Deerly departed

By now, the it's no secret that the heartless Neanderthals in Johnson County are planning a Kristallnacht-like purge of cute, harmless deer from 1300-acre Shawnee Mission Park.

According to the KC Star's coverage last week:

The park and recreation board agreed unanimously late Wednesday with a staff recommendation to use the lethal option to reduce the herd from about 200 deer per square mile to 50 — a 75 percent reduction.

Yikes. The "lethal option" includes the wholesale slaughter of deer by sharpshooters armed with rifles and bows (and not the kind you tie in you hair, ladies).

Now I'm not PETA lover. Believe me, I love the taste of barbecued baby seal just as much as the next guy. But going in to kill of hundreds of deer just because they aren't paying their parks and rec fees seems a little brutish.

I get that we can't have an overpopulation of deer running around biting people and spreading deer ticks. And yes, the deer are kind of assholes for standing in front of on-coming traffic, causing so much damage to cars and area motorists.

But it seems to me that as usual Man is trying to solve a Nature problem in just the wrong way. Sure, we go in and slaughter a thousand deer or so. Maybe we have a big cookout, light a bonfire and dance around it like heathens to celebrate the hunt.

And we all know that those horny bucks can't control themselves. So what happens in a couple of years when the randy little breeders have become overpopulated again? Another orgy of blood lust?

C'mon people, haven't we evolved beyond this kind of thing? Don't we have a better appreciation for the natural order.

So here's what I suggest.

Everyone knows that Nature always seeks equilibrium. In the case of the Shawnee Mission Park deer herd, if people weren't here to begin with, the herd would be naturally culled by natural predators.

So instead of killing the deer directly, we need to instead reintroduce the deer's natural predators that we have driven out in our shortsighted development of the natural prairie.

As you all know, deer have a number of natural enemies including Gray wolves, cougars, alligators, jaguars, bobcats, Canadian lynxes, bears and packs of coyotes.

All of us life-long Kansans remember hearing the great stories from the pioneer days when alligators roamed the wide prairie, the wind whistling through their noble scales as they surveyed the tall grasses for signs of the evening's dinner.

Well it should be that way again. What right do we as humans have to decide which of nature's wonders should thrive? As responsible stewards of our land, we are responsible for allowing nature to take it's course.

Guns and arrows are not a part of the natural answer to this question.

tagged: Kansas, wildlife, Shawnee Mission Park, deer, herd, slaughter, PETA, alligator