Listen up. A neighbor told me that, yesterday, she and her husband and her daughter were walking around the block with the daughter's Pomeranians, and that a couple of you guys trailed them at a not-so-inconspicuous distance.
Are you nuts? You need to focus on the rabbits! How many times do I have to tell you this? True, if you eat an occasional cat or small dog, that's a price I'm willing to pay for a big reduction in the rabbit population. But stop being cocky and acting like you can just waltz up to some lady in broad daylight and make off with her dogs. Otherwise, the neighbors are going to get all up in arms and demand a relocation program. Which would mean - BOOM! - an explosion in the rabbit population, and a wholesale attack on my vegetables and flowers.
I think I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again because I'm old and I repeat myself a lot.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was twelve, our county put a bounty on coyotes who had been attacking the local ranchers' calves and sheep (and dogs). It was so successful, that the following year the county was overrun with a massive horde of rats. Our dog was killing six of seven of them in our front yard every night. My father said he witnessed waves of them running over the roads at night.
It's not nice to mess with Mother Nature.
Here in SE Washington, Rebecca, it was a plague of cats, not rats. Feral cats, I must add, created by idiots dumping litters of kittens in nearby fields. And other idiots putting food out for them. They were EVERYWHERE, killing snakes and other critters useful to the ecology.
ReplyDeleteThe other difference was that the coyote population had already been reduced well before that. And returned because they had a new food source … feral cats, of course.
Matters stabilized after that.
Back to Paco’s dilemma …..
ReplyDeleteMaybe you could offer a bounty on the rabbits? Say, 1 road runner for every 5 rabbit?
Of course, there are problems with coyotes hunting rabbits, y’know.
Rats, bad link!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEUuZ_UzBQw
Is there no one in NC that eats rabbits? Just eat them before they eat your veggies.
ReplyDeleteBack in the late Seventies/early Eighties somebody in Defense procurement must have cornered the rabbit market. Not kidding, fried rabbit was on the menu in the messes at least once a week. It was for maybe under a year and I don't think I've seen it since (at least up to 2015 when I shook the dust from my sandals and left).
ReplyDeleteDunno what happened. Maybe Congress pulled the plug on the National Strategic Rabbit Reserve and it was all released to DoD.
My father said he witnessed waves of them running over the roads at night.
ReplyDeleteProbably looking for a good New-York-style deli.
Yeah, people don't really appreciate the idea of "actions have consequences". So, we have people who put out multiple bird feeders, and then profess themselves amazed at the profusion of squirrels, rats, rabbits and deer (birds are slobs; they kick the seeds everywhere). Don't get me wrong; I like birds, and have no objection to feeders, per se, but, you know, we mostly just have mockingbirds and brown thrashers - some of the most obnoxious specimens in the bird kingdom - and they can feed themselves.
And then there are the people who HATE ALL SNAKES (even though they do a great job gobbling up the rats and mice).
No doubt some of the Yankee transplants here will be pushing the county government to offer bounties for coyotes before too long (some counties in NC already have such a program in place). When that happens, I guess I will have to start catching and eating the rabbits, myself (fried sounds fine).
Maybe you could open a fried rabbit roadside stand or food truck.
DeleteJust make sure the PETA sympathizers among your neighbors don't find out you're eating the little bunnies.
ReplyDelete