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Mid-Night goes varmit hunting for prairie dogs

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Contributed by: Francis Miller on 8/3/2006

Dear Tabitha:

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the extermination of prairie dogs using genocide techniques such as injecting propane gas into their burrows and exploding them. Now, being a kat, you can imagine that I don't have much affinity for dogs, but given the extreme nature of the situation and its potential for spilling over to kats, I felt I had to weigh in on the matter.

Dispensing with emotional, crazed arguments, I decided to consult the experts. Each year the International Varmit Hunter's Association holds their annual convention in Pierre, South Dakota. While Fran was at the family reunion, I took the Greyhound (another daw-gone dog, don't you know?) to Pierre and attended the convention.

Now, these varmit hunters use tricked up .223 caliber weapons that are the same as military M-16s, except they have scopes. These guys spend a lot of money and take pride in their ability to kill a prairie dog, coyote, or other dawg related varmit at between 600 and 1,000 yards. You don't want to get in their cross-hairs, that is for sure.

Personally, I think that whether a prairie dawg's burrow is blown up using propane or whether his head is blown off by a rifle is drawing a distinction without a difference. They may think it humane, but somehow the humaneness of it gets lost in translation.

What is at stake here is whether humans will continue to devalue life, that is God's creatures, by putting them on a hierarchy of good and bad. If by doing so, the human is given license to kill the bad, then how can you argue rationally? Everything below the line gets blown to smithereens by some ego-maniac who derives some sense of personal power by killing a poor defenseless creature. That prairie dogs are next to worthless is besides the point. You could argue the same thing for all but Black Angus cattle and filet mignons. Some people despise fish, birds, cats, bugs, insects. The list goes on and cannot be reconciled because there is always some guy with a weapon who wants to personally kill Bambi.

Now, when Fran read this, he agreed whole-heartedly. He hunted and fished as a young man and it was not until he spent 7 years on the Board of Colorado Outward Bound School that he adopted an environmentalist "no-impact" ethic. That ethic is to leave as small a foot print on the Earth as possible and try to further life rather than destroy it.

Now, here is where Fran and I part company. He finds it hard to kill a living thing. But, I can snuff out a bird, kill a snake, eat a mouse, or kick the living bejesus out of Benji without any problem. The other kats, Sarah, Buckii, and Wigge all agree that this ethic only applies to humans and not kats. How boring would the world be if we could not play cat and mouse? But, we don't use rifles or propane and our hunting is conducted on a level playing field, instead of through the cross-hairs of a scope.

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Submitted By: Joe McDaniel

posted on 8/8/2006 @ 10:22:04 AM

(Not Rated)

Will the reader who rated this story a 1 please summon up the courage to tell us why. Enquiring minds need to know. Try to use facts and avoid personal attacks.

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Francis Miller

Parker , CO

Francis Miller has posted 699 stories and 9 comments since joining on 11/17/2005. Francis Miller's average story rating is 4.19.

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