Death To The Squirrells

CityBeat reports about L.A. County health officials' declared war on squirrels -- furry activists suspected of threatening Los Angeles with a new WMD: the plague. The thing is, "there has only been one case of the plague in California in the last 80 years", says the Humane Society.

Yet, Santa Monica has bowed to the pressure. In an effort to "protect its citizens", and in true western style, the city has "countracted bounty hunters to kill local squirrels, at a rate of $3,900 a week, in addition to $5.50 per dead squirrel", according to CityBeat. If you do the math, that's equivalent to a whopper $200k per year, plus the dead squirrel bonus. Talk about motivating the workforce. The City seems to have taken poor inspiration from a similar initiative in the U.K. [which went out of control and was soon regretted].

I sure hope that our famous People's Republic of Santa Monica takes further action against such mass decimation, and pressures officials to adopt more sensible measures to deal with our squirrelly friends. They may carry fleas, and taste our peaches and avocados before we've even got a chance to pick them, but they're part of our neighborhood -- and of L.A.'s ecology. [related]
photo Dano