I agree that the examples used were likely selected for the most journalistic impact rather than being typical examples. At the same time it’s good to remember that not every environment we visit is typical and that it is important to Leave No Trace when visiting delicate ecosystems.
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Does it make a sound? 
exactly this. depends 100% on where. please don’t toss your organic trash in sensitive environments or areas where they would cause issue with the specific flora or fauna or not decompose or an area that gets enough traffic to where this sort of behaviour would be frequent enough to be an issue. but also please don’t put them in the garbage when the reverse is true. it’s all about doing the least damage with our waste and using the best common sense.
banana was my childhood rabbit’s favorite treat when he was good.
he only died once and it was of old age.
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Well, IAAL,so let’s hope it doesn’t come to that!
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Horse apples = horse poop, so, no, the reference is to Osage oranges. The tree grows leaves that look like orange trees, grow fruits that look like oranges, but the fruits are not sweet or, really, edible like oranges, and the dumb trees can thrive in a place like southern Michigan. University of Michigan has one on S. State in Ann Arbor within their golf course, but the canopy extends many feet over the adjacent road.
Just another way for UM to thumb its nose at the townies as far as I can tell. “Ef, you, taxpayers. This pointless tree you can’t cut down will drop useless, large fruits upon your cars as you attempt to escape town for the next 100 years because some pissy alum paid for it to be so. Ha ha!”
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Roadside edible trash is a leading attractor of roadkill, which is then a cause of car strikes on raptors.
So, uh, please don’t.
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Chuck Palahniuk beat us to it:
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And yet still.
In high school, they were building a huge addition to my school. A bunch of areas shut down for some 3k students. Our lunchroom became the gym, and gym classes were cut.
One semester, I had gym right after a lunch hour. I noticed a banana peel on the ground on the track. And watched in horror as some guy jogging came on by and stepped right on it.
His foot flew out from under him and way high in the air, falling on his shoulders and back. Afterward, after making sure he was OK, I marveled.
That was amazing
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Straight from my Leave No Trace course:
Throwing apples and oranges out of car windows attracts animals to the side of the road where they become accustomed to traffic and eventually become road kill.
Even if it’s not near a road, the wildlife can become accustomed to human food and will cease to search out food on it’s own.
Throwing apples, and other seed fruits out in the wilderness can allow them to grow where they were not meant to and compete with native plants for nutrients.
https://lnt.org/blog/out-here-its-trash-apple-cores-orange-peels-and-other-natural-items
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Raccoons, possum, squirrels, chipmunks, skunks. Probably coyotes too. Stray dogs. Bears possibly. That is before getting into birds. I do not know much about birds.
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I read it, but gathered you thought such things on average would decompose before eaten. I realized the duplicate entry of possum but was too lazy to remove. Perhaps I got you wrong.
You could always throw them somewhere else instead…
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Even with subtitles I can’t decipher Donald outside of particularly clear mono syllables. Like, I’ll watch with subtitles and the noise he makes still doesn’t resolve into coherent words.
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The more you turn it, the faster it breaks down,
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The summary (of a summary) doesn’t really do the actual article justice:
Ms. Woodruff’s point is that people often appear to think that tossing things away in National Parks is ok if it is organic matter because animals will eat it or it will decompose away to nothing but that things are not so simple.
That pretty much captures it.
Except I think Ms Woodruff would also take issue with the idea that it’s fine to throw stuff out where it will decompose.
It doesn’t magically disappear as a result of decomposition.
You’re still adding something to the environment that wouldn’t be there otherwise. The consequences might be good or bad but either way it’s stuff that wouldn’t be happening if we didn’t dump our trash.
Sadly, no answer to that in the original article either 
this just seems very petty to me. Sure its not great to have trash everywhere and its not good thing to do, but the harm this causes is very minimal. It might stick around for a while, but its not toxic or going to kill anything if it gets eaten, like with plastic. Think this is pretty low on the list of things to worry about
I am so glad you experienced this and shared it. It is the little things that make life worth living.
And scavengers.
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It is not okay to throw away your octopus either
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And why wouldn’t you eat the whole apple anyway? Leaving the core is a waste of food.
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