And this is what I got at 6:53 AM or whatever it was. I was finished with my walk at that point, exiting the woods behind my house when I saw these bags stuck in the chainlink fence. What the heck is that? Oh, it’s plastic shopping bags. Why are they stuck in the fence? I can only guess but I *think* that someone has stuck them there as a resource for Dog People who have run out of Poop Bags (or forgot them or didn’t bother with them or whatever).

My first 0-skunk-30 thought about this was that it might be a good place for me to recycle excess plastic grocery bags. I’m not sure how I amass as many of those as I do given that I backpack most of my groceries and keep a bag of bags in the Ninja for when I need to actually drive an automotive vee-hickle to a grocery store. I got to thinking about it a little more though and while I think if I were a regular dog-walker I might appreciate finding a couple of clean empty plastic bags stuck into a chainlink fence along my route, I think 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 empty plastic bags stuck into a chainlink fence could be a nuisance. And what happens when it gets windy? Do they blow all over the schoolyard? Prob’ly.

I won’t get into the damn Dog Poop issue and I won’t touch the Bicycle vs. Automobile (vs. Pedestrian) issue with a 10-foot pole. At least not tonight. I am a little concerned about the Deer Cull issue. Our loverly city council in its infinite wisdom has decided to deal with the Deer Overpopulation Problem by hiring sharpshooters to “cull” 100 deer this winter. Don’t ask me where they came up with that number. I do not know.

The Planet Ann Arbor is not Portlandia by a long shot but there are some similarities and you have to know that there is a protest going on about this. I am staying out of it. I have complicated opinions about guns and hunting. I won’t try to begin to detail them here but on the balance, I am not opposed to hunting but I am rather against hiring sharpshooters to “cull” our deer population. My reason is Unintended Consequences. That is all. But I have been kind of willing to ignore the whole thing and let others fight the good fight.

Today. I received a communication from a neighborhood org that a whole bunch of city parks will be shut down between 4 PM and 7 AM throughout the winter! Say what? One of those parks is Barton Dam Park! We WALK THERE IN THE WINTER AT SUNSET! I wonder if those who favor the Deer Cull realized that they would be losing access to their parks for the duration. I wonder if the city council thought anything about how closing parks would affect the local population. I wonder if I will be safe walking through Miller Woods where 1) deer live, 2) it isn’t listed to be closed, but, 3) will people be shooting in there anyway because they think that because the city has hired folks to shoot deer, they are able to do that even though…?

I am not sure if the communication about closing the park is accurate and I will be researching that. If it is true, it’ll be interesting to watch city council meetings this winter, given that the council voted on the Deer Cull without letting the citizens vote on it and without telling their constituents up front that their parks will be closed during some of the prime hours.

Unintended Consequences? We’ll see.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2015 at 7:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.