Peace Out, Peter

Despite my often ill-contained disgust at the content in The New York Times, I still read it occasionally, cherry-picking the articles that are of interest to me. There aren't many. But there was an awesome one this week entitled Peter Rabbit Must Die.

If you have a few minutes, go read it now. It's highly amusing. Unless you're an animal rights activist, in which case it will probably piss you off. But it is five pages long, so if you're feeling too lazy to read the whole thing, allow me to summarize: Many gardeners eventually become so fed up with the animals eating their gardens that the gardeners kill the animals in a variety of ways. Of course, my first reaction to this was "No shit. You're just now picking up on this?" But it's the tone of the article that I find so amusing. This is The New York Times, after all, arguably the most pretentious and egotistical paper in the country.

Their demographic is the citizens of New York City. I may be generalizing here, but I don't think those good people have had a lot of experience with marauding raccoons that may drive you to murder. So The NYT has to be careful how they present an article on exterminating bunny rabbits. The article mostly pussy-footed around the issue, focusing more on the killing of woodchucks and snakes, presumably animals that people won't get so worked up about.

But still, the article describes some pretty brutal executions. One lady smashed a porcupine's head in with a sledgehammer. Another describes her mother going after woodchucks with a shovel. Still another lady shoots (non-poisonous) snakes routinely.

I have never done any of these things, and frankly, I'm not sure I could. I don't have any moral objection to killing animals that are eating your food (although one dude was killing raccoons that ate his water lilies. Lame.), the law of the jungle, yada yada yada. But bludgeoning a woodchuck with a shovel might be just a leetle disturbing to me. I'm still a soft-hearted sissy in many ways.

I prefer to let my hitdogs do the exterminating. That's why I keep them in kibble--they do my dirty work.