Dogs and Helicopters
Though the weather was great, yesterday was a bad day to be outside because for an hour or two someone was flying very close in a helicopter, back and forth to one side of my property.
Just as in the case of dogs, I have little use for helicopters.
Both can have one or two good purposes -- guiding the blind and rescuing people in collapsed buildings and in the Alps in the case of dogs, and rescuing people and ferrying the sick in the case of helicopters. But dogs otherwise are destructive, they trespass profusely, they defecate indiscriminately, and they bite people, while helicopters too often are used to deal death and destruction from the air and for violating privacy, as in the case of the marijuana hunters. That latter makes me jumpy as I've heard that they especially target properties that have unusual-looking, obviously owner-built houses, and my house definitely comes under that category, plus I have a small greenhouse. So every time a helicopter flies close, I fear having to face next an army of cold-faced legally sanctioned thugs invading my property with drawn guns and trampling all over my garden with hopes of increasing their box score.
Fortunately, however, a forestry man was kind enough to come by a few weeks ago and warn me that they would be spraying a closely adjoining property. Formerly a nice woods, it had been clearcut this year, leaving just a narrow strip of trees between the resulting empty field and my driveway. The spraying was to kill all the hardwood sprouts so that the subsequent saplings wouldn't compete with the pines that would be planted next, for commercial harvesting 15 or 20 years from now.
It is common practice around here to buy a wooded property and then to help pay for it by cutting off all the interesting mixed species trees and replanting with a singularly uninteresting monoculture of pines.
The helicopter flew just a few hundred feet away, and I thought of hammerhead sharks because I glimpsed a long pipe affixed to it laterally, from which the chemicals were sprayed. But I don't really know to what part of the helicopter the pipe was attached. I couldn't see the helicopter clearly because of the separating trees, and, while normally the curious type, I had no interest in looking closer. I couldn't see or smell the spray but I stayed indoors anyway, while hoping that not too much of it drifted over on my hardwoods, which I am planning never to cut, except selectively for firewood ...for as long as I am able, and those days are clearly numbered.
This terror from the sky made me think of the main bad feature that for me links dogs and helicopters. They both create enormous amounts of totally unnecessary noise pollution.
Just as in the case of dogs, I have little use for helicopters.
Both can have one or two good purposes -- guiding the blind and rescuing people in collapsed buildings and in the Alps in the case of dogs, and rescuing people and ferrying the sick in the case of helicopters. But dogs otherwise are destructive, they trespass profusely, they defecate indiscriminately, and they bite people, while helicopters too often are used to deal death and destruction from the air and for violating privacy, as in the case of the marijuana hunters. That latter makes me jumpy as I've heard that they especially target properties that have unusual-looking, obviously owner-built houses, and my house definitely comes under that category, plus I have a small greenhouse. So every time a helicopter flies close, I fear having to face next an army of cold-faced legally sanctioned thugs invading my property with drawn guns and trampling all over my garden with hopes of increasing their box score.
Fortunately, however, a forestry man was kind enough to come by a few weeks ago and warn me that they would be spraying a closely adjoining property. Formerly a nice woods, it had been clearcut this year, leaving just a narrow strip of trees between the resulting empty field and my driveway. The spraying was to kill all the hardwood sprouts so that the subsequent saplings wouldn't compete with the pines that would be planted next, for commercial harvesting 15 or 20 years from now.
It is common practice around here to buy a wooded property and then to help pay for it by cutting off all the interesting mixed species trees and replanting with a singularly uninteresting monoculture of pines.
The helicopter flew just a few hundred feet away, and I thought of hammerhead sharks because I glimpsed a long pipe affixed to it laterally, from which the chemicals were sprayed. But I don't really know to what part of the helicopter the pipe was attached. I couldn't see the helicopter clearly because of the separating trees, and, while normally the curious type, I had no interest in looking closer. I couldn't see or smell the spray but I stayed indoors anyway, while hoping that not too much of it drifted over on my hardwoods, which I am planning never to cut, except selectively for firewood ...for as long as I am able, and those days are clearly numbered.
This terror from the sky made me think of the main bad feature that for me links dogs and helicopters. They both create enormous amounts of totally unnecessary noise pollution.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 7:37 AM
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