The term “Press gang” applies to the British custom of seizing unsuspecting eligible men with force and depositing them on ships to work as hostage-sailors. It was used largely in war time but regularly through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. It represents the very opposite of the term “All volunteer army.” And usually happened to poor or unimportant men that no one was likely to miss.

I often think that at it’s most extreme edges, animal advocacy operates the same way. Something hijacks your attention and then your will and before you know it you’re hopelessly at sea, saving beavers even when that was never anything you set out to do.

Diane Stopyra’s recent article in the Washington Post appealed for this reason.

I never meant to be a birder. But the birds didn’t give me any choice.

I’ve never been able to tell the difference between a warbler and a wren, and I never was compelled to try. I endured one oppressively humid birding tour a few summers back and quickly grew frustrated by the difficulty of locating an osprey through my loaner binoculars. Plus, I’ve never felt like I fit in with the birder crowd. Even as the birding community has expanded to include a younger, hipper set — which makes generalizing based on age, socioeconomic status or propensity for fanny-pack-wearing difficult — there are commonalities I don’t share. Seemingly limitless patience is one. A remarkable preference for the Prius is another. (Common bumper stickers in my town include: “Bird nerd,” “I always tern up for birdwatching” and “Birding gives me cheep thrills.”) Then there’s the impressive, almost terrifying commitment on display. Every spring, this place is home to the World Series of Birding, a 24-hour competition that kicks off at midnight. Midnight! I don’t care how special a scissor-tailed flycatcher is, I’m horrified if I have to stay up past 10 p.m. to see it. 

I share Diana’s sense of horror at the patience necessary to tell one warbler from the next, but I was never adamantly against it, I just had much more important things to do. I went to college for 10 years to be able to do them after all, and glancing at nature was a pastime, a flirtation, never anything remotely like a calling.

But I could never be a real birder, I tell myself. I don’t have a field guide, and I don’t keep a “life list,” birdwatcher-speak for a personal catalogue of sightings. My hobby is an unconscious sort of thing, less about studying wingspan or beak shape and more about passing the miles of a long run or dog walk mindlessly comparing birds to the humans in my life. That leggy egret with the long neck that weighs two pounds? Totally a Jennifer. That stocky merlin with a square head? Just like the rugby player I dated in college. And that aggressive peregrine falcon that goes after anything that moves? Okay, wait, that’s the rugby player, too. 

Of course there is a series of well established traits you must possess to be a real birder. The path is well understood and easy to trace. The road to becoming a beaverer is much more murky. You never know when you’re going to slip from the blithely casual observer into something more alarmingly committed. It happens so gradually at first.

Noticing birds means you’re just a short step away from admiring them; not because they’re so exotic but precisely because they’re not. Birds — vulnerable and territorial and grumpy and affectionate and curious — are a lot more humanlike than we probably care to admit. Oystercatchers decorate with seashells, and there’s a quahog in my bathroom. Empathetic magpies hold grudges against mean people, and I’m working on that. Parrots have temper tantrums when sleep deprived, and who doesn’t?

>Noticing anything is the beginning of a commitment. You know well that once you notice that not-unattractive young man in your chem class changed his hair you’re doomed to the certain crushing behaviors that inevitably follow. So it is with watching beavers. Noticing the bonds in a beaver family  or the way siblings steal from each other without resentment speaks of a similar fate.  You can’t just stop noticing. It just isn’t an engine you can turn off once it’s been revved.

That’s the thing about this place. It forces even the most reluctant to confront the natural world in all its beauty and drama and comedy. (Try Googling a yellow-crowned night heron, or at least its mohawk, without cracking a smile.) Will I ever be the kind of person who’s toting a spotting scope, chasing birds at midnight or working to identify a muffled call while eight miles into a tempo run? Nah. But I do know this: Resistance is futile. Sooner or later, that natural world grabs you by the shoelaces and doesn’t let go.

You can probably see from the last line why this article appealed. Well done, Diane. Although I wouldn’t say beavers grabbed me by the shoelaces. More by the heartstrings, which are easier to tangle and harder to take off. Maybe it’s the city’s fault. Maybe if they hadn’t plan to kill them I would have been free to get over my crush and move on to something else, like knitting or basketry.

But that’s the way of press gangs. They keep you cruelly occupied and never let you find out what life would have offered up instead.