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.

The Fixer

When something breaks, people expect me to fix it. I’m a father, a husband, a grandfather. I also take care of vacation properties to supplement my teacher salary. To fulfill these roles, I need a workbench with a vise and tools within reach. So, when I built my garage, I put a work area in one corner. If I pull a vehicle in and open the hood, my workbench is right there with lights, a power source and tools. Much of this had been in my basement and there is still a bench down there, but I don’t use it much. It’s hard to lug stuff up and down the stairs and there isn’t as much room to work on large objects as there is in the garage.

There’s one problem though. My garage workbench is right next to the door leading into the house, so when someone comes home with armloads of things, the natural tendency is to set one or more of the loads down on my bench before opening the door. Sometimes they’ll come back and put it where it belongs and sometimes they won’t. Stuff accumulates, covering every square foot of space in a matter of weeks - sometimes only days. So, when I need to work on something, I must first clean off all that stuff before I can set down whatever I’m supposed to fix and examine it.

That’s frustrating. It’s seldom possible to call everyone who put the stuff there and ask them to take it away, so I have to deal with it myself. By the time I’m done, my mood has sometimes soured and I don’t feel like fixing whatever broke.

Some items are things people don’t really want very much, but can’t make the decision to throw away either. So when I ask them to put the things away, they don’t actually have a place. The items haven’t been adopted into the household. They’re kind of a temporary foster things and decisions on their final status have been postponed or forgotten. It falls to me to have to force a resolution. Usually I say something like: “Well put them somewhere, or I’m going to put them in the trash. They don’t belong on my workbench.” In response, I hear a sigh and an “Oh all right,” and some foot stomping while they do it. Those are not the kinds of interactions that engender good will. Though I’d originally set out to do something helpful and nice - to fix something for somebody - it can get unpleasant.

A friend has been remodeling a kitchen and he gave me some old oak wall cabinets. I hung them in the garage and organized a lot of my tools and other stuff and I feel good now. I cleaned off my entire workbench and it looks great. I know where my tools are and there’s a cleared work area on top where I can actually set something down, turn it over and around, disassemble it, and work on it. I don’t know how long it will stay that way, but for the time being, my workbench can be what it was meant to be. I feel powerful - ready to fix whatever should break next. I’m even looking forward to it.

It had been so long since I’d thoroughly cleaned it off, things appeared which I couldn’t identify. They were metal, plastic or polymer and more like pieces of things, but I’ve forgotten what things. I don’t know if they were important things or unimportant things. My wife might have put them there or I might have, but neither of us can remember. Those weighty decisions now fall to me: throw them away only to find out later that they were dreadfully important doodads? I can’t form a committee to decide because I’m all alone, so I put them in an large coffee can labeled UPIPs, or “Unidentified, but Possibly Important Pieces.” I have to save them for five years before I can dispose of them.

Then I realize there are UPIPs on top of my dresser, in the kitchen catchall drawer, on the dashboard of my pickup truck, on the desk in my office at home and on my desk at school. Should I consolidate them all in this one container or leave them where they are? Decisions, decisions. It’s too much to consider all in one weekend. I’ll leave them there for now and figure it out later.