When Fences Make Poor Neighbors

 

Fences make good neighbors, poet Robert Frost once famously wrote. Maybe humans need demarcations of their property so as to keep order and prevent the world from running amuck, but animals don’t find them friendly.  Once, sitting in my cabin, I saw a bear get caught in my neighbor’s barbed wire fence. It managed to extricate itself, but I wondered how many times animals hurt themselves when trying to get free of a fence.

Last week, I was driving south of Buena Vista in south-central Colorado and saw a herd of pronghorn in a field surrounded by a wire fence. Pronghorn can’t leap over fences like deer; their legs are too fragile and could break. While the older ones had figured out how to get under or through the fence, the younger ones were frantically running back and forth outside the fence, and another  younger one was on the other side of the road, trapped behind another fence. When I got out of my car, with some crazy idea that I would try to help them, some of the younger ones desperately threw themselves through an opening in the fence, while others continued to pace back and forth. I left, hoping they would eventually figure it out.

The Arkansas River Valley is full of ranches, and the fences keep in the cattle as well as separate one ranch from another. In Meeker Park, if there were cattle ranches at one time, there are none now, yet there are wire fences everywhere. A lot of the fences go straight up the hill among pines trees and over boulders, places where cattle are not likely to frequent. So I have to think these fences were installed merely to declare that this is where my property ends and yours begins. I guess it’s important to maintain our separateness, to establish what is ours and what you can’t have, lest you try to take what is mine.

My neighbor has since replaced his barbed wire fence with a wooden fence that is much more attractive and easier for animals to cross without hurting themselves. In fact, the chickarees (gray squirrels), in particular, use the wooden fences (above, photo taken last summer) as highways; it’s easier than having to slog through the snow.  On my walks around Meeker Park, I’m drawn to the wooden fences, which frame the landscape in unexpected ways.

A lot of them are falling down, becoming part of the landscape, perhaps as their reason for existing disappears—fewer horses or cattle to keep penned up—or maybe people found it too difficult to maintain, especially with no reason to keep them up. It would be wonderful if the wire fences similarly disintegrated over time, leaving a landscape with no boundaries—open and friendly to both humans and wildlife. 

Comments

[shoney]

You did a good job exploring this topic which I fear many people rarely think about.