Invasive Species

The most beautiful robots in the world, gecko sex in the kitchen, and seriously– why aren’t we eating cats?

Nov 10, 2024

Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: the enemy within.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Suppertime! I promise to feed you only once a week, and never after midnight.

Note for longtime readers: I’m moving the ingredients list to the end of the email since there are spoilers included. For new readers, this will include all sources and inspiration for this week’s theme, as well as other stuff I’ve been enjoying.

Ingredient List

🎧 : “Are Boys Being Left Behind?”, Raising Parents podcast // I’ve been a huge fan of Princeton professor and economist Emily Oster ever since she advocated for opening schools during Covid once vaccines were available. She’s also a dedicated listener of The Drop, so I may be a little biased. Her new podcast looks at parenting issues through data and available studies and breaks down a different topic each week. This episode on the current state of boyhood and the troubling future of manhood– especially in relation to the alarming rise of mental health issues and suicide– is a must listen.

Sources used in this newsletter:

“Palm Reading,” 99% Invisible podcast

“The Trouble With Earthworms,” NPR Environment

“Spotted Lanternfly,” Maryland Department of Agriculture

And now, onto dinner service.

Course 1

A Word of Gratitude: Buttercups and Granola Bar Crumbs

I’ve often wondered who decides what is beautiful, and why we all agree on it.

Just last week, I was in New York City, a place known for pigeons (i.e. robotic flyers of the modern surveillance state). They are quite literally everywhere. They’re endearing to nobody, outside of children and Mary Poppins toppins ladies. But as I sat on a bench in Central Park, watching them mill about, fighting for fat squirrels for whatever crumbs I dropped from my granola bar, I was kind of struck by how beautiful they were.

There are so many variation and patterns among pigeons, from speckled to checkered to barless. Intricate details on the wings, the throats almost holographic depending on which way they lean into the sun. Knowing nothing, if you were to land on the shores of New Amsterdam and lay eyes upon any version of this bird, you would immediately head to your quill and inkwell and describe it in great detail to your beloved back home in Britain.

Of course, you wouldn’t do this because they’re an invasive species. But of all the creatures that one could bring to America, I feel like the pigeon isn’t the worst. In fact, that’s probably why it was brought here. All rats-with-wings jokes aside, it’s a beautiful bird.

In the same way, earlier this year I was walking home from dropping my car off at the mechanic, walking along a stretch of road here in Baltimore that can only be described as pedestrian hell, though it was saved by a sidewalk. Four lanes of traffic, gas stations, multiple dicey intersections, an on-ramp to I-95– you get the idea. But on the shoulder, I noticed the proliferation of weed flowers. So many species in the span of one mile, of all variations and colors. Outside of their classification of weeds and our corresponding perception of them as nuisances, they were objectively beautiful. Yellow goldenrod, violet chicory, creeping buttercups and thistles, and of course– the ever-present dandelion. Without knowing their background story, if you bundled these altogether and presented them as micro bouquets at a farmer’s market, you’d probably have a good side hustle going on.

I don’t have a deep revelation about all of this, it’s more just an observation on how we frame things and our perception of those things based on a general consensus.

But just this morning I pulled into the parking lot beside our house and there, growing tall in a crack at the base of our side wall, was a groundsel with yellow flowers, still holding onto the fading sun. A few hours later I went out to take a photo of it and it was closed up for the night. I’m glad someone is still standing up for summer.

And for that, I am grateful.

Course 2

Appetizer: Refrigerated Lizards

The first time my wife saw a lizard in our house, she screamed. It was out of place, for sure. We live in Baltimore, a place where reptiles are found under logs in the summer, not on walls in the winter, so I assumed it had been someone’s pet or the offspring of one. After cornering it and capturing it and setting it outside sans tail (sorry buddy), I did some research and found that the creature in question was a Mediterranean house gecko (also called a moon lizard), an invasive species that came over in Spanish ships to Florida and bred its way north over the course of the past several hundred years.

To those living in the southern states, this is a pretty common household pest, along with a variety of other wildlife that my mother-in-law attempts to keep at bay through the methods of screened in porches and sticky traps, much to my dismay. For those of us further north, it’s a surprise and even a delight to see one, depending on how comfortable you are with large-eyed, sticky toed lizards who are willing to lose whole body parts to get away from you.

As with most geckos and lizards and reptilian creatures, the moon lizard is a master of disguise, thanks to both its camouflage and general stealth, slipping into cracks and crannies with deft speed. Sometimes you’ll see one out of the corner of your eye, a quick movement at the baseboard of the basement bathroom, and then it’s gone, like a double agent in a Russian back alley slinking into the cloak of night.

