Wild animals at Stow Lake

   There are many animals at Stow Lake, some seasonal and some live there year round. I enjoy watching the ways that they interact with others within and outside of their particular groups, and the arrival and departure of species that migrate to or from other places.
   For anyone that reads my blogs (which is basically no one), the fact that I have many opinions about how myself and others should behave is nothing new, and included in these is whether people should be feeding the animals that live around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park.
   While I feel that I should note that there are signs posted in a few locations which state that feeding the animals is prohibited here (and why it is), I want to focus in this blog entry on the wild character of animals, rather than whether or not people should be following the rules, a subject which I believe that I could write about endlessly.
   Never have I thought that the people who toss peanuts to the squirrels and scrub jays, or dump bread crumbs for the mallards and ducks have anything but care for them in mind when they do so (I imagine that they enjoy the animals as much as I do), but what I find most intriguing about the animals there is that they are wild, and I believe that feeding them regularly serves to make them into pets, robbing them of their wildness.
   Early in the morning, when it is mostly dark and the park is still sparsely populated by people, the animals that I can see and hear start their days; birds are singing, ducks quacking, and the squirrels' nails scratch into the bark of  trees. It's a world mostly mysterious to me, and although I am a person that likes to control things (mostly to my dismay), I love that the animal life in the park exists devoid of me; it seems so beyond my control that I cannot even fathom judging or altering it.
   As the light of the sun illuminates more of the park, the animals begin running up to me, obviously and dishearteningly expecting me to feed them. It is endearing in some way to see this, but also saddening, as I feel like I'm witnessing the loss of one of the things that make them specifically them. I believe that their birthrates have probably increased because of the land of plenty that they've become accustomed to over the years, and although I am a social animal (and forged by my own environment), I don't like that my fellow animals have impacted the others that I share my mornings with in such a human way.