In defense of the Mrs. Cameron (the bird killer)

I read the entire http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16960413/site/newsweek/">"my turn" story and did a little research on Mrs. Walda Cameron. She does appear to be what she says. She and her husband have suppported Democratic candidates with cash donations. She has fought her local government against a polluting gravel and blacktop production facility in her hometown.

Many people here, who don't seem to have read the story, are ready to cage her, tar her and or shoot her in the face. It used to amaze me at some of the comments and vindictiveness with which some members here went after people they disagreed with but not so much anymore.

There is one poster who commented on a thread that confirms that, yes, these birds do act out with this kind of behavior and, yes, it is very disturbing and frustrating and that nothing seems to dissuade them from their attacks. The poster also implied that she sympthized with Mrs. Cameron but would not come right out and say it for fear of being turned on by the angry villagers who had gathered in the thread.

If you read her story, the woman tried many, many different tactics and techniques to get the bird to stop or to get it to leave. It apparently would not stop. It went on for months and months. She did something which was against her nature and she regretted it immediately upon doing it.

I don't know about you guys, but if a wild animal was disturbing me for months on end and I had tried harm-free alternatives to get it to stop, I might do the same thing. I probably would have used a bb gun instead of a shotgun but the end result would be the same.

I am not a hunter, though I do hypocritically, some claim, eat meat. I have hunted in the past and just don't get much enjoyment out of it. In fact, when I killed an animal I felt sorry for it and felt bad about what I had done, just like Mrs. Cameron said she did.

In the great big scheme of things, it was just a bird. There are plenty of cardinals where I live and I haven't heard about them being endangered. If it was a rat, skunk or snake that was harrassing this lady, I am sure there would be much less "outrage" at what she had done.

If it is illegal to shoot them, she will have to deal with the authorities on that but I hope she won't have to deal with the throbbing angered hordes of DU members who want to call her home phone (which has apparently already been posted) and tell her what an evil bitch she is.

That is just my two cents on this latest shiny hot topic post.

Feel free to attack me know as a bird hating right wing undercover freeper lover. I can take it.:)

no further comment needed.

Have you ever killed any creatures in your home that were pests, i.e. bugs, mice, rats, etc.?

If you have, what makes her actions worse?

Just wondering how much holier thou art.

but i'm guessing that takes very little.

there was a better way to handle the tiny, beautiful cardinal and it sure doesn't involve a shotgun. I'm glad she doesn't live in my neighborhood.

if a neighbor played music so loud that you could hear it in your home and it went on for months and months disturbing your sleep, you would have no recourse because they weren't in your home?

with a shotgun because you thought you had no recourse.

Good retort. I guess I will just shut my snarky mouth for a while.

and it does not take much provocation to bring them out.

I will tell you that you're wrong for a number of reasons.

First of all, while cardinals haven't been put on the endangered species list, their numbers, along with virtually all songbirds, is in a serious decline. This is why it is illegal to shoot songbirds, we're trying to preserve them.

Secondly, this goes to the topic of man vs nature out in the country. When you live out in the country, you have to put up with a number of nuisances due to animal contact. Racoons get into your trash, deer get into your garden, birds peck on various parts of your house, coyotes will eat your little dog. All of this and much more have to be dealt with, and if you are truly a humane, caring person, you deal with it in a human, non-lethal, non-injurious way.

Yet this woman instead chose the gun before exhausting all options. If she had simply contacted a local extension agent, or somebody familiar with birds, instead of simply reading boxes and packages trying to sell her trash, she would have found a few easy solutions. The first is to make her windows as least reflective as possible. Sometimes this is as simple as turning the lights on in a room to take away the reflective properties of the glass. Sometimes this involves putting a film over her windows, which while taking away the reflective properties from the outside, it doesn't diminish her ability to see out. Another option is to leave signs around warning of the birds natural predators. Snake skins, or fox squirrel urine is a good repellant, since these smell like natural predators and discourage the bird from staying around. Another, take a bird feeder and put it as far away from the how and greenhouse as possible. Cardinals and other like songbirds will generally feed, socialize, and nest close to a reliable source of food. And finally, if all else fails, capture the bird using a mist net and transport it someplace far away.