When I am able to catch one, it’s usually a small juvenile whose evasion skills are still being honed. In hand, they’re beautiful to observe. The tiny-yet-abnormally-large toes, like four marijuana flowers extending from the stems of each leg. Speckled back and large, blank eyes taking in as much light as possible. The translucent skin, clear enough to see its heart beating inside.

One winter, a gecko posted up in a crack behind our refrigerator, between the wooden floors and the brick wall of our rowhome. For months on end, it chirped out its mating call, an animal version of a dying fire alarm. For awhile, I just thought our refrigerator was making a weird noise, until one day we moved the fridge and there was a 5-inch lizard scrambling back to its abode. Sometimes I think about how long that guy just wanted to have sex, stuck behind a refrigerator eating bugs and spiders in between his honking while horny. I hope he found a partner for life in that wall. I think he did, because the gecko population is still thriving.

Sometimes I’ll spot them on the front wall of our house in the summertime, feasting off insects drawn to the fake flame of our stoop light. Other times they’ll be upstairs on a wall in the corner of the room. If and when I catch them, I don’t put them outside anymore; instead, I just move them all to the back basement storage room to feast on insects (sorry if this is news to those of you who have stayed downstairs, this will probably be the last known sighting of my mother-in-law in our house). But I’m pretty sure they’re doing a good job of keeping the pests away, because in a city known for its cockroaches (and not the ones on the city council), we never see them inside. Here’s the deal: in our house, you either get geckos that do their best to hide at all times, or cockroaches that come out to play whenever and wherever. It’s your choice, mama.

So while plenty of people consider them pests or nuisances, I consider them family, nomads who have traveled over hundreds of years and thousand of miles before settling down in Maryland for a better life. I would call them migrants, others would call them invasive species. Guess it depends on whether you want them out of your house, or whether you think they should stay and contribute to the greater good. Whether there’s just the right amount to do the laborious work of insect eradication, or whether I’m taking money out of my own paycheck to feed them while my own kids go hungry.

I’m not sure what you believe, but I can tell you this: In this house, we believe that no gecko is illegal, and lizard love is lizard love, especially if they’re doing it inside the floorboards behind our refrigerator. That’s a zoominatarian cause I’m willing to support.

Course 3

The Main: A Case for Eating Cats

Over the past few years, the spotted lanternfly has made plenty of headlines in the Mid-Atlantic region. A “hitchhiking pest” from China and Vietnam, it’s a moth-like creature that has made its presence known during the summer months– covering trees, flying into your face while running, crawling over everything that lives or doesn’t. Much ado has been made about this pest. In the beginning of its invasion, we were told to report any instance of it to the Maryland Department of Agriculture.

Within a year, the lanternfly was everywhere; taking photos and sending them in for tracking was futile. I’ve trained my kids to stomp them out wherever they see them. Whole hours have passed as they shake sapling maple trees down and go on a Godzilla-like stomping mission of eliminating smaller Asian creatures in their paths. Which is sad, because they truly are one of the most beautiful insects I’ve seen in real life.

Either way, at this point, the knowledge of their scourge and the camaraderie of killing them is embedded within us, wherever it thrives. We all just intuitively know we must eliminate them on sight. And yet, nobody can really tell us why.

The Maryland Department of Agriculture website notes that the lanternfly may stress native plants and has been shown to stunt growth, but that it hasn’t been associated with host mortality. In the grand scheme of things, that, like… doesn’t seem that bad? I’m not an ecology major, so I can’t say either way.

But what I can say is that there are plenty of creatures that are invasive or have been invasive to the United States and we seem simply okay with all of it. Life goes on and nature seems to adapt.

For instance, did you know that every palm tree in southern California is non-native? They first came to Cali with the Spanish, who wanted to celebrate Palm Sunday. Soon after, the fascination with Orientalism took hold, the idea of bringing the Far East into courtyards and lobbies of hotels and other establishments to give them a more exotic and rarified feel. Following a natural progression of coveting, rich elites wanted them, imported them for their own estates, then everyone thought “hey, let’s just line the streets with them and create the illusion of paradise.” Now, there’s an entire black market for them, which you can hear about in one of my favorite podcast episodes ever.

