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which is a wonderful event but is also a time of tremendous hormonal changes, as is all of pregnancy. Some doctors think that the physiology of pregnant women is so different that they have to be considered as completely different from non-pregnant women, as if there were two types of women.
On the positive side, women who have given birth have a decreased risk of breast cancer, even more so if they breastfeed, the longer they breastfeed, the less risk. Not that anyone should have a baby thinking it will protect her health, because it may also cause a flare of a previously undiagnosed disease, and most of all because babies need to be wanted for themselves.
Lyme disease is carried by DEER ticks, which are supposed to stay on deer, not dogs or humans. It's on the increase because there are huge populations of deer, more than there should be, due to the lack of predators. Ecologists who specialize in this area say there are more deer in North America than there were when Europeans came here. We killed most of the wolves and other predators and we don't want wolves in our backyards, so instead we have deer in our backyards, eating our gardens and spreading Lyme disease because the deer ticks hop or fall off deer and look for something else to feed on, like your dog or you. Often, deer are underweight and not as healthy as they should be because there are too many of them and too little food, so the situation is bad for them and for us. Deer also cause many auto accidents, often with human fatalities. Besides causing wrecks, deer have been known to go through windshields when hit and, alive and panicked, kick the driver to death.
They are beautiful animals but we are too sentimental about them, thanks to the "Bambi" effect. If we had such an overpopulation of rats, we'd be demanding that they be killed, as we should since rats can carry Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes bubonic plague, not to mention that rats bite. Hunters cannot keep the deer population in check since hunting is only allowed at certain times and a hunter has a limit of how many deer he or she can take. We need a massive effort to reduce the deer population by either allowing hunting year around with no limits -- of course monitoring it so that deer populations wouldn't be decreased too much -- or having wildlife managers do the culling (i.e. kill off a lot of deer.)
The meat could be put to good use to feed the hungry, too. Hunters already donate meat from deer they take and don't need to feed their own family to programs to provide the meat to the poor. Venison is delicious if it's well-prepared, though of course some people won't eat it for psychological reasons, just as some won't eat rabbit. Old people from rural areas will tell you that during the Depression, wild rabbits and deer helped keep many rural families alive. When I ate meat, I ate venison and rabbit but I have my own hang-ups; I love liver but could never bring myself to eat other organ meats, though I'm sure they are delicious when prepared properly and that I could eat anything if hungry enough, but hope I'll never be that hungry!
I've never hunted and no longer eat meat but I'm a biologist with specialization in ecology and serious concern about the overpopulation of deer. They are out of balance with nature and posing a threat to humans. Eventually, we're going to have to deal with the problem.
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