There is a lot going on in New York. An influx of illegal immigrants is straining the capital city. Only 30 percent of residents are happy with the quality of life the Big Apple currently affords them. Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden, which for some reason reminded people that the venue previously hosted Adolf Hitler as well as some WNBA games. Finally, a man and his wife in a rural part of the state had the temerity to adopt and raise an orphaned squirrel.
Naturally, that last one is what really got the bureaucrats fired up, going to judges and agency heads to warn that the state is headed toward a disaster of biblical proportions. As such, they did what responsible bureaucrats do, namely raiding the home of Mark and Daniela Longo, seizing Peanut the squirrel, as well as Fred the raccoon, and then murdering the adorable critters.
While the response to this insanely ridiculous sequence of events has been swift and brutal toward the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, the outrage will not bring back little Peanut or medium-sized Fred. Their flames have forever been extinguished. In a just world, the perpetrators of this offense would lose their livelihoods and reputations before being sent to live in the wilderness with nothing but the hope that the woodland creatures would take them in and care for them. Alas, they’re union members, so at most they’ll get a short paid leave from work.
Instead then, let Peanut and Fred’s tragic demise serve as a wakeup call to all sensible citizens of the United States, as a rallying cry to rein in the wild creatures running too many of our public agencies. Kids get shaken down for trying to sell lemonade. Parents face arrest for letting their kids walk to get a donut. I can’t shoot squirrels on my own property.
At this point, you may be asking why I would care about Peanut given that I have previously warred against his varmint relatives. Well, allow me to explain. Growing up, my little sister was something of a Doctor Dolittle. There were our dogs, the neighborhood dogs and cats, the ducks she got for Christmas, and the rabbits she spent some time breeding. She once found a woodpecker chick that had fallen from the nest and successfully fledged him.
She also successfully tamed the squirrels in our yard such that they would come down from the oak trees to eat from our hands, sometimes even crawling into our laps. Technically she only somewhat tamed them. If you spooked one while feeding it, he would wildly attack you with his tiny paws of fury. In other words, Peanut the Squirrel these were not, though their semi-domestication would also prove to be their downfall.
Our home was not raided by the authorities. We were spared that injustice, unlike the Longos. What ended the great squirrel-taming experiment were our dogs. Once the squirrels became docile about larger mammals getting close to them, they became easy pickings, and our dogs, as dogs are wont to do, dispatched with them. It was a tragedy, especially as my father is no George Costanza when it comes to injured wildlife.
Much like with Peanut, there is a difference between a beloved pet and the never-ending supply of interchangeable yard squirrels. There is also a difference between a man waging war in his backyard and having tyrannical nannies kicking down the door to wage a war he had no intention of starting.
This is the future we must fight against, one in which the state cannot attend to its basic functions but has time to harass citizens for opening their homes to woodland creatures. At this moment, we are all Peanut the Squirrel, facing a government that has forgotten who the boss is. But that doesn’t mean we can’t stand tall, grab ahold of our acorns, and say, “Sic semper tyrannis.”
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