the box, we found a plastic envelope containing “The Nuttery Extra-Protection Brackets,” with an explanation that “for those of you who have persistent and pesky ‘super’ squirrels and raccoons, we are offering these Extra-Protection Brackets to deter them.” We put them on as directed to secure the lid—no measure was too much to ensure the safety of our birdseed. We hung the feeder from a wire on the branch outside the window by my desk. 

The first day it was up no birds visited. The squirrels, however, who have become quite numerous in a yard devoted mainly to free-range oak trees, found it right away. They jumped out on to the cylinder and hung from it at every angle, trying to figure out a way to get to the seed. Within two hours one of them had gotten his teeth on the edge of the lid and learned how to pry it up a few inches, Extra-Protection Brackets and all. Perhaps we’d made some mistake in putting it together, we thought.  

The manufacturer, in England, has a lovely website, explaining the concept in detail, showing even more specific installation tips, and repeating the claim that squirrels would be foiled. Ha! Wimpy British squirrels, perhaps, but not red-blooded Berkeley squirrels. 

By the second day, the lid, which was attached not only by the Extra-Protection Brackets but by a chain, was hanging off to the side, and a clever squirrel had gotten his head in the top and was gobbling seeds. Another one had mastered a technique for hanging upside down and shaking the cage until seeds fell out into his mouth. Still no birds.  

On day three, a couple of plain titmouses, little birds with cute tufts of feathers on their heads, had finally figured out how to get inside the cage to eat the seeds. The squirrels had detached the lid completely, chain, brackets and all, and had hurled it ignominiously to the ground. They were enjoying eating the seed they’d managed to shake out.  

Today, a week later, squirrels and birds (chickadees have joined the tits) are cheerfully co-existing, sharing the seed that’s left in the feeder. And the lesson Mother Nature is teaching us here? Well, there’s no such thing as total security. 

We took a short airplane trip a couple of weeks ago, after not having flown for almost a year. We were stuck on the freeway behind an accident, so we got to the airport very late and feared that we were going to miss our plane. We raced into the terminal, thinking that we’d surely be held up in the security line. Not to worry. People were being rushed through, without even having to take off their shoes as they did on our last flight. Our check-in procedure was perfunctory, with boarding passes printed on home computers and passed over a simple bar-code reader. We were, of course, exactly who we said we were, harmless middle-aged travelers, but if we hadn’t been, who would have known? 

Nevertheless, when we sent a friend off to the airport to go back to Martinique last night we made sure he left early, because we feared that his combination of dark skin and French accent would make him a target of special scrutiny. Harassing “suspicious-looking” travelers is the “Extra-Protection Bracket” of homeland security—a pointless measure intended to impress, but adding nothing to ensure real protection.  

And there are more extreme and very serious infringements of civil liberties which are just as ineffective. In New York, lawyer Lynne Stewart is facing 35 years in jail for a minor breach of court rules in defending an accused terrorist, an act which normally would result at most in sanctions from the Bar. In Los Angeles, four Iranian brothers are in jail because they were members of an Iranian exile organization opposed to the current regime in Iran, which is also opposed by Condoleezza Rice, among others.  

Neither of these cases poses any real threat to public safety, but they are being vigorously prosecuted by the thugs who have gotten control of the federal department of justice. At the same time, countless real danger zones like chemical manufacturing plants and railroad crossings continue to be exposed to potential terrorist assault, if anyone really cared. Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, while the U.S. government’s attention is diverted in Iraq.  

All of this proves once again the vanity of much that humans foolishly think we can control. If we can’t outwit squirrels for more than a couple of days, why should we think we can fool human would-be terrorists for longer?  

—Becky O’Malley 

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