As human civilizations continue to develop, we build infrastructure that cuts into the natural homes of our animals. The roads, like rivers dumped with poison, slowly choke the life out of the surrounding woods. Creatures now become nothing more than mere roadkill.

     Wildlife has no other choice but to look to the suburbs, filled with people, for food. As the once plentiful bushes filled with succulent berries, have now become littered with factories. Organisms once being able to fill each lung with crisp, clean air, now can only gasp for breath.

     The chopped trees are like tombstones of a forest, showing where there was once life. Now, those beautiful medleys of diversity, with birds the colors of the summer sky, are filled with the noises of a sleepless city.

     All of these instances, and more, have inspired me to write about the way human infrastructure has negatively impacted animal life. Man-kind will inevitably kill everything around them that’s good in the world, even if it means killing themselves. However, the true spark of inspiration that persuaded me into writing this column, has come from a poem named, “Kinder than Man”, by Althea Davis. It proceeds as so, “And God, please let the deer on the highway get some kind of heaven. Something with tall soft grass and sweet reunion. Let the moths in porch lights get someplace with a thousand suns, that will taste like sugar, and get swallowed whole. May the mice in oil and glue have forever dry, warm fur and full bellies. If I am killed simply for living, let death be kinder than man”

     How long will it take for us humans to see the effect of our actions towards the environment? Seeing how we take and take from nature, without giving anything back in return. We never give thanks to the animals that sustain and clothe us, instead, we spit upon their corpses like they were gum, on the soles of our shoes. Humans must learn to share our natural resources before our own greed will choke the remaining life out of our society.