Comment by saltcured

In the earlier post about apple trees, I'm assuming what they mean is that the neighbors have decimated the local pollinators so their trees are not fruiting. It is still frustrating, even if they are not having direct exposure to the poison.

I'm actually back in the same California neighborhood I grew up in, which has adjoining open space. In the 50 years of cumulative time my parents or I have been there, we've never needed exterminators. At most, a can of ant spray from the supermarket was sufficient to treat around a door or window in a problematic season. I'm talking about such events once every 5-10 years. Meanwhile, exterminator vans are seen in the neighborhood quite frequently. I think some folks just see a bug, absolutely freak out, and want to nuke it all from orbit.

I think it's nearly a mental illness, how people want to detach from the natural world. As if their self-image is not that of a complex animal but of some sort of sterile abstraction.