But instead, this woman took to the gun. Sorry, but I find that to be wrong. This is part and parcel of the attitudes of many Americans moving to the 'burbs and out to the country, we're here, our priorities are the most important, and heaven help any poor critter who gets in our way. This is why songbirds and other creatures are disappearing, people are ripping out their habitats and killing creatures because they are an "inconvience"

I moved out to the country and fully realized where I was going and what I would be dealing with. I keep my trash cans inside, I feed the birds, I keep my dogs fenced in, I spray my garden with hot pepper spray to discourage eating by animals. Sure, I've had minor inconviences, but I would rather live in cooperation with nature rather than start killing it. I am well rewarded also. The birds keep the bug population down, and are fun to watch. The deer in the field at dusk are a haunting sight. And listening to the owls in the woods is lovely.

No, I don't want to shoot this woman. However she has my unbridled scorn, and frankly I hope that the law throws the book at her. What is even more alarming however is that conditions around her home haven't changed. Therefore another poor cardinal is going to be fooled by his reflection and will engage in the same activity. What's her reaction going to be then, now that she's felt that rush? Will she grab her gun again and start blasting away? Or will she wise up, do some consulting and come up with a means of harmlessly negating this problem without resorting to bloodshed. I sincerely hope so, for we need all of the songbirds, and other creatures that we possible can have in this world.

First of all, thank you for your reasoned and articulate response. There are ways to debate politely which can teach and inform and there are just vitriolic attacks.

Let me respond to a couple of your points.

The research I did indicated that there are estimates of 100,000,000 cardinals in the U.S. I don't know if that figure is accurate but if it is it would indicate this species is hardly threatened.

This woman did try many of the things you recommended. According to her, they did not work.

The trapping or capturing of an migratory bird is also prohibited by the migratory bird act so to do that would have brought about the same penalties as what she did.

After her initial wave of relief at having killed the bird she said:

Then 60-plus years of culture kicked in. My knees grew wobbly, tears fell on the gun's fine wood. What had I done?

I left my prey where he had fallen. I stashed the gun in a little-used closet and mourned the demented bird and the parts of me that had died with him. I had lost another comfort zone of self-righteousness, another "death and taxes" truth.

I also moved into the country and lived in harmony with my wild neighbors. I loved the wild turkeys that would come grazing through my back yard early in the morning. But I also shot a skunk that appeared rabid and probably was one of the predators of my chickens.

I assume this woman has lived in this area for a long time and has only killed once. She must have been pushed pretty far to commit an act which was contrary to all her beliefs. But she did it and she was saddened by it and people on the old WWW are posting her home phone number and address and encouraging bird lovers to call her and threaten her and tell her what an insufferably evil bitch she is. People here are advocating her death and torture.

Which is worse?

enough, though some of us might not have done it. And no major damage to the environment. Sounds like the M$M trying to bring out the "left wing crazies" and make them look dumb in their passionate attacks on the lady. Giving Rush Limpballs and his ilk something to point fingers at. Sometimes I think they make these things up.

Jesus, it was a pest. There's nothing wrong with shooting it.

inhabiting this earth, competing for resources, endangering or inconveniencing us in any way, even as we encroach on longstanding habitat. WE have superior WEAPONS and use them with impunity.

That said, I cannot understand for the life of me WHY Mrs. Cameron offered herself up to M$M as red meat. Dumb, dumb, DUMB. People and animals are abused, run over, shot, tortured and otherwise misbehandelt every day. This is ridiculous. I can't imagine what she wanted to achieve.

The bird is dead but she may not sleep for another year with the threats from yahoos sure to come her way. I'm sure given the choice she'd prefer the goofy, disturbing bird.

There are a lot of cardinals, and they are all protected. Ditto for grackles, blackbirds, robins, and virtually all other birds.

