North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

Sherwin, pellet guns illegal in your village?- wow, that's the most extreme
form of gun control I know of, but then NYS doesn't allow me to have them
shipped, but I always figured that was thanks to the gun seller lobby.  I
wrote that the pellets were for coons not squirrels- best to drown
squirrels.

As far as info on the affects of relocation, I can't be bothered to google
it to make my point, it is something I've read on numerous occasions, but
people who think killing animals is a cruel business are going to do what
they are going to do.

I used to relocate coons and possums myself, probably because I suffer when
killing them, not because the animals suffer.  One year when relocating the
30th raccoon of the season it occurred to me that the populations of vermin
around humans is out of whack- we destroy the predators and feed the prey.

People have bird feeders that dispense the majority of the food to rodents,
even if they can't get up to the feeder because birds eat very
inefficiently from a seed mix and most seeds end up on the ground.  Even a
test winter and failed mast crop won't reduce populations that have
unlimited access to food supplied by humans.

I accidentally wrote previously that I try to be less cruel than mother and
forgot to insert nature after.  It would be very hard to be less cruel than
my own mother.