slaughter of the innocents

for the last couple weeks i have been treeing--pulling out the hundreds of baby trees growing where they shouldn't. i'm not allowing the parent trees to keep any of their offspring. i feel pretty bad about it, but it's a tradition.

it's also about the only outdoor task i am allowed to do. i can tell the difference between a baby tree and any other plant and the difference between a bird and a rock, but that's about the extent of my outdoor identification abilities.

everything looks so similar when young. so many shared genes.

so once again, i kill to restore order. i celebrate the birth of spring by turning the babies into early mulch. ownership always leads to death. the chaos i love in the woods bothers me in my own yard. i suppose that's why most of us prefer to have a house-trained cat or dog living with us rather than a mongoose or wild turkey.

really, most of the trees wouldn't have been trees if winter hadn't come early and hidden the seeds from the squirrels. but here's what i was thinking when pulling a record crop of trees: so many started so a few can live--the few that get by my view until it seems too mean (or requires too much work) to pull them up--like the millions of eggs laid in my pond that mostly become food for something else.

and i look around and see so many humans like baby trees and wonder what big hand is coming to pluck us and which of us will be lucky enough to be out of sight.