One of the great joys of being a Floridian for nine years was living with tropical wildlife. Floridians share their golf courses with alligators, their intracoastal waterway with manatees, their yards with peacocks, their ocean with sea turtles, their skies with brown pelicans, their hospital grounds with flamingos. True, Florida fauna also has a downside—snakes that can swallow you whole, cockroaches you can hear “samba-ing” in your pantry at night, stinging man-of-war jelly fish that can turn a beach party into a hospital visit and then those creepy, prehistoric, road-kill armadillos. But, to an animal lover, Florida wildlife is a continuing wonder.
Some of these creatures have acclimated to humans so convincingly that they’ve become pets of sorts. I’ve popped marshmallows into the toothy mouth of a nurse shark that had taken to waiting in the surf for treats. One of my friends lived in a subdivision with a 4-foot alligator they called Uncle Charlie. He had been there for a decade and had never been a pest.
It is hard to remember that such creatures are still wild and capable of reverting to instinctive behavior. DON’T FEED THE ALLIGATORS! were posted signs that warned us that no matter how acclimated, a hungry-enough alligator could see any of us as “groceries.”
Farther north, by our North Carolina cabin in the Smokies, wildlife experts warn us not to feed the bears. And though I have rarely seen one in our area (I did play with a baby bear in Cherokee once and had such a great time petting it’s bristly fur, I didn’t realize my arms were scratched up until it was all over!) a couple years ago one bear became a little too friendly for comfort. He forced us to take down the hummingbird feeders on our deck when he began to regularly visit them around 8:30 PM before we were even in bed.
Experts warn us: If you feed something that is wild, something tragic could happen; if not to you, then to someone else. And who is responsible if violence ensues?
It made me think about public posts in the times in which we’re living. It’s popular to blast away on Facebook with little sparks of incivility like, “I think I’m going to be nauseus” posted by a Christian leader after President Obama’s State of the Union speech; or the frequent alarming newsfeeds that prophesy national doom due to the passing of the health care reform bill; or the public posting of a politician who targeted political opponents with military “kill” symbolism; or a Vice President who speaks gutter publicly. I want to say, “Be very careful of inflammatory rhetoric in times such as these. Your spark of anger could ignite the native wild things among us. These are not just private words among “friends,” they are public postings. It’s possible “Armageddon” could be ushered in, not by a piece of legislation (as has been popularly posited) but by your neighbor with a military-grade assault rifle whose soul has gone feral, even though he still calls himself “Christian.”
If you feed wild things crumbs of disdain, contempt, hatred and baseness—and the consequences are tragic—who will be responsible? The answer: everyone who ramped up the hatred, that’s who. Even if you didn’t actually pull the trigger—or ended up personally experiencing the consequences—if you fed the hatred, you hold some responsibility for how it plays out in our country.
Yes, it’s an American right and tradition to be opinionated, to join the public debate and to try to sway others. But . . . if opinion turns into rigid personal orthodoxy, a belief that only you and “yours” are 100% right and all others are 100% wrong, if you can’t tolerate the opinion of others without publicly calling them “nauseus,” then realize there are radicalized versions of you out there. They have built arsenals, convinced that the depth of their feelings indicates the degree of their rightness.
The current national news indicates the real possibility that some believe any means justifies their ends, including terrorism. An angry-enough home-grown terrorist—like a hungry-enough alligator—will not ask you what you believe before he randomly chooses you or someone you love as his victim.
In this time of intense political division in our nation, we need Christian leaders with measured responses, civil public debate, and political leaders who don’t ramp up the issues with vulgarity or irresponsibility.
So I’m posting this warning: DON’T FEED THE ALLIGATORS, BEARS OR MILITIA MEN!—particularly the later. Feed a soul turned radical and feral with small crumbs of disdain and your words may be taken as justification for an unthinkable act. Connect the dots. Understand the consequences. And temper your nastier impulses.
And yes, I admit it. Many times I’ve been tempted to say what I really think, with a wordsmith’s well-chosen morsel of sarcasm. But then I ask questions like: Do I want to be a part of something that could turn out to be dangerous? Am I raising the bar or lowering the bar? Is my character Christian? Or am I behaving like a Christian-militia man of sorts?
I’ve decided not to feed any wild thing if I can help it—including my lesser self. But that said, don’t even try to convince me otherwise about armadillos. No matter what you say, those crawling, armored, mud-nosed, bottom-feeders still creep me out—though I’ll be careful not to go so far as to call them nauseus.