DeSoto County Beavers – Worth A Dam

Remember the county of Desoto in Mississipp i? Ten days after they were added to the FEMA list of natural disasters due to draught they announced a plan to encourage residents to trap beaver by paying 10 dollars a tail. Nice. Of course they got letters from Worth A Dam and Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife and probably a few from local animal lovers. It wasn’t great timing. The irrationality of the process might have slowed down their ruthlessness for a nanosecond. But now they’re back in business:

See now we HAVE to kill them because they’re rabid granny chewers and we value our senior citizens here in Desoto county. Should we let our children be chased? Do you want your daughter or mother attacked? Now we’ll just have to sort through the thousands of applications from Bubba or Scooter and pick the best trapper for the job. See instead of average people killing beavers in their spare time, we’ll use professionals who do it right! And if you’re wondering what the difference in qualifications is between professional trappers and average folk, that’s easy. The trappers have a truck with their name on it. Like “Crit er done” or “Coon Kiler” or the city slicker “Catch yer fancy”. It will be hard to choose among all the applications because the unemployment is so high that even Nellie from down the street wants the work but that just means we’ll probably save money in the long run.

I despair for DeSoto. And seriously listen to that newscaster. Alligators? Can you honestly not think of any way that might present a problem down the road?

The county board of administrators in DeSoto Mississippi are mighty worried and face a gnawing problem. Mind you – they’re not worried about the worst drought conditions the state has seen in any time during any growing season EVER. Or about the fact that this declared drought has been named a national disaster by the federal government making it eligible for FEMA. They’re not worried that besides DeSoto it affects 1000 counties and 26 states. Who’s counting? The elected officials at the top of Mississippi have more pressing things on their minds.

BEAVERS!

So just this week they sat down to discuss the problem and consider re-instituting the tail bounty that had been so popular in years past.

“There are people out there who’d like to do it,” DRCUA board member Barry Bridgforth said of collecting a fee for beaver tails. “We’re not trying to eradicate the beaver population but control it because they’re rampant in DeSoto County. If there’s a sizable body of water, they’re in there.“

See we’ll pay folks to kill beavers and at the same time take money from the federal government for drought conditions, because hand outs are only a problem when they go to THOSE people. What other choice do we possibly have?

Bridgforth pointed to a pond on the property of fellow board member Joe Frank Lauderdale: “He’s only got one tree left on his island in the pond. The beavers got rid of all his ornamentals.”

All the ornamentals! How much can one man suffer? He obviously has no choice. Certainly you can’t expect them to wrap the trees they want to protect with wire or paint them with sand. That would be barbaric! Much better to pay 10 dollars a tail and let folks kill themselves some pocket money. Times are tough. And beavers are cluttering up our creeks.You know the REALLY annoying thing they do in our creeks? They pile up all this mud and sticks and back up the water in these little stagnant ponds. They do it all over and all the time and in every stream they find! Sometimes they clutter up the creek with ponds so much we can hardly show the USDA officers how bad our drought is. We better get rid of them right away.

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I’ll tell you what. Maybe its a naming problem. Let’s not call them beavers let’s call then ‘water-savers’. See these little guys hunt down any remaining trickles you have left and hoard them into pools. They dig holes and build dams and pile mud and raise the water table so that you miserable wells have a little more water, and the hyporheic exchange through the banks cools your water temperatures so that a few of your remaining fish don’t get baked. And the deer drink from them and the turtles and frogs retreat to them, and waterbirds hang out on the banks so they have something to eat. And when this pondwater comes out on the other side of the dam its actually cleaner! Because the dam has filtered it! Oh and what price do these water-keepers charge to do this labor, live on sight, train the new workforce and make repairs onsight 24/7?

Nothing, They work for free.

But thanks to the county board of supervisors in DeSoto you can now get $10 a tail for killing them. Sweet.