Salvador Dali Spain 1936-38
A very to the point comment from today’s Comments section at the Automatic Earth by long term and highly appreciated commenter TAE Summary. Some of this stuff is just brilliant. If only I could be this concise.
As I mentioned early my town has a rat infestation problem and though some suggested rat traps the mayor (who owns a coyote pelt farm) decided to address this by introducing coyotes. This had some unforeseen consequences. The coyotes also ate peoples’ pets and chickens and were a danger to toddlers. The rats mutated to a strain that many coyotes wouldn’t eat (the so called Sigma Rats). Now there is a new problem: Coyotes kill other animals (like racoons) and the rats feed on the carcasses and their population explodes (this is known as Coyote Dependent Enhancement).
Many people with pets, chickens and toddlers distrust coyotes and fenced off their yards and started using rat traps. They claimed traps worked well but the mayor brought in an expert that claimed that traps don’t work as well as coyotes and that traps can be dangerous to the user so the city outlawed the sale of rat traps. The mayor’s expert also did a study that showed that 93% of the rats were now coming from fenced yards and that Sigma Rats were breeding and mutating there. In desperation some anti-coyotes started buying gopher traps and trying to use these to catch rats.
One woman injured her finger in a gopher trap. Her trip to the emergency room was front page news. People complained that news of their pets that were eaten were never covered by the paper. This was dismissed as an anti-coyote conspiracy theory. Pro-coyotes are saying those with fences don’t care about their neighbors, should be ostracized, lose their jobs and they are threatening to forcibly tear down all coyote proof fences in town. The mayor is consulting with the city lawyer to see if these things are legal.
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