I, for one, welcome our Drunken Pacyderm Overlords.



/obligatory

"The elephants are a part of our heritage and we have to coexist."

Yeah, so you allow folks to slash and burn the forest habitat, making it harder for the elephants to live and then wonder why they're attacking villages and the villagers are fighting back.

That's sort of like around here. My house used to be one of two on the block and we were surrounded by wild woods and groves. We had all sorts of wild birds, Gopher Turtles used to come and feed on our grass or get lettuce from us, there were Bobcats, raccoons, assorted beneficial snakes, bull frogs, water frogs, snapping turtles, gar fish in the canal, Armadillos, skunks, Quail by the scores, box turtles, big Woodpeckers and more.

Now, with the area having added over 100 houses, cleared most of the forest, cut down the groves, dumped krap into the canal, there are few of these animals left. There hasn't been a Quail around in years, the previously abundant and pesky Blue Jay is now on the endangered list, there are few owls, no Bobcats, no gar fish, few snakes and even the Bull frogs have been replaced by some slimy, dull green type. Thousands of beautiful, metallic colored dragonflies no longer swarm around, the wild grapes, raspberries and cabbage palms are all but gone. Even the cute color changing Chameleons are mostly gone, replaced by a dull gray small lizard.

The clean running canal is polluted and dirty. Thanks to their paving the dirt road, traffic is heavy and the animals that are left get frequently squashed trying to cross the road to get to a water source.

I just love it when places make laws to protect the wild life and then allow virtually unchecked development of the woodlands. (They're scheduled to build around 500 more homes in some remaining woodlands west of town.)