BIRDS AND VEGETABLES vs. CATS AND CATERPILLARS 



EDITH M. PATCH 



Maine State Entomologist 



Why the Gardener Needs the Birds and How Cats May Be Kept 

 as Household Pets Without Becoming an Economic Menace 



^URING twenty years in the pursuit of my profession I 

 have learned no more important message to give to 



those interested in plant health and plant welfare than 

 a to speak well of birds and to urge their protection. 

 This present plea is addressed neither to emotions nor to a 

 sense of fair play as regards an elder brother-life singing its 

 way down through all the ages until we invaded the land and 

 called it ours. No, this plea is for your hard-headed common 

 sense, for your shrewd economy, for the bank account that de- 

 pends upon crops, a plea for the proper policing of your garden. 



THE modern agricultural slogan is "cooperation." Coop- 

 erative buying and selling and growing and breeding. 

 These movements are in the right direction but they do not go 

 far enough — since man cannot live by himself alone. There 

 is no sort of cooperation more needed by modern agriculture 

 than a revival of an ancient custom — cooperation with birds, 

 that old-fashioned method by which Nature, for a million years, 

 more or less, kept the vegetation of America, both tree and 

 herb of the field, safe until the day the white man arrived. 

 In the brief few years since, sad to relate, he has come so danger- 

 ously near exterminating the native army of feather-clad 

 entomologists that, at roll-call, fully ninety-five per cent, of 

 their numbers are now missing from the ranks. 



This may sound like a sermon, but 'tis not so intended. It 

 is rather a confession — a confession of personal inadequacy. 

 For I have been dispensing entomological advice for almost a 

 score of years and I cannot say that I have succeeded in bring- 

 ing home to those who suffer from insect plagues any feeling of 

 responsibility for their afflictions. I seem to have failed to make 

 plain the fact that, though spray equipments and poisons and 

 cultural methods and literature have become a necessary in- 

 vestment, birds are still what Nature made them, the only 

 perfect entomological police. 



AND how do the gardeners of the country cooperate with 

 this ancient order of feather-clad entomologists? Per- 

 haps one illustration will suffice. A few years ago I was asked 

 to give "saving" advice with reference to a certain woodlot, 

 a splendid growth of Maple and Beech. It was July. The 

 trees, in full leaf a few weeks before, stood as naked as if it had 

 been January. The man who had appealed for help in his hour 

 of need against the caterpillar horde that had invaded his place, 

 was the proud owner of twelve handsome cats. 



For some time I hesitated to tell this incident. It seemed 

 incredible that a man with cultural interests could give the 

 shelter of his own roof to twelve of his worst foes. Yet when I 

 did venture to relate the circumstance, a farmer remarked, 

 " Humph — a man in our neighborhood owns thirty cats!" 



NOW I hold no grudge against the cat. Personally I like 

 Thomas and Tabitha all the way from the days of their 

 charming kittenhood to their more dignified estate of purring 

 partnership in the comfortable joys of the glowing hearth. 

 They are no more to be blamed for catching birds for food for 

 themselves and their family than a bird is to be blamed for 

 catching caterpillars for the same natural purpose. The ques- 

 tion of morals in either case does not enter. The cat is not a 

 criminal. Neither is the owner of a cat that is kept confined 

 inside a cat-proof fence, during the nesting-season of birds. 

 But the person who gives his cat freedom of the fields and 



underbrush during the season of bird nests is a neighborhood 

 thief. That word is .not pretty — neither are the facts. 



There may be exceptions but, if so, they go to prove the rule 

 that it is a poor cat that will not, either for the fun of the chase 

 or for food, make a killing of fifty birds a summer — given its 

 liberty in a region where birds are as abundant as they ought 

 to be for the good of the community. 



Now every time a cat kills an insect-eating bird, he saves the 

 life of not less than 500,000 annual insects and their progeny, 

 a total that can hardly be less than 50,000,000 insects in two 

 insect-generations. A cat that kills 50 birds a summer poten- 

 tially releases 2,500,000,000 insects during two seasons. 



But to be conservative, we will suppose that those twelve 

 cats owned by the man whose trees were stripped by caterpil- 

 lars in July, did not care much for bird-meat and did not much 

 enjoy the fun of catching them (we will call them ridiculously 

 unnatural cats for^the sake of making the case in question a 

 mild one). We will suppose that each of these handsome cats 

 killed but one bird the previous summer. These twelve birds, 

 had they lived, would have taken not fewer than 12,000 female 

 moths, each moth of this particular species capable of laying 

 500 eggs. This would give us in the first generation 6,000,000 

 caterpillars and in the second generation 3,000,000,000 cater-, 

 pillars — three billion caterpillars to balance twelve birds — one 

 bird killed, a season or two previously, by each of twelve cats. 



The average gardener, of course, does not own twelve cats; 

 but if you know of any neighborhood in the country infested 

 by so few as twelve cats, each of such nature or training that it 

 takes but one bird a year, my entomological advice is to buy 

 land in that vicinity and save money on increased crops and 

 decreased cost of spray equipment. 



THERE are two ways of considering cats. "The State 

 Board of Fisheries and Game at Hartford, Connecticut, 

 declares that cats, when found at large, should be treated as 

 vermin."* 



The other extreme was the attitude of the early Egyptians. 

 Cats in Egypt were sacred. In life they were pampered and in 

 death they were preserved as mummies. Of course, a mummy 

 can't kill birds, but in those days before the sacred cats of 

 Egypt were ready to be embalmed, what were they doing? 

 For in the time from Pharaoh's day to this, Nature has not 

 changed her proven ways. Then, as now, it was natural for 

 grasshoppers to eat green things, both tree and herb. Then, 

 as now, it was natural for birds to eat grasshoppers. Then, as 

 now, it was natural for cats to eat birds, so long as there was an 

 available supply. 



Whether the insect plagues that were visited upon Pharaoh 

 are to be credited to the Lord or to the sacred cats of Egypt, 

 may be an academic question. There is nothing academic about 

 the bird problem and the American farmer. It is an economic 

 question of gigantic importance. The insect plague settling 

 upon our land is yet in its infancy. It is still estimated at 

 only about one billion dollars a year. What it will be twenty- 

 five years from now depends to a tremendous extent upon the 

 attitude of civilized man toward birds. 



The warning sounds to America as clearly as, according to 

 story, it did to Egypt. 



*Any one further interested in the facts of the bird-destructive activities of 

 cats should consult Economic Biology Bulletin No. 2 of the Mass. State Board 

 of Agriculture, The Domestic Cat by E. H. Forbush, State Ornithologist. 



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