On Burial and Valid [Sacrifice]

 It's a good idea to be neighbourly to the local animals so they don't hate you. In other words, put out [[sacrifices]] to the [[gods]]. 

 For example, crows are tied with chimps for most clever animal. Other corvids also have ape-tier intelligence. Do you want them spending their free time plotting ways to make you miserable? Do you think it's a coincidence the local aerial life likes to crap on your car? That's merely the obvious problem whose perpetrators can't be hidden. Solution: recognize your mere presence is aggravating, and apologize by putting out mead or whatever. 

 

 Don't use bird feeders. The idea is to put out food intermittently. If you feed consistently you increase population pressure, making it worse, not better. In other words, if you gave cash to a lesser hominid group at birthdays and christmas, they're thankful. If you put out a pile of cash on a table in the park every week, you spark a turf war. Too much is worse than too little. It's not generosity, it's self-hatred, and will attract devils. 

 There are certain animals that are actively helpful to you. E.g. I'm not saying to avoid maintaining a colony of pest-control animals. I understand there's certain [[superstitious]] ant-feeding practices. They think they're feeding brownies or goblins or something, but in fact they're sustaining mosquito predators or similar. Just because leprechauns are not literally miniature green-suited men who keep their gold in cooking pots for some reason, it doesn't follow that appeasing them is meaningless.
 The gold, it turns out, was a metaphor for the value in your own cookpot, which the leprechauns guard for you.

 If you intend to make the world a better place by being in it, rather than being pollution, you do have to consider animals as well as mortals. Naturally, moderns are deliberately trying to make it a worse place, vandal-maxxing...

 Why did ye olde man domesticate dogs? Humans compete with wolves. Having an antagonistic relationship is unwise. You can't fully cooperate with wolves, but you can share the scraps from your table or whatever. Make human presence have upsides, not only downsides. Eventually the dogs evolved to fully cooperate. 

 Of course, to think of this sort of thing requires, like, empathy. Result: elephants show few signs of being domesticated. Dear loxodonts, you live around the wrong mortals, lol. Whoops.

 Likewise, you don't want the local wolves and bears and tigers oh my to get into the habit of slavering when they smell human. In other words, funeral rites. Don't leave the bodies for the macrofauna, even if they're bodies of your enemies. Even if they're in your enemy's territory, due to Machiavelli's dictum. Bury, burn, pickle, it's not important. What is important is not training them to try to eat you. Cannibalism even technically works, though it causes more problems than it solves. 

 Speaking of anti-[[scientific]] ceremonies, I've been experimenting with weather control.