Not all animal-lovers are liberals, though :)

The response of an animal-lover type person may not always be totally rational, but in this case I do wonder if there is something else Parks&Rec could try first, because Norma Campbell is correct; there will always be more squirrels, and people will always feed them.

Leo, I like your writing. You're clever and make your point subtly... it's a nice respite from Noonan's writing. (Although I have to say your links aren't so coherent in supporting your point.)

But of course, you're making a superfluous argument - and one that betrays typical conservative voters. Plenty of people from all political stripes enjoy your "squirrel nature." Are the people who feed the ducks all your strawman liberal?

You could have tried a lot harder to make a coherent connection between a long-tailed rodent and a motivated human being.

Squirrel - Box-trap! he he he!

Terrorist - dead-fall! Snare! spring-pole and dozens of other ways to capture terrorists!!

Jeremiah

I am a hard-core animal lover. I feed several geriatric horses because they are still happy and healthy, though not "useful", and they cost me a bundle but I don't put them down just because they are inconvenient. I have dogs and cats, rescues for the most part, and am very passionate about humane treatment of animals.

And I am researching ways to kill off several hundred, if not thousand, prairie dogs. As humanely and painlessly as possible, but dead is the goal. They carry disease, particularly plague----a cat not too many miles from our ranch had plague this summer. As is in Bubonic Plague, Black Death, very serious stuff. Their holes endanger my horses and cows. They destroy my land, making it infertile.

In nature, the population has historically been controlled by disease and famine---when the population reaches a tipping point in density, the animals die off from hunger or some disease, neither particularly painless or quick.

If I had any other rodent endangering me, or my family or community, I would not hesitate to make sure it was eliminated.

I allow a few people to hunt elk on my property, making sure that they are skilled and ethical hunters, capable of clean kills and dedicated enough to track any wounded animal if that were to happen. I'd rather see a fat, happy, elk drop dead instantaneously than to see it gradually starve, suffering all the while, till it is so weak it is easy prey for a predator which will bring it down, in terror, and tear it apart while it is still alive.

Pragmatism is not the same as indifference to animal suffering. I've seen too many animals suffering needlessly because the owners could not bring themselves to end the suffering, and I've seen too many wild animals starving, or hit by cars, because they are too overpopulated for their territories. Too much of what passes for compassion is really either laziness or cowardice.

Last year I trapped and relocated 10 raccoons. I was careful to turn them loose near weekend and summer homes of people who think they are darling, and who would enjoy seeing Rocky eating the dog food on the deck. All were released near running water, early in the summer so they had time to establish territories and make new homes. Trapping squirrels would not be too hard, if one could get around the goofball bleeding heart animal "lovers".