I live in a townhouse complex that’s in a U-shape, and in the center of the U is a lovely pond with a nice fountain that never seems to be working. It’s quite a nice pond really, and there are one or two tall trees that provide nice shade if I ever want to go and sit near the pond and relax outside. In the warmer months, there are loads of wildlife that come by this pond, like ducks, squirrels, chipmunks, and various types of birds. Sometimes, when I look out the window overlooking this pond, I feel like it’s a scene out of Bambi due to all the wildlife outside!

I’ve never really paid much attention to the wildlife that frequent the pond, I just associate it with how nature works and leave it at that. However, as the months have gotten warmer, I have noticed that there seem to be more and more animal visitors to the pond and the townhouse complex. I assumed that maybe word got out among the animals that the pond was a nice place to chill so they were all coming to hang out, so I didn’t really think much of it. But then one day I was looking out the window and into the mini-garden my family planted a few weeks ago and saw a type of animal I had never seen before near the pond: mice.

After some investigating and talking with my neighbors, it was discovered that my next-door neighbor is feeding the animals that visit the pond. I guess she thought it was cute to have all of these animal visitors, and her feeding them encouraged more and more of them to frequent the area. However, she either fails to understand or does not care that other people living in the complex view these additional visitors as nuisances, and not only has she attracted more cute Bambi-esque animals, but she has also attracted enormous amounts of mice. They get into the mini-gardens many of my neighbors have, and one even darted quickly into someone’s house when they opened the door to go outside! My brother keeps a watering can outside to use to water our mini-garden, and once he found a drowned, bloated mouse inside after a particularly heavy storm.

Many of my neighbors have complained to the management office about this particular neighbor’s habit of feeding the wildlife and attracting the mice. Some have taken it a step further and have set out poison for the mice, despite putting the other forms of wildlife at risk as well. I think the whole situation is ridiculous. Mice are rodents and are unwanted pests, and if it’s gotten to the point where poison is being set out to get rid of them, then why doesn’t this idiotic woman stop feeding the wildlife out by the pond?!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Dear Ms. Betty Brown (R-TX),

Your recent statement about how Asian-Americans should change their names to ones that are easier to pronounce during House testimony on voter identification legislation is not only insulting towards Asian-Americans, but also to the people you represent in Texas. Your assumption that Asian-American names are the only foreign names that are hard for the average English speaker to mispronounce is ignorant, and demonstrates your lack of cultural and awareness about the diversity on which the United States prides itself. Furthermore, your belief that citizens should change their name for the convenience of poll workers and other civil servants shows that you see poll workers as lazy and/or ignorant and do not possess the intelligence required to identify one person from another.

You are quoted as saying, “Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Yes, Chinese is a difficult language to learn, one of the most difficult, in fact. However, if one’s name is in a language other than English, the English speaker is not required to learn the language that the name is in, they only need to learn the name. There are plenty of Asian-American celebrities that have had their names recognized by the American public without having to change their names so that they could be dealt with “more readily” in the States - Kelly Hu, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, Ang Lee, to name a few. I doubt that all of the American people who are familiar with these aforementioned celebrities as well as other famous Asian-Americans became fluent in Chinese before learning how to pronounce their names.

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Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.