44 THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 

Interfering With Nature 
By 
Jack Miner, KINGsvILLE, ONTARIO 
Canadian papers, I notice several writers fall back to this old worn- 
out argument, “‘interfering with the balance of Nature.” Now, 
dear readers, I would like a full explanation of the meaning. Does it 
really mean that no person should attempt to assist Nature? If that is 
what you are trying to tell me, let me kindly say you are wrong, for I 
have tested it out and know if man will take God at His promise and 
work in harmony with Him that man can even change the migrating 
route of the fowls of the air. 
Now remember, I only have an A. B. C. Sunday School education, 
but there are a few of His lovable promises I have been privileged to 
test out and I know they are true. For illustration, I ask you to read 
Genesis 1:21-26 and 28 when He said let man have dominion over all? 
Could anything be written plainer? Last summer our Nettie raised 
sixty bred-to-lay Plymouth Rocks. We killed and ate twenty-two of the 
twenty-five roosters. The pullets started laying in October. Now, if we 
had left the twenty-five cockerels with the thirty-five pullets, would we 
have had eggs all winter? Don’t forget the fowls of the air are all ours 
and they will come to us for our assistance and protection. 
Forty-eight years ago this spring our family moved here on the farm 
that was then all woods, but on our arrival we were terrorized by the 
rattlesnake stories we heard and really I was expecting to see snakes as 
large as clothes props that would strike you at a distance of ten or 
fifteen feet away and then all was over except a brief report in the weekly 
town paper—‘*Those who knew him best, loved him most,” and so 
forth. Well, in a few months I[ got well acquainted with these rattlers, 
but, believe me, they were only a little larger than our largest garter 
snakes and could only strike about a foot or eighteen inches. I have 
killed as high as six on one Sunday. In fact, I would hunt for hours to 
find a rattler just to tease him and get him striking a stick. But in a few 
short years the danger was all over, for, where the snakes were, grew 
the fields of waving wheat and corn, but, mind you, in order to do this 
we had to “interfere with Nature.”’ Which was for the best for humanity 
—a rattlesnake jungle or a productive grain field? 
My esteemed friend, Mr. Thos. Baty of London, Ontario, kindly says: 
“If Jack ever had a pet crow, he never would kill it.””. Really this makes 
me laugh. Say, I wonder if there isa man in America who has gathered 
up more pets from the woods than I have. Crows, crows, why bless your 
[ GLANCING over the many articles written on the crow in our 
