The Permeable Prison, Nature's Enduring Sovereignty

“ There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside. ”

“ A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside, and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact in one of the spice islands of the Indian ocean. ”

“ I never saw sad men who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue We prisoners called the sky, And at every careless cloud that passed In happy freedom by. ”

“ In his eyes, as in the eyes of all Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful creatures in a state of captivity far outweighed the inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom God had so improvidently placed in a state of freedom! It was for the animals good, removing them at once from the countless dangers of open air and exercise, and enabling them to exercise their functions in the guaranteed seclusion of a private compartment! Indeed, it was doubtful what wild animals were made for but to be shut up in cages! ”

“ They have gone the whole round of (p. 209) experiment—imprisonment and hard labour, solitary confinement, transportation, stripes, cropping and branding—the whole machinery of torture and death has been put into various motion, in the ignorant hope of reforming a sinner by the sure and only means of making a devil. The science of architecture has been exhausted in experiments to construct a reformatory prison, as if the form of a cell could regenerate a vicious heart into virtue. ”

“ Although in this small cell I'm found,
A prisoner I am not.
The door is made of iron bars,
The lock is large and strong,
But my mind soars free, up to the stars,
As if I'd done no wrong.
The mind of man is ever free,
By nature's law itself,
While this wicked, wretched corpus
May be laid upon the shelf.
What of this wretched body?
What care we for this hand?
But there's one thing safe to wager on,
"That mind's the standard of the Man." ”

“ If you take a bird, and place it in a cage, and next day liberate it, it will ever retain a dread of confinement; but, if you keep it in a prison for years, and then open the cage door, instead of the sudden eager flight to freedom, it will hover round its little prison, perhaps it will even re-enter it, preferring it to that liberty which it has lost the power to enjoy. ”

“ Such a fence, if set with the lower edge on the ground and anchored down where necessary, can safely be recommended as coyote-proof. Their cost, however, is possibly too great to bring them into general use for sheep pastures. Where land is valuable and pastures of the best, they will prove economical, for they have the merit of being both dog-proof and coyote-proof. Dogs, both large and small, that by chance get inside the inclosures are unable to get out, and have to be let out by the gate. ”

“ We do not know that a coyote has ever scaled or jumped it. A very large coyote that got in through an accidentally 'propped' floodgate, though chased by dogs all day, could not be made to jump out, even when cornered. Considering the steep, wild, and broken nature of the country, with several 'slides' in the fence that could not be avoided when building, and which move and displace the fence during hard storms, it is net surprising that a few coyotes have gotten in. ”

“ These coyotes were responsible for the tracks we had seen, and had mistaken for dog tracks, but of all the canyons we had seen he was in the last place where we would expect to find a trapper. The coyotes evidently reached the river gorge through side canyons on the left, where we had seen signs of ancient trails. Apart from that there was no sign of animal life. With the last of the wooded canyons, the signs of beaver had disappeared. There were a few otter tracks, but they are wily fellows, and are seldom trapped. ”

“ The opinion they have of the human race is that it exists for their advantage, and mankind, further than it contributes to their support, is an object of indifference to them.
More to the south, and in the vicinity of white settlers, the coyote is oppressed and persecuted; subjected to like usage with that which the common wolf receives. This state of things is of course accompanied by changes in character that are not less marked than in the wolf’s case. It becomes nocturnal in habit, flies from the face of man, and is one of the most wary, timid, and suspicious of animals. ”

“ In the wildest parts of the country remote from settlement they are more readily trapped. The chances for successful trapping decrease with their familiarity with man, so that there is little probability that the process will ever have much effect on their numbers.
The writer knows a Kansas trapper who is quite successful in capturing coyotes in a rather thickly settled part of that State. He steel traps and sets them along hedges in places where the animals are accustomed to pass through openings. No bait is used and the trap is partly concealed by dead leaves or grasses. ”

“ Because of the extirpation of larger carnivores such as bears, wolves, and mountain lions, coyotes are the current apex predator in many ecosystems in North America [4] . Coyotes are also a behaviorally labile species with the ability to change activity patterns and ecological niche depending upon their circumstances. Examples include changing pack size and prey preferences depending on whether competitors/predators, such as gray wolves, are present or absent [5] – [6] .
Extant coyote subspecies in North America are also highly mobile, colonizing areas at a rapid rate [7] – [8] . ”

“ Being shy and cautious is the very price of his existence. He displays both courage and fighting blood whenever there is anything to be gained by such display. Rarely is it cowardly to avoid being a target for the deadly long-range rifle or to slip away from an attack by dogs at overwhelming odds. Recklessness and rashness do not constitute bravery.
The coyote constantly uses his wits. In a Utah desert I often saw him watching the flights of buzzards. If the buzzards came down, the coyote made haste to be among those at the feast. ”

“ The park is not especially well suited to the coyote, as it lacks the open sagebrush flats and rolling hills that are such important parts of the animal’s natural environment. Coyotes are highly adaptable animals, however, and seem to fit themselves into almost any habitat. Having respect but little fear of man, they are often found even in the farming districts and near the smaller towns. Wherever there is sufficient food there seem to be coyotes, even though they are mercilessly hunted in many such localities. ”

