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As usual, the best take on news I'm interested in is delivered by The Onion:
After nearly being driven to extinction 50 years ago, the gray wolf has been removed from the endangered list and can be hunted again. What do you think?
"Well, I was just going to build a taller fence to protect my sheep, but if the government says I can shoot them, I guess I should."
In Pest Control, they call that a "cultural control," or preventing the pest problem from happening in the first place. Anyway, I think they should let the gray wolf spread into the areas that it's been extirpated from before taking it off the endangered list. We haven't had wolves in New England in about 400 years, and it shows in our deer overpopulation problem. Everyone in the northeast suburban sprawl should be happy to have wolves in their back yards! Don't leave the cat out, and probably you should go out with junior, especially around dusk.
On the other side of the coin, a father and son inventor team has developed a new weird pest control product. They're calling it (in the headline) a "humane" rat trap. It uses valerian and other ingredients to make rats fall asleep. What the hell you are supposed to do with unconscious rats is another question (along with "how long will they stay asleep?"). It makes me think of the Adam West Batman tv show, where the Joker would use sleeping gas to knock out Batman and Robin, and then put them in a death trap so that they wake up in a giant hourglass or something with their utility belts still on. If the goal is to kill them, KILL THEM. So it is with rats. I suppose an unconscious rat will be easier to humanely euthanize than one that's thrashing about in a "have a heart" trap, its jaws bloody from hours of having tried to chew its way out.
The article comes with a smiling endorsement from PETA, an organization famous for Passionate Objections, but lacking on Reasonable Alternatives. They do not make any guesses about what a homeowner (or, heaven help us, a farmer) should or could do with unconscious rats. They mention the happy family life of a rat, which will surely be disrupted by translocating the sleepy fellow; not to mention that in most places that's illegal, and serves only to create a rat problem elsewhere--imagine if it was a pregnant female! They emphasize that there are humane alternatives to killing rats, without specifying them. Storing all edible substances in rat-proof containers is the first one I can think of. "Edible substances" means "everything except steel and glass." "Rat proof" means "made of steel or glass". There are intermediary steps, such as various kinds of exclusion work, but these only work if you are also killing rats.
Comments pointing out my hypocrisy are most welcome.
After nearly being driven to extinction 50 years ago, the gray wolf has been removed from the endangered list and can be hunted again. What do you think?
"Well, I was just going to build a taller fence to protect my sheep, but if the government says I can shoot them, I guess I should."
In Pest Control, they call that a "cultural control," or preventing the pest problem from happening in the first place. Anyway, I think they should let the gray wolf spread into the areas that it's been extirpated from before taking it off the endangered list. We haven't had wolves in New England in about 400 years, and it shows in our deer overpopulation problem. Everyone in the northeast suburban sprawl should be happy to have wolves in their back yards! Don't leave the cat out, and probably you should go out with junior, especially around dusk.
On the other side of the coin, a father and son inventor team has developed a new weird pest control product. They're calling it (in the headline) a "humane" rat trap. It uses valerian and other ingredients to make rats fall asleep. What the hell you are supposed to do with unconscious rats is another question (along with "how long will they stay asleep?"). It makes me think of the Adam West Batman tv show, where the Joker would use sleeping gas to knock out Batman and Robin, and then put them in a death trap so that they wake up in a giant hourglass or something with their utility belts still on. If the goal is to kill them, KILL THEM. So it is with rats. I suppose an unconscious rat will be easier to humanely euthanize than one that's thrashing about in a "have a heart" trap, its jaws bloody from hours of having tried to chew its way out.
The article comes with a smiling endorsement from PETA, an organization famous for Passionate Objections, but lacking on Reasonable Alternatives. They do not make any guesses about what a homeowner (or, heaven help us, a farmer) should or could do with unconscious rats. They mention the happy family life of a rat, which will surely be disrupted by translocating the sleepy fellow; not to mention that in most places that's illegal, and serves only to create a rat problem elsewhere--imagine if it was a pregnant female! They emphasize that there are humane alternatives to killing rats, without specifying them. Storing all edible substances in rat-proof containers is the first one I can think of. "Edible substances" means "everything except steel and glass." "Rat proof" means "made of steel or glass". There are intermediary steps, such as various kinds of exclusion work, but these only work if you are also killing rats.
Comments pointing out my hypocrisy are most welcome.