She broke the law. Nobody should be defending her for the commission of a criminal act.

she seemed a tad too smug to me.

She's a fucking idiot. She should live some place where there are no animals to "bother" her. I hope she doesn't have any pets.

if you had read the entire story you would have know that but let's not do any research let's just jump on the bandwagon and wish death and torture on a little old lady who shot a bird.

Most people don't realize that songbirds can live to over 20 years and can be as intelligent as a housecat. They have rich social lives and form committed relationships with their mates. That stupid cow probably robbed that poor bird of more life than she had left herself.

At the end of the day, no matter how many tactics she tried (all of them cruel and stupid, btw) she still felt that she had a right to kill the creature for her own convenience. That takes a special sort of arrogance and stunted conscience.



Oh, and you're a bird hating right wing undercover freeper lover. ;)

Posting home phones is way against rules. People want to call her because she had an article written about how hard this was for her to do? How much she suffered? shame on them.

I wouldn't have shot the bird. I might have, as a last resort, called animal control.

She shot the bird. Ok. I kill mice and rats. While I don't kill them, I wouldn't mourn the local starlings if they died.

Why did this story make newsweek? Why is it news at all, other than that she broke the law, and why did it make more than a casual mention?

Why are people so interested in jumping on a side, one side or the other, in the case of a single ill-advised bird death?

I would so love to hear people passionately debating something that affects the entire nation. How about NCLB, the national education nightmare, that gets a few passing criticisms, but no one finds the time to passionately work to repeal? NCLB happens to matter to me, as an educator. I'm sure there are other problems out there, currently ignored, that merit this kind of passionate engagement for so many.

Guns are evil. She bought one and used it. Conflict. Human interest. I wonder why so many seem to have missed this part of the story and are instead just jumping to conclusions.

I had lost another comfort zone of self-righteousness, another "death and taxes" truth.
She hunted the cardinal for days. She was initially satisfied that she had shot it at a distance, inexperienced as she was at shooting.

Her self-description as a "a peace-loving granny, a tree-hugging liberal—through 64 years of protected, upper-middle-class subsistence" is a classic stereotype of Democrats, AKA the crazy people who want to take away your guns. That for me is what is infuriating and all too convenient about this essay. The NRA should have paid her to write it.

Granted, some DU posters have gone beyond commenting on the content and have made strong statements about her personally and her actions rather than focusing on the essay. AFAIK the phone number posting wasn't here, it was on another site and referenced in the other DU thread by Bikewriter. Posting the woman's personal contact data is over the line, period.

You could make a starling casserole every night of the week and not violate any wildlife laws. Gun laws and animal cruelty laws, maybe, but you could go get yourself a bag of starlings right now.

Cardinals are protected.

between a protected native and an invasive alien.

That's why I'd opt, in an extreme circumstance, for catch and release. Hopefully accomplished by animal control, although a video of me trying to trap a cardinal might make "funniest home video," lol.

I have never been bothered by any birds but starlings, who mass in large numbers and foul the areas they roost.

I enjoy Stellar's jays, gray jays, magpies, robins, and many small songbirds locally. No cardinals. The robins foul my sheep's water trough sometimes, the jays can be aggressive, the magpies noisy, and the starlings periodically invade the chicken coop, but I've never been tempted to shoot them.

Trapping or catching protected species is against the law too.

http://www.fws.gov/laws/laws_digest//migtrea.html

$15,000 or a year in prison.

a bird, pre-meditated. The point I am gathering is the warrant of justification for VIOLENCE. When you applaud someone going out to kill an animal with a weapon, where the animal cannot defend itself properly, then where do you draw the line?

Whats next? its wrong on so many levels and once again glamorizes an extreme end to a MINOR issue resulting in death, nice, very nice.

Asshole should get the max penalty, but I fear she'll get a spread in playboy instead. Disgusting.

It woke me up at dawn by banging on my dorm window for two semesters. I just dealt with it. It was doing its cardinal thing.

That said, I don't blame her for shooting it. People set rat traps all the time, and there's no difference.