“ Stockmen hate the coyote with an intensity that they show toward no other animal, and with good reason, for the coyote meets them on a more equal footing than other beasts, his strategy outrivaling that of men. He repays their cruelties against his kind by killing their sheep and calves in broad daylight and executing a well-covered retreat before the owners can exact the penalty, then returning at night to raise his jeering laughter almost under the windows of his enemies. ”

“ The success of their efforts in Colorado is evidenced in the virtual extinction of such indigenous mammals as the grizzly bear, the timber wolf, and the Canada lynx, and in a great reduction in the numbers of black bears, cougars, and bobcats. The coyote, while not so abundant in the mountains earlier, was the only predatory animal able to hold his own against the trapping, and has actually thrived in settled areas. Wildlife investigators have assembled a mass of evidence indicating that it is not the ordinary habit of these carnivores to feed regularly on domestic stock. ”

“ The coyote is a kind of wolf that preys on the antelope. It is a mean, sneaking thief, too mean to attack a herd of antelopes, but follows them up, and while one strays off, grazing, watches the opportunity to spring upon his victim, run him down, and snap the hamstring of poor antelope, and then eats him.
One night I was woke up at Fort Sedgwick, thinking I heard wild geese flying over. But I learned it was a drove of coyotes, which came over the bluffs, into and through the fort nightly, to eat the refuse meat outside, where beef was slaughtered. ”

“ The establishment of pioneer homes throughout the country has always resulted in restricting the numbers of the larger wolves, which have gradually become extinct over large areas in the eastern and middle parts of the United States where they were formerly abundant. Not so with the coyote. Except in a few thickly settled regions, it has thrived upon civilization and is practically as numerous as it was before settlements began. Indeed, in many parts of the West coyotes are said to be increasing in spite of a constant warfare against them. ”

“ Coyotes are not adepts at burrowing, yet, some credit must be accorded them for work in this line. They often follow up mice and gophers for several feet under the sod, though it remains for the female to exhibit the powers of burrowing possessed by her tribe. In late winter in the southern part of her range, and in the early spring in the northern part, she selects a safe location, usually under a boulder or a ledge of rock, or on the face of a rounded point in a coulee or gulch, from where she may keep a sharp lookout, and sets to work to dig a home for her prospective family. ”

“ You are alone; you hear no human voice,—no sounds but the rushing of the river over its volcanic rocks, and the creeping of millions of lizards and tree-frogs and little toads. You see no human face; but you see all around you the labor of man being gnawed and devoured by nature,—broken bridges, sliding steps, fallen arches, strangled fountains with empty basins;—and everywhere arises the pungent odor of decay. This omnipresent odor affects one unpleasantly;—it never ceases to remind you that where Nature is most puissant to charm, there also is she mightiest to destroy. ”

“ Yet we should remind ourselves that if a being under our eyes passes in a second from life to death, yet in that same instant millions of similar beings are being created by the mysterious courses of organic nature: just as while lightning is striking and consuming a giant of the forest in one burning moment, simultaneously millions of such trees are germinating in the fruitful heat of mother-earth, beyond our sphere of control. We should note that in all ways and at all times creation has the numerical superiority over destruction, whether it concerns men or animals or plants. ”

“ Sometimes305 we fancy that green and amber eyes burn the darkness, and we cling close, close to the primal birthright of the race—the flaming brand—which raises its bright barrier now as in the age of stone, between mankind and the predatory beasts of the wild. The wooded hosts seem to press down with stifling persistence upon us and an indefinable terror creeps into our hearts, the inherent fear of man, the atom, of Nature, the fathomless, the unknown. ”

“ Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, Nature accomplishes her beneficent designs—now a flood of fire, now a flood of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an outburst of organic life—forest and garden, with all their wealth of fruit and flowers, the air stirred into one universal hum with rejoicing insects, a milky way of wings and petals, girdling the newborn mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating against its sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees. ”

“ Some of these are due to favorable conditions of surface, of geological structure, and of the distribution of rain; in many others, the evil consequences of man's improvidence have not yet been experienced, only because a sufficient time has not elapsed, since the felling of the forest, to allow them to develop themselves. But the vengeance of nature for the violation of her harmonies, though slow, is sure, and the gradual deterioration of soil and climate in such exceptional regions is as certain to result from the destruction of the woods as is any natural effect to follow its cause. ”

“ Nature has, in her eyes, no laws, no uniformity. She can work miracles at her will, and when she calls monsters from the deep they come. She can bid the almond-tree blossom in winter, and send the snow upon the ripe cornfield. ”

“ The truth lies in the opposite direction, as even small land birds are so little averse to ocean voyages that they not only cross the Gulf of Mexico at its widest point, but may even pass without pause over the low, swampy coastal plain to the higher regions beyond. Under favorable conditions birds can fly when, where, and how they please. Consequently the distance 4 covered in a single flight is governed chiefly by the food supply. Exhaustion, except as the result of unusual factors, cannot be said to be an important peril of migration. ”

“ The Parties recognise that the movement of terrestrial and aquatic invasive alien species across borders through trade-related pathways can adversely affect the environment, economic activities and development, and human health. ”