Johnny, a licensed trapper, walks down a street in Scarborough with some of the tools of his trade. The tools he is carrying are for breaking up beaver damns and digging after animals.
That’s the ‘critter-getter’ Johnny walking away in Carlos Ososrio’s Toronto Star photo. Look at that manly trap-setting profile and the way the ‘traffic orange’ sets off his biceps. Johnny won’t show his face or give his last name to keep the ‘nutbars’ from finding him. (His word, not mine. It’s possible he means us.) The Star-ry-eyed reporter Carola Vyhnak, appears to have a mancrush of her very own. She describes the critter-getter with the awed, breathless language usually reserved for tales of French heroes rescuing Jews during the holocaust.
He is one of the most loathed people in southern Ontario. He’s been threatened with bodily harm and property damage. He works in secrecy and under cover of darkness.
and then goes on to say
But don’t jump to judge the tall, fit outdoorsman with more than 30 years of hunting, trapping and “dispatching” under his belt.
Is it just me or do you get the feeling that Carola is chewing on the end of her pencil speculating about something else that might be under Johnny’s belt? Well, there’s time for all that later. Right now there are trappers to extoll and beavers to kill! Hard working sportsmen driven to near-financial ruin by the crazy bunny-huggers and bleeding hearts. Like you.
It’s humans who are usually to blame when he has to pull the trigger, he says, touching tiny replicas of the tools of his trade — a rifle and leg hold trap hanging on thin gold chains around his neck.
Did you get that? While he’s flexing his manly frame for the cameraman he’s also stroking a tiny gold rifle and leg hold trap on a necklace just to show the interviewer, I suppose, that while Johnny knows how to handle the big game he can also use his fingers for more delicate operations — in case she was interested. Which apparently she was. (Are there really jewelry shops that sell gold leg hold traps? Should we add one to the keystone species charm bracelet?)
“Do I get joy out of going out and whacking animals? No. But the critters are going to keep coming and people are going to keep messing with them. It’s not the animal’s fault. But most times, the animal pays the price.”
He goes on to sagely opine that people ‘mess with them’ by unintentionally providing the three things animals need, food, water or shelter. Since it’s unlikely living humans will ever stop messing with them in this way, his career is made for life. Only one thing can keep this grimly reaping entrepreneur from earning his alimony and boat payments: the rising tide of public opinion. Just look at what happened to Massachusetts. The crazy PETA-fairies start calling their friends to outlaw trapping and now they have to catch beavers with a suitcase! Goodness knows there are no other ways to solve animal problems besides trapping. It’s not like any one else on the entire planet makes a successful career over animal exclusion or the installation of flow devices.
He fumes about two recent high-profile cases, one involving “Neville” the coyote that killed a small dog in the Beach last year, the other in Oshawa where a colony of beavers is causing a potential flooding problem. In both instances, he believes city officials should have let him “trap and dispatch them legally, quickly and humanely: problem solved.”
Ahh, the noble hero just trying to do his job to make the world safe for small dogs and subdivisions. Johnny has his work cut out for him. The animals are drawn to the wasteful humans and since animals are incapable of being discouraged by any other means his only tool is extermination. It’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it. It’s all he knows. (I really, really believe that.) These trappers try their best against impossible odds. (I just read that the mother of the beaver-saving teen in Comox Valley was contacted by a trapper who assured her that conibear traps are very humane. He knows they kill beavers instantly because otherwise their teeth would be worn down from chewing on the metal underwater, and did she perhaps want to come look at the beavers in his freezer? She foolishly declined but hmm…Add a vodka tonic to the invitation and maybe Carola would be interested?) Our hero Johnny is not worried about those animals. It’s the other animals that trouble him. The damn compassionISTAS who go around on two legs trying to find alternatives to trapping. These are the ones that must be eliminated.
Johnny grew up in a family that has trapped for generations. “It’s all I know. It’s what I am,” he says, Johnny, a licensed trapper, walks down a street in Scarborough with some of the tools of his trade. The tools he is carrying are for breaking up beaver damns and digging after animals.claiming a preference for “the big guys, the dangerous ones.” But he maintains he loves all creatures, especially coyotes — “the smartest animal in Ontario” — and can spend hours watching white-tailed deer.
There’s nothing I enjoy more than a good read about how much trappers love wildlife. Get me another cup of coffee so I can savor it again! Thanks for a lovely story and I think some where in Canada there’s a muddy reporter and a ink-stained trapper that should be leaning back and smoking a cigarette about now.
