Tossing pebbles at a grizzly bear?

 It is a dilemma I never expected to confront.

Next month there is a youth baseball tournament in Cooperstown, New York, home of the baseball Hall of Fame. A grandson is one of the players and I planned to be there to cheer him on.

Like many Canadians, however, I am outraged by the Trump administration’s treatment of Canada and I want to keep as much of my money as possible away from the Americans.

Canadians can never forget how Trump savaged us during the G7 earlier this month. He warned Canadians that standing up to him will cost us a lot of money, and he called Prime Minister Trudeau weak and dishonest .

Then he unleashed his fascist hounds, one of whom said there is a special place in Hell for people like Trudeau.

The U.S. has slapped hefty tariffs on our steel and aluminum, calling them potential threats to its national security. The tariffs are an insulting attack on the Canada-U.S. historic friendship and will damage our economy.  

Canadians have reacted swiftly with calls for consumer boycotts of U.S. goods, services and travel. An Ipsos Poll two weeks ago showed 70 per cent of Canadians were looking at ways to avoid buying U.S. goods.

Some say the boycotts will have little effect on the giant U.S. economy. It is like tossing pebbles at an attacking grizzly bear. Others say they worsen the situation and hurt ourselves.

Probably, but it would be wrong not to fight back and not let America know we won’t sit back and absorb its bullying. Anything we do will not seriously hurt the overall U.S. economy, however, consumer boycotts will be effective in some U.S. regions.

Pull Canadian tourism out of places like Florida and border states and you’ll hear the wailing. The Naples (Florida) Daily News published a story last week expressing concern about Canadians talking about cancelling visits.

Stop buying Ivanka Trump clothes and accessories, Heinz ketchup, Hershey candy and people who make or sell those products will jump on their politicians. Stop buying Kentucky bourbon and Wisconsin cranberry products and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, the Republican bosses who represent those states in the U.S. Congress, will hear from their voters.

Giving up U.S. products and travel is not easy and can’t be taken to the extreme. It is not practical to expect someone with a significant investment in a Florida vacation property to stop going there.

We all can be more aware, however, of watching product labelling, avoiding American products and buying more Canadian products.

Also, when you boycott U.S. products or services write those companies and tell them why. Get your message out through social media and encourage your friends to do the same.

I will go to Cooperstown to support my grandson. I don’t intend to hurt him because the U.S. government is hurting us. I will reduce my visit, however. I will watch his game but forgo the couple of days of sightseeing that had been planned.

There is something more important than consumer boycott at play here. Canadians need to change their relationship with the United States. We have been very close and very friendly, much like close relatives.

The Americans have chosen to place their trust in an authoritarian government, which is implementing policies and practices not acceptable in Canada. That’s their business but it changes the way we see them and deal with them.

We have friendly relations and do business with other authoritarian governments, (for instance China, Russia, Cuba, Jordan). But these relations are quite different from the historic blood brother/sister relationship we have had with the U.S.

 We now have to change that historic relationship from one that was totally trustful to one that is cautiously friendly. We should no longer treat them like our best buddies and favourite neighbours.

If Americans decide to turn away from authoritarian government perhaps our relationship might return to what it was. But that is doubtful; too much damage already has been done.

If viewing Americans differently and buying fewer of their goods and services causes us some pain, so be it. There always is a price to be paid for confronting the bullies of the world.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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The positives of creepy crawlies

Finding something good in everything takes work.

For instance, it requires a colossal imagination stretch to find positives in the forest tent caterpillar onslaught chewing parts of Ontario.

There are no reports of wide scale infestations in Haliburton, however serious outbreaks have been reported northwest of the county. The Sudbury-Manitoulin Island region seems to be the centre of an infestation that stretches west to Sault Ste. Marie and east into the Ottawa Valley.

The creepy critters have been crawling all over Sudbury’s landmark Big Nickel, the nine-metre tall replica of a 1951 five-cent piece. In some places they are covering outdoor furniture, cars and house walls.

Caterpillar infestations are nothing new. They aren’t caused by climate change, rising oceans or anything like that. Folks back in the late 1700s reported witnessing them.

There are numerous species of caterpillars but the ones we most often see are the forest tent caterpillar and its close cousin the eastern tent caterpillar. The tent caterpillar has white or yellow spots on its back while the eastern tent caterpillar has a solid white or yellowish back stripe.

These worms follow bust-to-boom-to bust cycles, reaching peak numbers every 10 to 12 years, then dying off before beginning a new cycle.

Peak infestations see billions of caterpillars chewing the leaves off thousands of acres of forest. Defoliation can be severe with trees left with nothing but naked limbs. The preferred leaves of the tent caterpillar are poplar and birch although they also are attracted to hardwoods.

