Eating Aliens: One Man's Adventures Hunting Invasive Animal Species (27 page)

BOOK: Eating Aliens: One Man's Adventures Hunting Invasive Animal Species

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“Well, I’m building a trap. A box-type thing. It needs to break down and fit in my suitcase,” I explained, somewhat absentmindedly.

The red-vested employee nodded, with a look on his face that indicated anything but comprehension.

“It has to get past TSA. And go back together easily. And stay shut properly. You know, for the kill.”

The clerk disappeared, fast.

A week later I was in Manhattan with the friend on the roof of his apartment building, screwing together the panels of my pigeon trap. We baited it with bread crumbs, and all he had to do was pull the string when pigeons were in it.

In retrospect, my mistake was building a trap that caught the pigeons live rather than killing them automatically. It was unfair of me to expect a regular city-dweller to open the lid, grab a pigeon, and break its neck. My friend told me that, despite the disappearance of the crumbs, there were never any pigeons in the trap. Killing something in so personal a way is not easy to do.

Later attempts at taking urban pigeons were similarly doomed. In Charlottesville, I tried to throw my cast net over one for dinner. There were plenty of pigeons, but they were usually too high for the net (with a pellet gun, they’d have been goners). On other occasions, in a park, for example, and again with the net, there were pigeons but also small children watching. That was that. . . .

Once I organized a proper expedition on a large parcel of public land reported to harbor massive numbers of starlings and a moderate amount of pigeons. It was even planted with a grain crop. It should have been a slam-dunk. I brought along several former students from deer-hunting classes, as well as my father-in-law, Bob, my brother, a few other friends, and a producer for National Public Radio.

This substantial bunch of hunters I’d gathered spent the day sitting at the edge of a field doing absolutely nothing. It was utterly mortifying. We were doing everything right, except the birds failed to show up. One fellow, an alumnus of one of my hunting classes, said he saw a few starlings that flew away before he could get off a shot. I suspect he was just trying to make me feel better about the terrible location I’d chosen.

These two species were supposed to be my easiest targets, yet I failed in all my attempts to take them. I learned two things, though. First, sometimes there’s a reason why an invasive species is successful. If it was easy to kill, maybe it would be gone already. Second, it’s usually the rules and restrictions imposed by humans that enable an invasive species to thrive.

These local failures are painful to confess, considering I went to such great lengths to collect invasive lionfish and nutria. Many times I could have grabbed a pigeon out of the air beside a subway entrance in Manhattan or Paris. Just as often, though, I probably would’ve been mobbed by incensed locals calling for the police (or the gendarmes).

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Edited by Carleen Madigan

Art direction and book design by Alethea Morrison

Illustrations by © Tavis Coburn

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Landers, Jackson. Eating aliens / by Jackson Landers.

p. cm. 1. Hunting—Anecdotes. 2. Hunting stories.

I. Title.SK33.L327 2012639’.1—dc23

2012017449

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