Let Nature Take Its Course

This is one of the phrases that I’ve grown to hate and struggle to understand. It’s the phrase that people say to me when they have an injured animal or bird and they can’t be bothered to bring it in. It’s a phrase I just don’t understand.

It actually feels a little hypocritical for any human to say these words if we think about it – since when have we ever really let nature take its course? We have done everything for our own convenience and nothing for really for the convenience of nature. If nature is following a course then we build big old roads down the middle of it because it makes our lives alot easier.

Nature has suffered, adapted and died so that we can live the lives we want to live – and we have never once considered what our world would be like if we had just let nature take it’s course.

So why do we then think it’s appropriate to say that when it justifies us leaving something to suffer? A baby bird fallen out of a nest, a pigeon hit by a car – are we really letting nature take it’s course if we leave this alone? In my opinion – no. Half the patients we get in aren’t brought to us because nature is cruel. We get the odd hawk attack on a pigeon sure – but the majority of patients have fallen victim to human interference in one way or another.

Hit by cars, nest cut out of trees, cat attacks, gun shot wounds, diseases and illnesses that are a direct result of the way we have damaged the ecology and environment.

I always remember a story my Dad told me about a man drowning in the ocean. He prayed to God for help and a fisherman came along in a boat. He asked the man if he wanted to get onboard but the man said no because God would save him. Then a helicopter came and tried to get the man to climb the ladder to safety – the man said no because God would save him. Eventually the man drowned and when he went to Heaven he asked God why he hadn’t saved him. God asked him who he thought had sent the boat and the helicopter.

That story stayed with me. So when we see something suffering then perhaps rather than “letting nature take its course” we can interfere because maybe there is a reason why we were there at that exact moment in a position to help.

There will be lots of arguments to this – what about interrupting something being killed for food by another animal – well that is truly letting nature take its course and that is an individual decision to be made.

If you see an injured animal or bird in pain and you can do something – then do it. Pick it up, get it safe and get it to help. It’s not interfering – it’s being in the right place at the right time to make a difference.