Remember the county of Desoto in Mississippi? 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?
