Ground round dog

A dog pound to house strays has been in the news several times recently. We are led to believe that we need to set aside 30 acres (!) and $350,000 to fund this hotel for stray boonie pups. What, other than a fence and a couple of sacks of gravy train do we really need to buy? Why on earth would we set aside 30 acres of our very limited land for this project? By my calculations that would provide room for about 435,600 pooches at 3 sq. ft. per dog. I don’t think we have anywhere near a half million dogs roaming the island.

Alternative: Set aside one acre and two employees. Securely fence the area. Build a small kiosk at the front to house one employee and the receipt book. While the other employee goes around picking up the strays, the kiosk sitter sells the dogs to those on the island who have a taste for pooch. (And there are a LOT of folks on this island who do).

At $1 per pound the facility could generate enough funds to pay for the food, pay the attendant and the stray picker and maybe even kick a few buck into the general account.

If you don’t have a taste (sorry) for the above alternative, here’s another. In Kansas back in the ‘40s the state paid a bounty on each coyote killed. After a few years, there weren’t many coyotes left. We could do the same. If we set aside $100,000 and paid a bounty of $10 to each person who brought in a pair of boonie dog ears we could solve the problem once and for all in a matter of months. Besides it would provide a part time income for a few folks who would, of course, pay a tax on the income. (Executive order 2006-0245 could ban the ASPCA from the island to facilitate matters).

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Quote #1 of the week: Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
— Groucho Marx

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Garden eels in our channel rocks?

I know it sounds faintly sexual, or maybe medical, but it’s not. It is a case of the tail being neither wagger nor wagged by the dog in question. Nothing is happening, and that is costing us a lot of money.

We have a ship channel that allows ships to navigate from outside our barrier reef all the way to our commercial port at the Charlie Dock. At least that is what is supposed to happen. Problem is our channel is not deep enough in places to allow all the ships that want to enter, to do so. In the last few months no fewer than five military ships bearing sailors with pockets ajingle with spendable cash had to turn away from our island because they drew too much water to enter. Likewise, I’ve heard that fully laden tankers cannot come into port causing us to pay more for the fuel in partially filled tankers instead of the complete discount available when paying for a full one.

From what I understand the culprit in all this is just a few chunks of rock and random and now dead coral heads that stick up into the channel. Like a hidden snag in the Mighty Mississippi that could punch a hole in a passing paddle wheeler, so the five or six big rocks in our ship channel could do serious damage to the hulls of passing large ships. The solution is to simply get the rocks out of the way.

Enter the EPA, who says we have garden eels in our rocks. Now there are plenty of garden eels to go around. They are not endangered. They are not threatened. They are out there all over the place breeding like…garden eels. If we roll the rocks out of the channel so the ships can come and go, some upwardly mobile eels will probably come back to live in their calcium carbonate condos once moved to the new location. Housing and real estate being in big demand, someone enterprising eel will come along and use that rock as a home no matter where we move it.

A reliable source has told me that the U.S. Navy might be persuaded to do part of the work of disconnecting the rocks from their base as a training exercise. Meaning we would not have to pay for the service. A tugboat could hook on and roll that rock right out of the way. (Sounds like lyrics to a potential R&B tune).

Why would we care about all this? Because every ship that comes into port for liberty spews out a group of guys who have been locked up together for weeks or months who want to get the heck off that ship and have a good time. They wind up collectively spending $50,000 to $100,000 in hard cash depending on how long they are in port, sometimes more. This money goes into the coffers of truly local businesses that pay their bills with it and pay their taxes with it and pay their employees with it.The money comes into our economy and is spread all around just like tourist dollars, but unlike most of the hotels which are foreign owned, the bars and other small businesses that attract them are locally owned so the money stays here instead of being shipped off to Japan or Australia or Hong Kong.

We should also care because most every thing we have or want or need or use on this island except for a few garden vegetables comes to us by ships that have to use that channel. It is our link to the outside world without which that refrigerator in your kitchen and that car in your driveway would not be there. Ever smelled a three-day old, unrefrigerated tuna?

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Quote #2 of the Week: Now, more than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
—Woody Allen, author actor, and filmmaker (1935- )

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Bruce A. Bateman writes Sour Grapes when the moon is full and the mood strikes. Stay tuned for each exciting episode of: Sour Grapes. Yes, he is opinionated. email to: bbateman@pticom.com