Most of us will breathe sighs of relief if wildlife biologist Allan Mueller rediscovers what he thinks was the ivory-billed woodpecker, which he thinks he saw last year. He and a team of 26 volunteers, plus three expert field biologists, start their search this Saturday and will slosh through the Arkansas swamps until about March or April.
By now I’m sure many of you are saying, “Wow, that’s a long time to spend in the swamps, looking for a bird that may not exist!” Relax. They intend to split into five teams, and one team member will search once a month, for about six hours. They’ll be armed with a wooden contraption called a double knocker, to replicate the sound of the bird, as well as a CD player to broadcast the distinctive call. My only question is, if the bird was thought to be extinct, how does anyone know what it sounds like? Apparently, no recordings of the bird’s call exist. It’s possible they recorded the call from an old Woody Woodpecker cartoon, but that hasn’t been confirmed, nor has it been confirmed that Woody was an ivory-billed specimen.
When the bird supposedly became extinct, piano manufacturers had to resort to. . . Wait, my research assistant just informed me that the bill isn’t made of ivory; it only has the appearance of ivory. Never mind, I was thinking of elephants, but either way, you should harbor no feelings of guilt if you recently bought a piano.
In case you think all of this is simply a waste of time, consider the fact that an anonymous donor has pledged $50,000 to anyone who leads the team to a live specimen. It’s not too hard to figure out why this person prefers to remain anonymous.
I suppose you’re thinking that finding this woodpecker will greatly improve your life, which, up until this time, has been fairly empty. Maybe, maybe not. I’ve seen red-bellied woodpeckers and pileated woodpeckers, all in my ex-backyard, and none of them affected my health or wealth, other than eating some bird seed from my feeder. I found one pecking on my house one day, and I scared it away. Woodpeckers often peck holes in the wood on houses, sometimes searching for insects, sometimes making holes for acorn storage, and, in rare cases, making nests. It should be readily apparent to anyone with an ounce of sense why these birds are so heavily protected by regulations.
So what can we expect if these wildlife biologists actually find an ivory-billed woodpecker? More environmental regulation, I suppose. You can pretty much forget that vacation swamp home you were considering building. The government will take your swamp lot by eminent domain and give a quit claim deed to a needy woodpecker. That won’t be enough, however. As their populations increase, they’ll demand more and more land. Even the Jersey Shore resorts won’t escape the influx, as they make nests in the plastic palm trees at the doo-wop motels, also on the endangered species list.
Speaking of which, the Doo-wop Preservation League has done an outstanding job in that only 100 or so doo-wop motels have disappeared from the Wildwoods since the league’s formation. Maybe they should borrow a page or two from the environmentalists.
Many people think that environmentalists are super smart, otherwise, why would they have the term mentalist in their names? Well, they’re not really environ mentalists, they’re environment people. I’m not saying that all environmentalists are stupid, but you won’t hear me making the case that some are not. They’re presently holding up expansion of a landfill in Cape May County because someone spotted a red-headed woodpecker which claimed to have property rights in a tree. When asked to move to a tree further down the forest, the woodpecker stated that if it was so great there, why not just move the landfill to that location?
It also seemed totally sane to me when a subdivision in Ocean County had to provide a fenced area for some type of rattlesnake, as if it couldn’t just slither off to some other woody area. Of course, this was the only place suitable for that particular type of snake, and why would anyone of sound mind be opposed to rattlesnakes living in the area? The ACLU got involved, claiming discrimination against poisonous reptiles.
Way back in my youth, I used to romp through the woods, sometimes unarmed, and sometimes with the added security of my aunt’s BB gun. I never worried about bears or coyotes, but both have made a resurgence in NJ since they were reintroduced to the area by caring environmentalists. Some people claim to have seen mountain lions, also.
So it’s easy to see that we desperately need more environmentalists. Already they have succeeded in renaming man-made global warming to climate change, and we now look forward to the coming man-made ice age, as predicted back in the 70’s. This is good news for the polar bears, who just missed making the endangered species list, settling for threatened. Next time you meet up with a polar bear, let me know how threatened it feels.