Spokane parks to detonate squirrels

I love the part where they say the explosions collapse their tunnels and kill them....but in a humane way. God forbid we have some ground squirrels. I mean, we really should kill them all if they get in our way of walking.

I like squirrels. I know they are rodents but still---eek!

I watched the vid---with the exterminators---all that was missing was redstripe beer and belly scratching.

sabertoothed gopher?

joyce said:

I love the part where they say the explosions collapse their tunnels and kill them....but in a humane way. God forbid we have some ground squirrels. I mean, we really should kill them all if they get in our way of walking.

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Being buried alive is humane?

Does it work on #$&%$*&$#* moles?

I would be surprised if that method is legal under animal cruelty laws.

Wasn't Spokane the same city that tried detonating a dead whale back in the 70's? That didn't go very well.
*Googles*
My bad. It was Oregon.

I'm envisioning it going about as well as the whale detonation and ending up with them blowing each other up while the ground squirrels laugh...

Devil Ledbetter said:

Being buried alive is humane?

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Trust me, I was being quite sarcastic. I love squirrels and have a whole community that waits for me at my back door to feed them. I've got the fattest squirrels in Florida. I think we should put the exterminators in a ground tunnel and put explosives in there and blow it up. This would test how humane it really is.

I don't understand why we simply accept that this planet is ours. They live here too, people need to understand what we're losing when we kill animals for no reason or a stupid one.

Wayne K said:

I don't understand why we simply accept that this planet is ours. They live here too, people need to understand what we're losing when we kill animals for no reason or a stupid one.

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I so agree with you. It just makes me go crazy when I hear about the senseless killing of animals and we humans think it won't affect us in the long run. My signature line speaks my feelings exactly.

This is mental.

Blowing up squirrels? Are they really that annoying? I know some animals drive me nuts from time to time, but it doesn't make me want to blow them up. Not often anyway.

But I may just be ignorant as we don't have squirrels here. We do have the Easter bunny shoot every year though! 48 hours of men with guns crawling over paddocks shooting bunnies. The most killed wins. But there is a reason - overpopulation destroys the paddocks and causes sheep and cows to break their legs in rabbit holes.

Anyone broken a leg because of a squirrel?

It does conjur up images of the Holy Hand grenade.

I'm just curious. Termites are animals. How about senseless killing of them when they set up shop in the walls of our house? And ants. Shall we give them the run of our pantry? Tomato worms like to eat our tomato crops. Let them?

Where do we draw the line of what is senseless killing and what isn't? If they are cute and furry they get the grand pass? We kill for food. We kill to help grow our food. We kill for health reasons. We kill because some animals threaten to ruin our possessions. We kill because some animals annoy us. We kill so we can enjoy recreational areas. We kill for sport.

But if they iz cyoote an furrie, how dare we?

We kill a whole lot of plants, too.

[just trying to make people think a little]

NeuroFizz said:

I'm just curious. Termites are animals. How about senseless killing of them when they set up shop in the walls of our house? And ants. Shall we give them the run of our pantry? Tomato worms like to eat our tomato crops. Let them?

Where do we draw the line of what is senseless killing and what isn't? If they are cute and furry they get the grand pass? We kill for food. We kill to help grow our food. We kill for health reasons. We kill because some animals threaten to ruin our possessions. We kill because some animals annoy us. We kill so we can enjoy recreational areas. We kill for sport.

But if they iz cyoote an furrie, how dare we?

[just trying to make people think a little]

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I'm thinking that's a lot of killing.

Wayne K said:

I'm thinking that's a lot of killing.

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I come from a family that's a long, long, long line of hunters......hunters for food, not for the sport of killing. Everything (including those wood hoarding termites) have some sort of reason for being here. Sure, if a rabid raccoon shows up at my backdoor spewing gook all over my patio furniture, I'm going to want the thing dead. Heck, if my hubby showed up at the backdoor spewing gook all over the patio furniture....well, that's another subject. I just feel that there's a way both animals and humans can work this thing of living together, out some better way. Sure, I'm smarter than a frog.....at least I think so....but, that frog still has a right to live here.

