THEY ARE ONLY TRYING TO LIVE IN WHAT ONCE USED TO BE THEIR NATURAL HABITAT

I used to live in a mountainous area in Laguna. I was happy living near nature. One day, a bird was on the street, at which the driver annoyingly honked at. I realized: I wasn’t living near nature. Instead, the development I supported destroyed nature. Instead of a tree to rest on, the bird had a road. And we humans fail to see who the nuisance is.

SNAKES

Just this year, Tennessee residents reported more snake sightings in their neighborhood and homes. The snake population had initially dwindled; residents thought that this year, the “pests” were bouncing back. Danny Bryan, program director and Biology professor at Cumberland University, however, said that populations continue to dwindle, with several species becoming vulnerable.

“There has been a boom of urban development in Nashville, and we’re building houses where snake habitats once were,” Danny told Tennessean, citing human expansion as one of the reasons of snake sightings. Simply put, the snake isn’t in your home; you’re in the snake’s home.

ROACHES

I have to mention them at some point: everyone’s favorite, roaches!

The roaches in our homes have adapted well to the setting humans have built: they can live for weeks without food, they eat almost anything, and they can survive in a big temperature range. They can bring diseases, but so can almost any living creature. Cockroaches we find in our homes, though, only represent a meager number of the over 5,000 known species of roaches. Out in the wild – in the ever decreasing environment humans haven’t bulldozed yet – roaches serve as food for birds, lizards, and other animals. They also pollinate, while the microbes on them decompose organic material.