I Can’t Really Think Of A Way….

….To make this story funny. I have the running joke around here about the animal uprising and have a lot of fun mangling news stories to fit into that series. People seems to enjoy the stories, too, judging by comments and emails. So I thought that this story would fit right in when I saw the headline: "Raccoons invade California enclave". I mean that sounds like a headline I can work with, right? Wrong. Because the story shows that there are people in positions of authority in Los Angeles that have the most serious case of rectal-cranial inversion I have ever heard of.

The reasoning appears to be thus: if packs of vicious raccoons invade your neighbor and are literally attacking and killing your pets and generally savaging the area, it's the resident's own fault and they need to learn to get along with the ferocious beasts. Just so the humans will learn to be better humans. Or something to that ludicrous effect.

LOS ANGELES – One balmy summer night, Larna Hartnack awoke to the cries of her dog Charlie and, to her horror, found the Dalmatian in a battle for her life — pinned by a gang of raccoons that tore into her flesh and nearly gnawed off her tail.

Charlie survived. But recurring raccoon attacks on dogs and other creatures have unnerved people along the Venice Canals, a funky, well-to-do beach neighborhood packed with ardent dog lovers, many of whom are now afraid to walk their pets at night or leave them alone in the back yard.

Communities around the country are plagued by destructive or aggressive raccoons, and many of them routinely trap, remove and even kill the animals. But this being California, the city's animal-control agency is instead urging people to try to get along with the raccoons — a notion that strikes some as political correctness gone wild.

"What we're trying to inculcate in the L.A. community is a reverence for life. If we have more reverence for life, it translates into all our programs — for women and infants, the elderly and everybody in our community," said Ed Boks, the head of Los Angeles Animal Services.

"As we develop these programs that demonstrate our compassion for creatures completely at our mercy, it makes for a more compassionate society all the way around."

Just so you're clear on this: you as a human have inferior rights to those of the animals that are attacking and killing your pets. It will teach you to be a better human after enough of your pets are torn to shreds, don't you know? It is social engineering theory gone completely, and I mean completely, over the edge of sanity. And it actually gets worse, because you, as a victim, have brought this all on yourself:

The animal-control agency sees people as part of the problem: They are tempting raccoons by leaving dog food and trash bags unguarded.

"If you live in a high-crime area and don't put bars on your windows and you've had break-ins before, you're asking for it," said Gregory Randall, a wildlife specialist with the agency. "Our goal here is coexistence and making the alterations you need to make."

Now tell me exactly how that reasoning is one bit different than the Australian mufti who compared women to uncovered meat? He said that if women were not covered well enough with clothing, they deserved to be gang raped. In Randall's world, if the raccoons are killing your pets or attacking and destroying your home or landscaping , you asked for it. Oh, and make sure you fortify your home and remove any landscaping the raccoons might like:

He advised residents to try to keep raccoons out of their homes by getting rid of trellises and bougainvillea, closing cat doors and locking up kibble. Strobe lights, motion-activated sprinklers and talk radio can scare off the animals.

Venice Canals, a community of 400 homes, is the kind of place where nearby shopkeepers greet customers and their dogs by name and often have a bowl of water or dog biscuits on hand. One resident turned part of his property into a dog park.

Dogs have not been the only victims of the raccoons. They have chomped on ducks, a parrot and the legs of a turtle that they dug out of hibernation. Nadine Parkos, former president of the Venice Canals homeowners association, said the koi fish in her pond were massacred.

Personally, I'm in favor of immediately relocating the raccoons. Right to the offices of the Los Angeles Animal Services. They, after all, have a reverence for live and are asking for it.