The only predators my part of the country has to deal with is bobcats, alligators, mosquitoes and no-seeums. I'm thrilled to see a bobcat is still able to survive in our area, where concrete outnumbers dirt. I'm sorry the neighbors cat was eaten, but what in the hell was it doing outside all night with a bobcat around? Alligators, well I love them. Most people who get attacked by alligators are being just stupid. If they'd had a brain, they'd never allowed themselves to be put in the situation in the first place. The alligator always looses. These are only my humble opinions.

There is a long philisophical and psychological tradition of drawing the line--rather self-evidently--at animals with a conscious experience of pain, that being most birds and mammals, and some cephalopods.

Wayne K said:

I don't understand why we simply accept that this planet is ours. They live here too, people need to understand what we're losing when we kill animals for no reason or a stupid one.

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And never mind that in most cases, the other animals were here first...

ETA - And hello? They're claiming one of the biggest problems is the "tunnels collapsing" yet what are they planning to do? Collapse the tunnels. That makes sense like all get out. :eyeroll:

The squirrels dig tunnels and holes that people can trip on or fall into, the agency said. They eat new tree roots, can spread disease and are spreading to neighboring yards.

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The shock waves kill the squirrels

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I wonder if relocating the squirrels is an option that has been explored.

Part of the problem is that we have eliminated their natural predators. Everything has gotten out of whack with our disrupting the natural food webs of ecosystems.

If an animal enters my property while my Siberian Husky is outside--be it cat, squirrel, opossum, raccoon, bird, rat, what have you--she kills it.

The inhumane bitch. Oh, wait...

Beach Bunny said:

I wonder if relocating the squirrels is an option that has been explored..

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Only if they testify in open court.

veinglory said:

There is a long philisophical and psychological tradition of drawing the line--rather self-evidently--at animals with a conscious experience of pain, that being most birds and mammals, and some cephalopods.

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I understand this argument. The "lesser" animals don't have a conscious experience of pain as we know it. Yet, they all have noniceptors (sensory cells that response to injurious stimuli), and these cells are all wired into neural circuits that produce behavioral responses of struggle, escape, defence, or other activities that are designed to minimize body damage and maximize either agressive responses or escape, in other words, to promote survival of the individual. Tissue damage in these animals is just as severe and reactive as in humans, we just don't think they have the same sense of agony. For this reason, I think the distinction of conscious experience of pain is just an argument of convenience for us, but of little biological substance other than that. And there is research on animal consciousness in sub-mammalian, even sub-vertebrate animals other than cephalopods.

I think is it a really but graded difference. I am confident an amoeba does have enough 'selfhood' to feel pain, and that for most insects it is negligible and all carrots it is nil.

The differences may be be 100% clear cut but they are meaningful.

veinglory said:

I think is it a really but graded difference. I am confident an amoeba does have enough 'selfhood' to feel pain, and that for most insects it is negligible and all carrots it is nil.

The differences may be be 100% clear cut but they are meaningful.

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It really is an interesting area of current research in which the biological work is going to have a major impact on the psychological and philosophical research/ideals (if the different areas pay attention to one another--not always a given). And insects are turning out to be one of the more neurobiologically sophisticated animal groups. Their sensory capabilities are incredible from a physical standpoint, but also from a neural processing one.

I say the squirl exterminators can kill the squirls if they will also eat them.

NO A-1 sauce or Ketchup (aka Catsup) OR giving them to your cat for supper. There is an epidemic of fat cats in America!

NeuroFizz said:

It really is an interesting area of current research in which the biological work is going to have a major impact on the psychological and philosophical research/ideals (if the different areas pay attention to one another--not always a given). And insects are turning out to be one of the more neurobiologically sophisticated animal groups. Their sensory capabilities are incredible from a physical standpoint, but also from a neural processing one.

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I'm not sure that this is a good thing from an ecological standpoint. We're already having problems with people anthropomorphising animals and disregarding the delicate balance of the food chain. In nature, the cute little bunnies get eaten by the wolves. Get rid of the wolves so they don't eat the cute little bunnies and the cute little bunny population explodes. Then the not so cute anymore bunnies get into farmer's crops and cause other kinds of environmental damage. It's all about balance and maintaining that balance, not upsetting it. And respecting where each species fits in the ecosystem.