DC Rat Extermination Program -- I Cannot Make This Stuff Up -- Absolutely Nothing To Do With The Bakken

Update

January 20, 2012: see first comment below. After that comment, I thought it would be the last of this story. But it appears that Virginia is not the only state worried about the law to place vermin in "halfway houses" before relocating them and their families.

Maryland is just as concerned.

A Republican delegate in Maryland plans to introduce legislation to protect Maryland's borders not from undocumented workers, but from rodents.

Del. Pat McDonough, R-Baltimore, will at an afternoon news conference roll out his Rat Trafficking Act, which would bar the D.C. government “and any other entity from trafficking rats and other vermin into Maryland.”

McDonough’s move will come after a flurry of attacks against the District's Wildlife Protection Act of 2010, which mandates that animal control companies use humane methods when handling animals. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli set off the firestorm when he publicly worried that the law would lead to a mass relocation by exterminators of D.C. rats into his state.

Apparently "anonymous" is as confused as the rest of us.

Original Post

This may be the funniest story I have read in quite some time.

The law banning city exterminators from killing rats was bad enough, and requiring that rats must be caught live and "re-located" was about as funny as I thought it could get.

Then, this: rats that are re-located, must be re-located with "their families" if at all possible.

I cannot make this stuff up. Washington, DC. Thank goodness for Drudge. I doubt if I would have seen this in mainstream media.

Cuccinelli said D.C.'s new rat law--the Wildlife Protection Act of 2010 -- is “crazier than fiction” because it requires that rats and other vermin not be killed but captured, preferably in families; no glue or snap traps can be utilized; the rodents must be relocated from where they are captured; and some of these animals may need to be transferred to a “wildlife rehabilitator” as part of their relocation process.

The law does not allow pest control professionals “to kill the dang rats,” Cuccinelli told CNSNews.com. “They have to capture them--then capture them in families. [Not sure] how you’re going to figure that out with rats. And then you have to relocate them. That brings us to Virginia. Now, if you don’t relocate them about 25 miles away, according to experts, rodents will find their way back. Well, an easy way to solve that problem is to cross a river, and what’s on the other side of the river? Virginia.”

These are the same folks that will be defining "diesel" for regulating fracking.

Theme song for the D.C. city pest exterminators (highly recommended that the video actually not be watched to the end):

Ben, Michael Jackson