Teaching the Article
Exercise 6: Immigrants, Poachers, and the Limits of Community
While urban squirrels provided opportunities to encourage charity and strengthen a sense of community, they also provided opportunities to distinguish between those who belonged in the community and those who did not. Exclusion and inclusion were two sides of the same coin. Those who were unwilling or unable to treat squirrels with charity and kindness became targets either of moral reform, if they were children, or of persecution, if they were adults. Italian immigrants were often accused of hunting urban squirrels and songbirds for food and thereby lowering the moral quality of the community, as reflected in these two articles.
Questions
- Why did some pro-squirrel social reformers think that it was particularly immoral to kill city squirrels that had gotten used to being fed?
- Why might someone have risked a violent encounter with the police to hunt a gray squirrel in an urban park?
- Hunting of squirrels remained legal and popular in rural areas even as squirrels were being fed and protected within cities. What does this tell us about differences between the way nature and human-animal relations were imagined in the city and the country?
Sources
- “Struck Down by Poachers,” New York Times, Dec. 17, 1900, p. 10, available at the New York Times Article Archive: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30C1EF63F5911738DDDAE0994DA415B808CF1D3
Local copy of article (JPG) - “This Italian Must Beware,” Cambridge Tribune, Oct. 10, 1903, p. 6, available at the Cambridge Public Library: http://cambridge.dlconsulting.com/cgi-bin/cambridge?a=d&d=Tribune19031010-01.2.53
Local copy of article (JPG)