Even peak infestations do not seriously damage healthy trees. Tree trunks hold enough nutrients to keep themselves going long enough to produce a new crop of leaves.

However, armies of caterpillars have been known to delay highway and rail traffic when squished bodies make pavement and rails dangerously slippery. Caterpillars also have been known to crawl along power lines, causing outages.

They can be a major nuisance but pose no threats to human health.

Tent caterpillars emerge in spring and go on a feeding frenzy until late June or early July when they transform into flying moths. The moths lay egg masses on tree twigs the thickness of a pencil. The egg sacs remain there until next spring when new caterpillar populations emerge.

During peak infestations masses of caterpillars actually can be heard munching leaves.

Anything that eats that much has to go the bathroom. And, caterpillars go to the bathroom a lot.

Walking through a forest where caterpillars are at work you might hear what sounds like  light rainfall. It is not rain. It is caterpillar poop, little pieces the size of pepper flecks, falling from the trees.

Scientists have positive thoughts about all this. Caterpillar excrement is rich in protein and nitrogen, they say, so it is good fertilizer when it falls to the forest floor.

Also, folks who study these things say that when caterpillars defoliate a forest they create openings that let sunlight into lower areas, creating healthier conditions for smaller plants.

Caterpillars also provide food for birds and to a lesser extent, squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons and mice. Fish are said to gorge on them when they fall into lakes or streams. However, as caterpillars grow, the hairs on their sides stiffen and make them less palatable, and less digestible.

That doesn’t seem to bother bears. The North American Bear Centre in Minnesota reports that a black bear consumes roughly eight to 10 kilograms of caterpillars a day. Considering that a fully developed caterpillar weighs only one-half gram, that’s a lot of caterpillars.

The centre said one bear consumed 25,192 caterpillars in one day. How could any researcher come to that exact count? Certainly not by watching the bear stuffing them into its mouth.

It turns out that caterpillar skins pass through a bear’s digestive system intact and can be found in their scat. A researcher tracked one bear for three 24-hour periods, collected all of its 73 droppings and counted the caterpillar skins in the poop.

So, as ugly and unwanted as they are when they come in masses, caterpillars do have their positives. They provide food for other wildlife and work for researchers willing to poke their fingers into stuff most of us gladly sidestep.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Time to start body slamming

We Canadians are just too polite. There are times when we need to swap our signature friendly, sometimes phoney, body language with genuine Canadian hockey body slams. 

We acted far too nice last week when we greeted Donald Trump upon his regal arrival for the G7 summit at La Malbaie, Quebec.

Justin Trudeau, with a smile as wide as the St. Lawrence, not only shook the hand of the Blusterer in Chief enthusiastically, he squeezed the chief’s forearm in a special display of warmth. So did Sophie Gregoiré, Trudeau’s wife.

An outstretched handshake from a distance reserved for someone who plans to hurt you would have sufficed. And he is hurting Canadians, imposing tariffs on our important exports, and threatening to cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Trudeau could have engaged in some  psychological one-upmanship. For instance, when Trump descended the steps of Air Force One Justin could have taken his outstretched hand much the same way you take raccoon poop off the cottage deck.

“Good flight, Ronnie?” (Bullies hate when you confuse them with someone else).

No ‘Welcome to Canada’ because for most Canadians, he isn’t.

Then with a disdainful glance up at Air Force One Trudeau could have added: “Geez, the old ship looks a bit grungy. Whenever Obama visited it was always bright and sparkling clean. You must have flown over West Virginia. All that coal dust. We need to talk about that at the summit.”

Bullies have an over-inflated sense of their importance and constantly seek the spotlight, so at La Malbaie it should have been kept off him. A couple of sharp Gordie Howe-style elbows would have kept him out of the centre of the official G7 photograph.

Trudeau has the perfect outfit for toning down Trump. Remember last Hallowe’en when he trotted down the stairs of Parliament Hill’s centre block on his way to the daily question period? 

He had the Clark Kent look with slick black hair, geeky black-rim glasses and blue suit with the red tie. As puzzled reporters looked on he ripped open his dress shirt to reveal his Superman costume.

Repeating that performance at the G7 opening would have shown who is the boss.

The U.S. president often invites other leaders to his Mar-a-Lago resort to show off his wealth, power and brilliance.

Invited or not, Trudeau should have raised Mar-a-Lago during the meeting by telling Trump: “Sorry I can’t get down to Mar-a-Lago this summer, or even the fall, Too much going on. Vlad Putin has invited me to go mushroom picking and Kim keeps asking me to go over for a banchan lunch. When you see him next week tell him I’ll give him a call and we’ll set a date.”