Earthworms, too. All earthworms north of Pennsylvania in the Northeast and Midwest are invasive and are destroying the ecosystem. We’ve been told our whole lives that earthworms are good for gardens and soil, but there’s a chance that none of that may be true. It’s all just anecdotal. And while they’re certainly great for throwing on a fishing hook and catching a nice haul of bluegill, when you move inland you’ll find that they are wreaking havoc on forest floors, disrupting the delicate balance of the ecosystem. Even so, none of us are out on the streets during a rainstorm, stomping nightcrawlers to death in our galoshes.

Then there’s the cats.

House cats, without exaggeration, are quite possibly the worst invasive species to ever enter the United States. Worldwide, there are 100 million cats functioning as an invasive species. They are responsible for the extinction of over 60 species of birds, of which they decimate to the tune of 1 billion per year in the United States alone. One billion birds pounced to death! And we think Haitians are the problem? Vice President Vance, they are the solution. If indeed they were actually eating townspeople’s cats, instead of being vilified, they should be granted full citizenship on the spot and awarded the Audobon Society’s Presidential Medal of Freedom. The rest of us should all be doing our part by sharing recipes for Tabletop Tabby and grabbing our .22s before heading en masse into the back alleys and barnyards of America. The promise of this great country: a car in every driveway and a cat in every pot.

Cats, earthworms, and palm trees are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the scourge of invasive species. I haven’t even begun to dig into northern snakeheads, ash bores, Asian carps, blue and flathead catfishes, and the Burmese python of the Florida Everglades, the primary yoink target of my favorite Instagrammer.

And yet, for all the talk of climate change and disruption to the ecosystem, you almost never hear about these delivery drivers of destruction, and you almost certainly never do anything about them. They’ll garner a headline when they first arrive, scientists will declare the end of an ecosystem is nigh, and then eventually we just don’t care. We catch and kill when the opportunity arises, but we just assume that eventually things will balance out.

Really, we’ve just given up. Nothing will wear down your resolve like the full throttle of an invasive species.

Instead, we turn the fight to our day-to-day lives, where we’re actively encouraged (or even forced, in the case of an HOA) to keep our lawns tidy and neat, straight lines and edges, with the help of fertilizers and pesticides and copious amounts of water. A single dandelion, strong enough to push through a sliver of a sidewalk crack, demands a fierce dose of Roundup. A flower through pavement– that’s become our enemy.

Meanwhile, we buy nightcrawlers by the dozen at the gas station before a morning fishing trip, send postcards of palms against the sunset of Venice Beach, and feed the feline curled up in the sunlight by our front window– purring, napping, and dreaming of colonization, conquest, and murder.

Course 4

Dessert: A Repast of the Past Week

Finally a bit of a break in the schedule (before heading to Austin next week for the craziest week of the running shoe year). My legs have felt feel like I’m getting back into a little bit of a running rhythm and was able to get my legs going yesterday when I got in a nice 8-mile progression run from our house over to the kids’ soccer games in Locust Point.

I was trying to think of what else I did this week and, oh yeah, I kind of forgot there was an election. I will say, I’ve seen some stuff over on Threads and, man, I think I’m just living in a different reality than other subsets of people. As a rule, I don’t tell people who to vote for or who I vote for, I never have and I never will. I remember an elementary school teacher telling us she didn’t even share it with her husband (at that time she probably voted for Dukakis and he voted for Bush), and I’ve always just decided to live by that rule. It’s always been super cringe when reporters demand an answer out of celebrities, as if having more money means your perspective is valid. Just always seemed like a peer pressure move. Also, leave them alone when it comes to their personal lives. Taylor Swift doesn’t owe you anything beyond a great performance on stage.

On a brighter note, my oldest son Rye has been loving a new skate park that just opened in northeast Baltimore, the kind of place I only imagined in dreams while growing up in rural PA. He’s been getting more confident every time, to where he’s now dropping in without hesitation, and today carved around the bowl for the first time. The excitement and unbridled joy when he came out of the bowl and looked for me while yelling “I did it!” was one of those things that is irreplaceable in life. You feel it more deeply than anything else, a real walk-off grand slam for the home team.

Other things I’ve written this past week:

Go Ahead, Pile On Matt Choi // If you don’t know the drama behind this, consider yourself lucky. If you are familiar, this is a call for some levity in the matter.

I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic (and sometimes heartfelt) manner. You can subscribe here.

I’m also the co-host of The Drop running podcast, one of the top running podcasts in the country, where we mostly talk about things other than running that thousands of people seem to find entertaining. You can listen to this past week’s episode here, where we recap our time at the New York City Marathon.

END OF MENU

Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.

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