Nurturing nature

>> McGill's wildlife hotline helps Montrealers cohabitate with critters

by NAOMI BLOCH

Rather suddenly summer has sprung upon us, which means it's time to pull out the lawn chairs, scrub clean the barbecue and scrounge up some favourite summertime recipes: mom's famous potato salad, spicy gazpacho, or perhaps the following recipe: mix 5 parts very hot hotsauce, 4 parts Castor Oil, 8 parts Murphy's Oil Soap and 1 shot glass of human urine.

While it's possible that this seasonal concoction may appeal to certain less-discerning readers, the strange brew is not actually meant for human consumption--surprise, surprise. The mixture, posted on McGill University's Urban Nature Info Service Web site, is specially formulated to help humans harmlessly "exclude" small mammals who infest their pristine gardens and eat their carefully planted rhododendrons.

"People are babies, if you ask me," confides Urban Nature's Marie-Anne Hudson, who answers calls at the service's hotline. "They just don't want to share their space with an animal. A lot of people are afraid that they'll spread disease or eat the flowers and ruin their nice, pedicured lawn. People just want to exclude them."

Witness the annual spring kerfuffle over in Gatineau, where condo owners continue to lose their battle against the local groundhogs. The condos were built three years ago on prime groundhog territory--a fact that was apparently well known at the time--and the wily rodents seem uninclined to hand over their habitat willingly. The groundhogs have chewed through countless car wires and insulation, and have even been found by unsuspecting mechanics nestled under car hoods, still perniciously gnawing. Several residents have asked the city to remove or kill the animals, but Quebec law forbids either killing them or destroying their natural habitat.

Last week, environmental groups across the country called attention to the necessity for better laws to protect natural habitats after the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada announced that an additional 17 species of animals and plants are at risk over last year's count of 354. "We do have laws now that prevent a lot of building due to endangered species," says Hudson. "But that breeds animosity. So people will destroy birds' nests and then say, 'Whoops, it fell out of the tree. Now I can build.' There's a lot of stuff like that going on."

The purpose of McGill's Urban Nature service, which only this year combined the 20-year-old horticultural info centre with the much newer wildlife info line, is to offer advice on how to peacefully co-exist with nature. "One guy actually called because of his tenant who had pigeons on his balcony. And the guy's telling me, 'He wants to buy a gun. He wants to kill the pigeons.' Of course I told him, 'No! Don't let him do that,'" recounts Hudson--an applied zoology student at McGill's McDonald Campus--with a somewhat horrified titter.

Beyond giving advice on how to exclude squirrels nesting in barbecues, ducks hanging out in the swimming pool or a cowbird incessantly performing its mating dance on the window sill, the hotline also offers expert horticultural advice. "We have a lot of information on organic gardening--ecological options as opposed to chemicals," explains the hotline's resident green thumb, Frieda Beauregard. "We can help people who want to make their gardens more suitable habitats for wildlife."

Contact the Urban Nature Information Service hotline at 398-7882