Government Knows Best

Not only is government "fixing" our economy, it wants to control everything it can down to the smallest details.

A property I manage was overrun with flying squirrels, for instance. The owners already had an exterminator but the contract didn’t include squirrels. I’d trapped more than a dozen flying squirrels and one red squirrel, but I couldn’t keep up with them. Then someone told me about a guy who specializes in the critters. I called him in and he went about plugging up the many places squirrels or bats could gain access. Then he installed one-way doors so they could get out at night (they’re nocturnal), but not back in. Finally, he trapped the stubborn ones that tried to chew their way back in. He told me that flying squirrels were protected by government. I couldn’t believe it at first, but it’s true. A great example of government trying to fix something that isn’t a problem. I’ve caught dozens with rat traps in my own house too and heard similar stories from friends.

Not wanting to violate the law while he conducted business, my guy contacted authorities about getting rid of nuisance squirrels. They told him to continue trapping them, but to save their cute little corpses for government to examine. He did so, but accumulated so many, so often, that officials told him to stop contacting them which he happily did. Flying squirrels are not scarce here in western Maine, but they only come out at night, so few people ever see them. One woman friend told me she caught thirty-six of them in her attic in her “have a heart” trap. She released them all some distance from her house. As for me, I don’t have a heart when it comes to squirrels of any sort.

One animal-lover group excoriated President Bush for taking northern flying squirrels off the endangered species list in 2008. How could Bush have been so heartless as to leave such a cute little rodent unprotected, they wondered, and they begged President Obama to put them back on. The Center for Biological Diversity claims: “The tiny squirrel, which appears to have a brown cape when in flight, is dearly loved throughout its Appalachian Mountain homeland.”

Well I beg to differ. I live in the Appalachians Mountains and I can’t stand them. I shoot squirrels of all kinds whenever I see them near my house or any of the buildings I take care of. If I don’t, they chew their way in and cause enormous damage. They’re a pain in the butt and there’s no end to them. I say hurray for President Bush.

These animal-lovers are nuts and government is enabling them. They think the human race is a problem and cutting back our population is vastly more preferable to trapping their cute little tree rats. In that spirit, they’ve initiated an “Endangered Species Condoms” distribution project. I’m not making this up. They want to protect squirrels and cut back humans because we’re the biggest threats to biological diversity. They believe human activity invades squirrel habitat when it’s pretty obvious that squirrel activity invades ours.

Just how nutty are these people? To justify government intervention into the alleged squirrel shortage, they cite another non-problem for justification:

Despite dire projections from recent global warming models predicting the complete disappearance of the West Virginia northern flying squirrels’ habitat, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed all protections afforded to the species by the Endangered Species Act.

These are the kinds of people President Obama was talking to when he said he would lower the sea level and control climate. They actually believe he can do that. Their ilk elected Obama and a Congress that does what he says. Now they want to control virtually every aspect of our lives.

Canadian Geese are another nuisance species protected by government and making my life difficult. When they’re not causing plane crashes in New York City, large flocks of them invade lakefront properties and crap all over the place. The easiest thing would be to shoot them and eat them, but government says you need a federal license to do that.

So what’s going to come out of Washington next? In Virginia, where so many federal employees live, there exists an organization known as the “Center For Human-Wildlife Conflict Resolution.” It purports to “help Virginia residents and municipal leaders identify potential sources of assistance when confronted with problematic wild animal concerns.”

Isn’t that special? If present trends continue, we’re going to need a federal license to pull ticks off ourselves or swat mosquitoes - and then only according to whatever guidelines are laid out in a Center for Human-Wildlife Conflict Resolution action plan.

Animal Lover

I love animals, especially on the grill. Lately, I prefer domestic animals all cleaned, cut up and wrapped at the supermarket meat counter. Some guys like wild animals better, but for me they’re too much bother now that I’m an aging baby boomer. I’m a decent shot with a rifle or shotgun but it’s a lot of work to hunt them down, shoot them, disembowel them, drag them to the truck, butcher them, wrap them up and freeze them. I’m getting too old for all that.

There are other kinds of animal lovers who consider them equal to humans, but I’m not in that category. Growing up, I did get friendly with some dogs though. We had a German shepherd named Trixie which, if an older boy tried to push me around, would show her teeth and growl menacingly. I had to like that dog. She got old and died and my parents got a mongrel named Tootsie. He had a brave heart too, but lacked the strength to back it up. Consequently, he got thrashed in clashes with other dogs. Still, he never backed off and I had to admire that. As they say, it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.

Two years ago we buried a wonderful mongrel named Molly after seventeen years. She was gentle and smart and knew her place. She got expensive near the end of her life, but she was worth it. Her replacement is a large, unintelligent Yellow Lab/Irish Setter cross. Neither breed is known for smarts and Hannah is no exception. She’s huge and high-maintenance - a black hole of need, constantly seeking to be patted and stroked. And, she eats a lot. I may get a hernia carrying in huge bags of dogfood from the car. It doesn’t take long for Hannah to gobble it all down and what comes out the other end is of commensurate size. When she drinks water from her bowl in the kitchen, she slobbers about a quart all over the floor. You know how it feels to step in water right after putting on fresh pair of socks? Not a pleasant sensation. In winter, her hairs are all over the fleeces I wear and the back of my wife’s car is covered with them. When I ride in the passenger seat, Hannah is right by my left ear breathing and drooling. She’s not allowed in my car or in the cab of my truck either. She barks whenever a stranger approaches so she does serve as a kind of organic security system, but if I had my ’druthers I’d replace her with an electronic one. I tolerate Hannah only because my wife likes her.

Other kinds of animal lovers consider them superior to humans and I’m certainly not in that category. These are your rabid animal lovers. They would rather humans were extinct so we could turn the planet over completely to animals. When alligators ate three women in Florida last month, rabid animal lovers blamed humans for encroaching on the alligators’ habitat. It was the women’s own fault the alligators ate them.

Speaking of predators, a big black bear has been hanging around my neighborhood lately. I went out my door at 6:45 one morning and he was sniffing around my grandson’s swing set. He looked at me and sauntered down the hill into the woods like he owned the place. My wife has a counseling practice here and she told me some clients noticed the bear again outside her office. One said the bear was “brazen,” not afraid of people at all. Then I read about a black bear attacking a young family after climbing over a fence in Tennessee. The bear killed a six-year-old girl, mauled her mother and critically wounded her two-year-old brother after picking him up by the head and holding him aloft. Rabid animal lovers claim such attacks result from increased human encroaching on bear habitat, but Forest Service biologist Laura Lewis said in USA Today: “People don't want to think it is a natural behavior on the part of the bear [to eat people], but I really think it is.” I’m with you Laura. It’s natural for alligators to eat people too.

Why is this so hard for animal lovers to accept? Do they think all animals are vegetarians like they are? It should be obvious that bears love humans too - as tasty morsels. My six-year-old grandson plays on that swing set and the next time the bear comes around may be his last. He’s encroaching on my habitat now. Rock musician and hunter Ted Nugent wrote a book recently called “Kill It And Grill It,” with a recipe for “Bar-B-Que Black Bear.” I’m going to Amazon now and order it. Maybe I could learn to love bears. I’ve never tasted one on the grill before.