One Saturday afternoon a few years ago, I was walking in Harlem Meer in Central Park, when I noticed a young girl tossing bits of bread to the ducks; the smile on her face a mile wide.
"She really loves the ducks." I smiled to the girl's mother who was standing nearby. "Its nice to see children connect with nature like that."
The young mother explained that her little girl loved animals, but they were not allowed pets in their apartment. The child looked forward all week to coming to the park on Saturdays to "feed the duckies."
"She would stay here all day feeding them if I would let her." the mother laughed. "She's even named some of her favorite ducks!"
The sweet memory haunts now as New York City is on the verge of criminalizing such activity in all city parks.
What options do such children have now? Children who cannot have pets for one reason or another. Children whose parents might lack the resources for nature trips to the country or even local trips to the zoo.
Perhaps city officials and Mayor deBlasio would argue that children can view videos of animals or admire "from a distance." But such are not the same as interacting one to one with a semi-tame duck, goose or squirrel in the park. Animals who have grown up around and are comfortable with people.
I now live in Cortland, NY. A sleepy kind of 1950's style city of less than 100,000 people whose children can still delight in going to the local Municipal Water Works park and feeding the ducks on a Saturday afternoon. They can even name them.
Not all changes are progressive.
Criminalizing a behavior that for millions of Americans is considered a charitable act of giving and sharing, as well as representing warm childhood memory is simply furthering our disconnection from the natural world and plunging us into deeper separation, individualism and ultimately, loneliness and isolation.
We do our children and citizens no favors by such cruel and feckless policy.
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