Archive for July, 2005

There is a private day school (pre-K to 1st grade) behind the apartment complex where I live. On Saturday I noticed that there were two men taking down the fencing around the school’s large grass covered play yard. (The play yard was located in and around the location of the semi with the trailer in the right side of the picture above.) I wondered why they were doing that, and after pondering it a while I assumed they were going to put up a higher fence because of all the times the students have accidently kicked soccer balls over the fence. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

On Monday morning a semi hauling a bulldozer showed up with construction type people in an extended cab truck. After a short time the people in the truck & semi left, leaving one man behind, who proceeded to noisily bulldoze all the grass off the play yard. Well, by now I kind of figured that this was not going to be a simple case of them putting up a new fence. Far from it! Though, little did I know that what they were going to be doing would be far worse than I ever imagined.

After it had scraped up all the grass the bulldozer then began the lengthy process of leveling out the area in, and around, the now ex-play yard. This went on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, until late Tuesday, and resulted in a huge mound of dirt being created. *sigh*

Well, on Wednesday morning a semi pulling an enormous end dump trailer showed up, and the bulldozer started scooping up the dirt and dumping it into the trailer. This went on the whole morning, and into the early afternoon.

When I came out onto my back balcony in the late afternoon, on Wednesday, I was stunned… To my dismay I saw that someone had cut down the whole line of trees on a slope between the field and the construction site. This line of trees went from the trees you still see behind the far side of the semi, to all the way past the bulldozer in the very far left side of the picture. The green leafy things, in the middle of the picture, that look like bushes are actually the trees that were cut down. Before this, those trees totally hid most of the huge field you can now plainly see behind the construction area, and buffered the traffic noise from the street that borders the field. They also cut down several large trees on the left side of the picture as well.

The above picture is the current view from my balcony now, and I find it extremely replusive!!! I hate it so much I’ve thought about calling, or emailing, the people responsible for it, but I can’t yet imagine conveying my displeasure about it without a lot of swearing taking place. Pookey can attest that all the ranting I’ve done to him about it has been liberally peppered with profanity. It just boggles my mind why people feel the need to totally decimate the surrounding area that they’re building something on. There’s just no apparent reason for it, and it’s always wrong to cause harm when there is no need for it.

To me, there is no justification to cutting most of those trees down, especially the ones on the slope. They wouldn’t have impeded any of the construction efforts, plus the fact that they cut these trees down at the height of the breeding/brooding season for birds is criminal. I’ve always observed plenty of bird activity to and from that line of trees, so who knows how many nests fell to the ground when those trees were cut down. I had known, since 2002, that the school would be constructing another building in that area when Pookey & I took a tour of the school (we were thinking about sending Morgan to preschool), so I can’t understand why no one thought to cut down those trees during the winter to avoid any unnecessary harm to the wildlife. Though, it’s now obvious that they did not think at all. It’s their complete lack of respect for nature that really makes me so very angry.

Since moving to Texas in late 2001 I’m astonished at the number of indisputable cases of animal cruelty I’ve heard about happening here, and I’ve personally witness it for myself three times now. Thankfully, all three times I was able to intervene before the animal was harmed, but it’s a shame that I even had to do so in the first place. In the entire 33 years I lived in New England I didn’t hear about, or witness, so many stories of cruelty to animals than I have here in Texas. It just amazes me that Texans, who consider themselves to be such upright & moral people, don’t see anything wrong with treating animals with such callousness and disregard. Animals have basic rights, as does any living thing on this earth, and deserve to live their lives in peace. We all do.