There are other ways everyone involved with the G7 could have stuck pins in Trump’s ego. Staff at the Manoir Richelieu, where the G7 leaders were staying, could have been instructed on how to serve the U.S. president with mind games.

For instance, when he called down for his late night cheeseburger and Coke, the chef could have said: “Je suis désolé, Monsieur Le President. Angela Merkel just got the last one.”

Unfortunately, there was not enough time to play really serious mind games with the president. He came late and left early, not wanting to spend time with powerful and intelligent leaders who are no longer in the mood to shower him with the flattery he craves.

Once again, Canada was far too polite to him. What we got in return was that he came reluctantly and quickly escaped from what he no doubt considers another outhouse country.

There’s an old saying that a bully is always a coward. Trump fit that proverb perfectly when he left the G7.

Once in the air on Air Force One he took to Twitter and called Justin Trudeau a liar. Trudeau was “very dishonest and weak” and acted “so meek and mild.” He did the name calling on Twitter because he was too cowardly to do it face to face.

Later, Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser said there is a “special place in Hell” for people like Trudeau.

It’s time we started taking these people into the boards.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Read From Shaman’s Rock: www.mindentimes.ca/columns

Let them eat horses

It’s amazing what you learn when you open a book.

I thought I had a solid grasp of North American history, until I picked up Wild Horse Country by David Philipps.

I got the book because Philipps, a Pulitzer Prize New York Times correspondent, has a theory of how mountain lions can solve America’s wild horse problem. The read taught me something about wild horses, but more importantly how the horse changed North American history.

The wild horse, or mustang, is an American icon, and a problem that costs U.S. taxpayers millions, if not billions, of dollars. Eighty to 100,000 mustangs freely roam public lands in the West, exhausting grassland food supplies for themselves and other wildlife.

Their numbers need to be controlled but the U.S. government can’t decide how that should be done. Slaughter or mass sterilization are two options being considered but there is a dilemma: the wild horse is as much a symbol of America’s freedom as the bald eagle and the general public wants the horse left wild and free.

So the U.S. federal government rounds up hundreds of wild horses and puts them in holding areas where it pays to room and board them. Meanwhile, open range wild horses continue to breed and the overpopulation problem continues.

In explaining the wild horse issue, Philipps gives a fascinating history of the horse in North America and that’s where I got my history tuned up.

Horses did not always exist in North America. Ancient forms of small, horse-like animals did exist tens of millions of years ago but disappeared. Horses, as we know them today, did not appear on this continent until the 1600s, arriving on galleons with the Spanish Conquistadors.

To the Spanish the horse was a weapon of war that allowed them to conquer the Americas and enslave its indigenous populations. They brought horses by the thousands to the Americas.

Before then, North American Indigenous peoples lived in forested areas or southern pueblos near water needed for growing food. Their movements were restricted because the only transportation they had was their feet and various forms of dugouts and canoes.

The Conquistadors’ horses changed all that, and the history of the continent.

The Spanish conquered the Pueblo of the southwest and put them to work doing jobs they needed done, including looking after horses.

The inevitable happened. The Pueblo learned how to care for horses, how to treat them and how to ride them. They also learned how to steal them.

Horses wandering off, thefts and trades soon had horses showing up in the territories of other tribes. The result was the birth of the Horse Nations, tribes such as the Navajo, Apache, Kiowa, Sioux ,and the greatest horse people of all – the Comanche.

Horses freed these people from coaxing vegetables out of parched soil and chasing bison on foot. They hunted and explored on horseback and moved their villages to better locations as needed.

Tecumseh, the celebrated Shawnee warrior and diplomat, travelled thousands of miles on horseback organizing the pan-Indian confederation aimed at stopping American takeovers of Indian land. The Americans chased and killed him in a battle along southern Ontario’s Thames River during the War of 1812-14.

The horse, an animal unknown to any North American native before the Europeans arrived, allowed tribes to hold off total colonization for decades, if not a couple of centuries.

All that, however, is a historical explanation in Wild Horse Country. The book’s main message is that the U.S. government ignores the wild horse management potential of mountain lions.

Philipps has noted the federal agriculture department killed 305 lions in 2014, gave grants to agencies that killed hundreds more while private hunters, encouraged by government bureaucracies, killed almost 3,000 lions the same year.  Had those lions not been killed and had eaten three horses each that year, there would have been almost no growth in the wild horse population.

Government initiatives continue to promote killing lions in some areas where the government also wants wild horse populations limited.

Philipps says killing fewer lions so they can eat more wild horses will restore an important balance and save taxpayers money.

In other words, let nature do its work without more human meddling.

 

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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