Oh Rats!
By Carol
Fondiller
According to the weekly
newspaper The Argonaut, May 22, the Catellus Development company has devised a
plan for evicting long-term residents of a 45-acre site situated on a Playa del
Rey bluff.
The original plan was to poison the
long-term bluff residents with an anti-coagulant, which would cause the
residents to bleed to death, but would prevent the residents from invading the
surrounding homes.
Catellus Corporation
wants to eradicate the residents that have inhabited the bluffs for eons in
preparation to build 114 homes on the bluff. The development was about to
eradicate the residents by adding the killing agent to the soil when
Councilwoman Miscikowski ordered the developer to “re-evaluate” the
plan.
Several community organizations and
environmental groups had sprung into action to prevent this
holocaust.
The developers then
countered with the proposal of relocating the inhabitants to the Ballona
Wetlands.
The developers were treating them
like long-term tenants. Except these are not tenants, they are Rodents, rats,
vermin, who have lived on the marshes forever with the exception of the European
Rattus Whateverous, which the Europeans imported at great expense to the
Americas, and the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse and Gophers that are indigenous to
the Wetlands.
Environmentalists and
safety groups were concerned that the rodents–which are midway in the food
chain in the wetland ecosystem–if poisoned would kill off birds and other
animals who feed on the rodents, and could pollute the wetland
ecosystem.
The Diaspora of the rats to
the wetlands was frowned upon by environmental groups because it would upset the
delicate balance of the Ballona
Wetlands.
Some groups of the
conservation community see this as an opportunity to purchase the bluffs to
ensure the viability of the wetlands below the
bluffs.
Unfortunately, efforts to
dislodge developers from the bluffs so far have been futile, because they
won’t go, and as for using anti-coagulants on developers–well, it
just won’t work.
Developers
don’t bleed.
Posted: Sun - June 1, 2003 at 03:19 PM