I dream of living off the land completely - in vain, because the monkeys eat everything.
When we became sedentary, lived indoors, and started to raise livestock, we began to see wolves not as occasional fur-bearers or fellow hunters but as robbers.
I love animals to the extent that my home is my dog's home! Which means that nothing is too good for my Freckles-chairs, couches, beds. But I do draw the line on chipmunks nibbling at my table linens, bedding, blankets, etc.
Human relationships with predators have always been thorny. Predators are the first creatures our kind purposely eradicates. Too often, people feel humans are and should be in control; we are enraged to discover this is not true. And when other creatures share our appetites and kill our livestock (often animals we were raising to kill, ourselves), we call them vandals and murderers...Predators are the most persecuted creatures on Earth.
When people encroach on forest land and in the periphery of habitats of wild animals, they attack humans.
The ancient feud between cat and dog is not forgotten in the north, for the Lynx is the deadly foe of the Fox and habitually kills it when there is soft snow and scarcity of easier prey.
If people persist in trespassing upon the grizzlies' territory, we must accept the fact that the grizzlies, from time to time, will harvest a few trespassers.
We are all vegetarians here, and except for a mountain lion that's been hanging around and killed our dog, we don't have a care in the world.
