Nature is not good

Dar Williams - The Babysitter's Here

Building on a point I make in Losing My Religions - here is Richard Rhodes in the Foreward of the 25th Anniversary edition of The Making of the Atomic Bomb (definitely worth a read):

In the middle years of my life I lived on four acres of land in Connecticut, a meadow completely enclosed within a forested wildlife preserve. It teemed with creatures: deer, squirrels, raccoons, a woodchuck family, turkeys, songbirds, crows, a Cooper’s hawk, even a pair of coyotes. Except for the hawk, every one of those animals constantly and fearfully watched over its shoulder lest it be caught, torn, and eaten alive. From the animals’ point of view, my edenic four acres were a war zone. Only very rarely does an animal living under natural conditions in the wild die of old age.