I switched to Delta Cable during a break in the recent Alabama-LSU national championship football game and caught Delta council and senior staff in a very serious, hourlong discussion about the rabbit peril.
Council was in supreme gravitas mode as it considered spending $60,000 of taxpayers' money to capture, neuter and relocate these loveable herbivores to a more remote part of Ladner. It was harelarious; you don't get entertainment like that on commercial TV.
To my dismay and envy, Jessica Kerr got three-quarters of the Optimist's front page to chronicle every hip and hop of the council deliberations, including a large photo showing three of the cute, floppy-eared miscreants caught in the act of munching on municipal grass.
Now $60,000 is a fair chunk of change. It could buy, for instance, a low-emission Cadillac Escalade SUV for the secondary suites inspectors to drive around in or a half dozen first class return airplane tickets to Sweden for Coun. Scott Hamilton.
Delta estimates there are 500 rabbits to be dealt with, so we are spending $120 per rabbit - enough to feed a family for a few days.
Now this will date me, as most things do these days, but when I was a kid we used to go out on Saturday mornings in winter on frozen fields north of Toronto and shoot a rabbit or two, take it home and eat it.
I mentioned this to a friend while walking on the dike and he said that in his youth in Exeter, England, people routinely snared rabbits and made rabbit stew. On the basis of my experience, this was likely the best food in England if it weren't cooked to death and served with rubbery eggs and cold beans.
But I digress: The point is that many people walking around Delta have eaten rabbits and survived. So let me set out the dots for the readership to connect.
The Corporation of Delta is plagued by hundreds of contented, plump, and likely delicious, rabbits. Delta has a food bank indicating that some people need food.
Delta is not only home to the Delta Ladner Rod and Gun Club, but the Corporation of Delta has more than 100 armed people in its employ. Need I elaborate?
For substantially less than $120 per rabbit to feed to coyotes and eagles, you could put the rod and gun club and food bank together and feed the rabbits to hungry people while simultaneously eliminating the rabbit peril.
But a bureaucrat doesn't shoot a rabbit and eat it. She requires an animal to be neutered, registered and issued with a tag. The owner is also registered, and then taxed $25 for the animal registration fee. The registration fees are pooled to hire another bureaucrat to manage the program. To manage the program the bureaucrats require a low emission SUV. Think about this while looking at your last tax bill.
I just glanced at the photo of those rabbits again. They're so cute.
