Animals that Cross the Line: Challenging Human Contradiction
Crossing the body of a 'harmful animal'
A Natural History of Desire and Culture, Myth and Science

All animals are equal.
But some animals are a little more equal.
Some animals are loved, some are hated.
Even within the same animal, people's reactions can vary 180 degrees depending on the situation they are in.
Cats, which are gentle at home, can become 'terrifying killers' that harm biodiversity outside, and pigeons, which were once 'symbols of peace', are now treated as 'winged rats' in the city.

Of course, animals have never changed.
What is always fickle is our gaze towards animals.
There is a mixture of human desires and needs, ideology and science.
Above all, we want to control nature.
Animals that stray from the places set by humans are mercilessly labeled as 'villains'.

The author vividly and humorously reveals this ambivalent perspective of humans, who easily care for and hate animals.
By listening to the stories of ordinary people who live alongside animals, field experts, and scholars, we provide a broad framework for understanding the interaction between humans and animals.
Through a narrative that leans neither toward naive compassion nor cold anthropocentrism, readers will be led to consider how to live 'well' with the animals around us.

When they die, we sigh.
We mourn the loss of pumas, eagles, and pandas.
Develop a conservation plan and celebrate even small successes.
Even their sex lives are tracked.
(...) But when animals adapt too well, we don't seem to be very happy.
(...) In theory, we want those animals to live.
I just don't want them to live here.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, some animals are born pests, some animals become pests themselves, and some animals simply embrace the status of 'pests.'
But this is just a label we give to animals.

We know how to see them from more than one perspective.
While putting rat poison to kill rats, they protest against using rats as laboratory animals.
We shoot deer in the fall and show our children their adorable young ones in the spring.
Vermin with spines expose our inner hypocrisy.
It shows that the natural world evokes both admiration and bewilderment in those who live apart from it.
Maybe this is a good thing.
Maybe we need animals to humble us sometimes.
--- From "Introduction: What is a harmful organism ____?"

Corrigan says the key to the rat problem is waste management.
(...) Corrigan says things would be different if we used solid, lidded trash cans.
But perhaps the residents don't like the noise the garbage truck makes when it comes to collecting their garbage.
Corrigan says city officials could change their regulations to require trash to be put out in the morning instead of the night before.
But no one wants to wake up earlier than their normal wake-up time.
--- From "Chapter 1: The Plague-like Rats"

Scientists estimate that between 2000 and 2019, an average of 58,000 people died from snakebites each year in India.
In contrast, the United States had a total of 101 snakebite deaths between 1989 and 2018.
(...) What if India were like the United States? If so many people died from snakebites, wouldn't the entire population take to the forests with hoes and machetes? According to Sinu, in Kerala, the southwesternmost state of India where he lives and works, people don't do that.
--- From "Chapter 2: The Slithering Snake"

Human memory is short.
What have pigeons done for us recently? Pigeons once had a purpose, but now they've lost it.
The pigeons descended from their perches and began to loiter, becoming what Jerolmac calls walkers.
(...) we sent away the pigeon, declared it useless, decided that it was nothing more than a winged rat.
--- From "Chapter 4: Pigeon's Poop"

Our beliefs affect the lives of animals that live far beyond our own neighborhoods and countries, and the lives of the people who live with them.
In the case of elephants, how Kenyans deal with the harm they inflict is determined by the beliefs of people on the other side of the world—mediated by money, tourism, and politics.

People who live with elephants do not hate elephants.
They know that these animals play an important role in the ecosystem.
I know that beauty too.
Elephants are part of their culture, folklore and traditions.
But their view of elephants is not a dreamlike tale of peaceful wisdom or playful behavior, as Westerners often do.
It's hard to dream when death and destruction stare you in the face.

It's easy to see why people who live with elephants feel hostile.
In Kenya, it is difficult not to conclude that the lives of elephants are far more valuable than the lives of the Kenyans who live alongside them.
This is especially true when judged by the cold, hard yardstick of money.
An elephant's life is worth 20 million Kenyan shillings, and a human life is worth 5 million Kenyan shillings.
The reason the fines for killing elephants are so high is because elephants are so precious to Kenyans, both in terms of biodiversity, but also to people in developed countries who see elephants as lovable and peaceful creatures and want to go see them.
To them, elephants are never pests.
Elephants don't live in their backyards, and the damage they cause isn't at the tourists' expense.
--- From "Chapter 5: The Elephant's Memory"

We are responsible for the cats that come into our lives.
The same goes for wild cats.
We are responsible for both the lives of cats and the deaths they cause.
Whether we view cats as pets, essential rodent control, or a serious threat to biodiversity, they are there because we put them there.
Now, faced with the threat that cats could drive more species to extinction, we face a choice.
What will live and what will die? What will be honored and what will be vilified?
--- From "Chapter 6: The Troublesome Cat"

Nisner and I sat side by side in Griffith Park, basking in the late afternoon sun, thinking about this.
What if we acknowledged that our environment—both urban and suburban—is always fraught with danger? What if we embraced our lack of control and responded with proactive measures rather than preemptive strikes? What if we relaxed our grip on the environment, even just a little, out of fear? While there are risks, there are also rewards for both the people and animals who live there.
--- From "Chapter 7: The Coyote Pack"

The problem is that when we try to adapt the landscape to our 'desires', there is a lot of room for disagreement even among ourselves.
For example, one side might point out that the Blue Hills National Park is a natural ecosystem and say that we need to hunt deer to preserve that ecosystem in its evolved form.
On the other hand, the other side is right, saying that this is a natural ecosystem, so humans should not try to manage it.
“Even if we all agree that something is natural, that doesn’t mean we can or should do anything about it,” says Short Zanotti.
--- From "Chapter 9: The Deer Herd"

“Most Westerners would never say that Christianity has influenced their science, or their view of wildlife, or their view of the world,” Patterson says.
“Scientists would say that religion is completely separate from such things.
But I don't think that's true.
Their religion permeates everything.” It is difficult to be conscious of the water in which one swims and the air one breathes.
The same goes for the culture we grew up in.
If we assume that humans are responsible for everything, all sorts of conclusions naturally follow from that.
If we truly take responsibility for everything, we not only have the power to destroy everything, but we also have the responsibility and right to fix what we have changed in the way we want.

At this point, it seems natural to conclude that humans—especially cultures that colonize others through Western notions of conquering nature—are the true pests.
It is we who flock to cities, invade other people's habitats, and provide waste.
We were brought to a vulnerable island full of birds that didn't know how to fight back against greedy cats, rats, and other such things.
(...) But this answer seems too easy.
In the face of such declarations, we simply throw up our hands and say we have lost.
What can we do? We're a disaster for the Earth! Fortunately, humans are tenacious, resourceful, and capable of change.
We don't have to be trapped in a war of our own making.
We can learn from each other.
You can learn from other cultures, other people, and other ways of life.

When I hear the word 'coexistence,' I picture people picnicking in a park under a blue sky, with raccoons and deer frolicking peacefully beside them.
It would be nice if the lion and the lamb lay down together.
Anyway, the thing to note in this picture is that the people are acting as they please, and the animals are acting exactly as we want them to.
If that is what we think coexistence is, we will never reach that goal.

--- From "Chapter 11: Harmful Animals by Any Name"