Much to the amusement of my friend, T (aka “The Goose Slayer“), a sister organization is also under attack. Not by geese, or the feather-headed imbeciles who love them, but by groundhogs, and the fur-brained boneheads who can’t spell “nuisance”. i despise deliberate cruelty, and even benign neglect, of animals*, but there are issues when the human need to colonize the planet conflicts with the animal need to… well, gnaw, shit and procreate all over the place.
From the Operations Director of the other organization:
We’ve had a groundhog problem in the courtyard. Now we have someone releasing them and sabotaging the traps. PLEASE do not release the captured groundhogs or mess with the traps. The captured groundhogs are relocated — they are not destroyed.
From a distance the groundhogs, especially the baby ones, look cute and friendly but they are aggressive animals—keep away from them. They have destroyed building foundations, and they have chewed through wires and hoses of vehicles in the parking lots.
Groundhogs are considered nuisance animals and state law prohibits the release of a captured nuisance animal. Don’t release them!
Well. Isn’t that special? Apparently, the rodent-fetishists didn’t get the message. This came out the next day:
SUBJ: Gopher Cam will Get You
Someone has sabotaged the gopher traps again! As a result, we now have a camera that is viewing the area and the culprit will be caught if it happens again. I will ask management to take the maximum disciplinary action possible. Wiring has been damaged on several cars, resulting in $1000 repairs. By sabotaging the traps or releasing the animals, someone is putting everyone at risk. The animals caught are relocated and not destroyed. Release by unauthorized personnel violates the law.
Bottom line: Don’t screw with engineers. We have the technology. We will get your sorry, mushy-brained, PETA-supporting ass.
_____
* Why do the animal rights folks seem to care more about “cute” animals? Have you ever heard of “Possum Rescue” or “Naked Molerat Preservation Society” or “Earthworms Unlimited”?
Trailer Park Refugee 
Yhew, don’t get me started on the PETA-brained or humaniacs as I call them. I have been attacked on the bus for enslaving my service dog. Actually, they will let anything with more fur than we have loose. I sincerely suspect that they will soon extend their protection to plants and bacteria, and we will not be able to eat anything without feeling guilty. Except maybe Soylent Green.
As for letting rodents loose, they must be crazy. Rodents and insects already rule the world. They don’t need any help from us.
I’d love to work in a place where e-mails or memos like those went around.
“Don’t screw with engineers.”
The thought would never ever occur to me.
I’m Hollywood confused; I’ve got Bill Murray on a plane shouting “We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Groundhog Day!”, while Bill Pullman shakes his pocket watch.
Did you see that in the paper the other day about those carp in the Mississippi River jumping into boats and bonking fisherman in the head? It’s true. They’re called big head carp, they’re from Asia and they’re attacking and severely injuring many fisherman.
Biologists claim the roar of boat motors agitates and excites these carp and they jump towards the sound but I think these biologists are naively missing an obvious connection. Fish are attacking fisherman. For the fish it’s get them before they get you, kill or be killed. Even if these fisherman are practicing catch and release, that’s a very painful, embarrassing experience for any fish and apparently they have had it.
What about the increase in mountain lion attacks? Great White sharks moving closer to shore? Moose have been showing up in towns and stomping on people. A squirrel was in my living room last spring. Am I the only one that sees a pattern here? People, wise up! The other animals are against us. It doesn’t take a genius to see there’s an inter-species conspiracy to thwart the urban expansion of man.
How do the squirrels fit in? Surveillance. They spy on what we people are doing in the cities and report back to the bigger species out there on the front lines.
And taken together these other species represent walking, we hope not yet talking, scratching, biting weapons of mass destruction. And if these other species can convince the insect world, for example a well known anti-human group like the killer bees, to join up our way of life and our democracy could be history.
The skeptical may ask why would these other species want to hurt us? Obviously, they hate us. They are jealous of our way of life. We swim in chlorinated, safe environment pools, then towel off and have an adult beverage. They are stuck eating sludge in the Mississippi, a river polluted by guess who: their mortal enemy man. And to top it all off we eat them.
This invasion of Asian carp is no accident. This is stage one of their well planned attack. We ignore the obvious at our own peril.
We can no longer sit back and wait for them to attack us. It’s time we adopt a new doctrine regarding these other animals. We have to wipe out any and all species who are a lined against us, wherever they are. We can not rest until every big head carp, great white shark, mountain lion, moose and squirrel and any other species that associates with them are defeated.
If the U.N. wants to get involved fine, if not we can do it alone. Of course the British will show up, they always do.
– Borrowed from Tim Bedore, 2003
an Engineer Conundrum for you, Daisy…
yes, the engineers exercised their technology brain lobes to set up ‘gopher cam’ to protect the traps… but aren’t the folks sabotaging the traps likely technology-savvy engineers as well? I can easily see the clever engineer (no, that’s not redundant) figuring out how to pirate a video feed of “Sponge Bob Squarepants” and make that record on the cam while they merrily (are there ‘merry’ engineers?) re-sabotage the traps. Hmmm… could be great fun… or a mediocre movie.
“Naked Mole Rat Preservation Society”… [chuckle] i’m a proud member!
silverstar – “Humaniacs”? Perfect! Can’t believe they consider your dog “enslaved”? That’s just bonkers…
rob – it has moments. any large, bureacratic organization – where people have direct opportunity to send e-mail to “ALL”, lends itself to some funny suff…lots of annoyance, as well. like 20 reminders (with 5MB atc) of the bake sale in the lobby…
az – Good point! Hadn’t thought of it that way!
dolce – A Bill Murray over-rides a Bill Pullman. Always. It’s in the “Bill of Rights”…
umdalum – thanks for sharing that one! agree wholeheartedly about the damn squirrels. they are evil emissaries from the underworld… did see the “Carp” story on the tv-tube awhile back, and it’s funny as hell! Need to trade the fishing pole for a baseball bat!
gnu – good point, but suspicion always goes first to the support staff for such radical Pro-Critter behavior (that’s sort of how it rolled out with the Loyal Order of Goose Protection). it could also be a student – we get tons of interns for the summer – some without e-mail connectivity yet – and that’d be my guess. the “video” transfer could happen though – people really despise the security folks in the building who monitor monitors all say long….
“Have you ever heard of “Possum Rescue”…?”
Not until now. . .
Possum Rescue
[preparing to dynamite the gopher tunnel] In the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre, ‘Au revoir, gopher’.
Caddyshack…….classic
thanks for the link to bete’s blog, there was some fine wisdom in there about cats, went to the humane society today and against my better judgement came home with a little gray tabby i’ve dubbed Pedro, hopefully he can grow up with the boy and he’s been tearing ass around my house and just fell asleep on my chest while i lay on the couch, the bummer is i missed the Dolls but after a long day of yard work, grill assembly and house cleaning plus being emotionally spent i ended up hanging with the new kitty instead of venturing out into the night, shit i think i might be getting old.
az – holeeee parasites, azahar? who knew? suspect that orphaned possums are pretty common since they are the number one roadkill in many parts of the US…
manuel – tis a classic! i liked “groundhog day” better…
kono – not old, just gently ripening… clearly you needed something other than the thrash pit tonight. your story of Pablo gave me extra patience as Mr. Pickles, my large brown canine life partner, once again spent the morning painting my floors bile yellow (sigh).
Sorry to hear Mr. Pickles is sick again. I’ve been there a few times myself, and it’s not fun or cheap. Hope he gets better soon.
silverstar – better. we’ve pinned this down (probably) to some bad dog treats. fingers crossed that we’ve fixed the problem. the floors, his tummy and my nerves can’t take much more!
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