WHY BAMBI MAY HAVE BEEN WRONG ABOUT US

We're a news-conscious culture listening daily to newspapers, television and blogs for the latest. While each medium is different, they all share one thing in common. They're each loud and insistent about the news they're reporting.

Right now, though, there's a quieter yet no less insistent sound out there...!

When you listen carefully, it's the sound of nature blowin' in the spring winds. Whispering to us an evolutionary message for dealing more wisely with our cockeyed world. It's the message of the pigeons, the deer, and the geese that have lately multiplied throughout our city in staggering numbers

.

There are complex biological reasons for this daily drama, but the simplest of them may be that these species have genetically learned to be less afraid of us. With the reluctant exception of gun-toting hunters, it seems evolution is doing its thing here. Specifically, altering the long-persistent genetic codes by which these flocks and herds have always feared us

.

Now, instead, we feed the noontime pigeons, enjoy the parading geese, and watch the deer daring out of their preserves. Say -- maybe Bambi was wrong about us after all!

Could it be that what's at work here in our city parks and fields is evolution quietly re-coding ancient fear genes with emerging co-existence genes? Just as it has for centuries with our dogs, cats, horses, and other domesticated species who have learned to come out of the wilds, and peacefully co-exist with our species. After all, they've learned exactly how to let us take care of them for life.

If evolution can re-code animal gene pools this way, is it also possible nature is quietly demonstrating how a co-existence gene might also be acquired by other once-warring species? Consider the possibilities. Whites and blacks...rich and poor...young and old....neighbor and immigrant...why even such natural enemies as Democrats and Republicans?

The times are pregnant with possibilities. Why not Cub fans and Cardinal fans....Americans and French.... Americans and Russians... someday even Americans and jihadists? Evolution has accomplished far stranger things as it keeps proving to its many species how they all share this very same tiny blue planet in this very enormously uncaring universe.

Evolution is a funny fascinating thing that's led to many surprising changes. Even among the unchangeable. So it's hard not to hope.

Trouble is, this evolution thing is a stunningly slow, methodical process, and right now we don't have as much time as evolution usually likes to take. Is there something we can do about that...? Say like we have with the pigeons, the geese and the deer...?