Pesticide

Back in 2009, while living in San Isidro, Teresa and myself woke up from an afternoon nap to a man in a spacesuit wandering around in our house.  My Spanish was much worse back then, so confusion set in.  Eventually we realized, after being chased out of our house, that they were fumigating the place for pests.  The store below us had apparently arranged this without our knowing.  As we stood outside of our now toxic house, we watched as swarms of swallows started to gather to eat the moribund insects collecting around the property.  Mostly they were feasting on non-target bugs that had been affected such as butterflies and dragonflies.  We were certain that the birds must have been suffering as a result as well, but we didn’t find out one way or the other.

Well, people are spraying nearby now, and I can now say for sure what the results are.  I have pictures for this blog post, but I’ve decided they are just gratuitous.  They are of dead and dying birds found around town in the past couple of days.  The dead are lying out in the open, and the dying are struggling to breathe.  In total there have been about eight of these birds found, mostly blackbirds and inca doves, and there are certainly more.

I guess there is a moral to all of this, but I don’t feel like pushing it one way or the other.  There is just a long way to go towards environmental awareness.