Thursday, 5 June 2025

 Thursday, June 5, 2025



https://pop-the-cherry-say-i.blogspot.com/2025/06/thursday-june-5-2025-raccoons-are-back.html

The raccoons are back on the radio. Of course they are. Toronto’s preferred theatre of governance continues: the great “one-way door” debate, now in its fifth or fiftieth season. Experts solemnly explain that the method doesn’t really work—especially not with raccoons, who laugh at symbolic gestures and bureaucratic metaphors.

No capturing. No hunting. And absolutely no killing. All effective strategies are either banned outright or considered too uncivilized for modern sensibilities. Instead, we rely on half-measures that make the city feel humane while leaving the residents helpless.

Funny how no one ever went on the radio during the years of infestation—when raccoons nested in attics, squirrels turned basements into nut bunkers, and skunks treated porches like rent-free condos. The public silence was deafening. But now, now that someone’s got a microphone and a quota to fill, we’re pretending to be shocked by the state of things.

I never complained. Thought it was better to just deal with it quietly. But I still remember the pandemic squirrel incident—the one time a rodent made headlines. The city, embarrassed by media pressure, sent both police and firefighters to remove it. As if they were conducting a tactical rodent extraction. Not because it made sense, but because optics.

Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve been a squeaky wheel. Because clearly, in this city, grease doesn’t go to the patient or the pragmatic—it goes to the loudest whiner with the best soundbite.



https://pop-the-cherry-say-i.blogspot.com/2025/06/thursday-june-5-2025-raccoons-are-back.html

No comments:

Post a Comment