Invading The Humans

The rat problem in destroyed New Orleans now has company. The latest problem in the most destroyed areas of the city involves raccoon, insect, snake, termite, opossums, armadillo and alligator infestations.
Yep, in the parts of the city that are city uninhabited, filed with debris and un tended houses, there is an invasion of those critters that is becoming alarming. Residents are reporting run-ins with the vermin throughout the city to the extent that they are afraid to be in their homes at night. One lady in the destroyed New Orleans east area who lives in a temporary trailer said the raccoons are so bad at night it appears that one hundred or more of them march down the street at night. And the raccoons are not afraid of the humans they see. Instead of fleeing they stand up on their hind legs, purr, threaten to attack and go about their business unafraid. Since raccoons carry rabies the city is planning on a serious campaign (if it ever finds workers and money to institute it) to control them. Pest control companies say they are finding large infestations of fleas and spiders in homes (they drop off the raccoons and rats and get into the houses).
Some of the spiders are the poisonous variety. Apparently the hurricane blew the spiders into the environment and they are now entrenched. Complaints of alligators trespassing into yards in neighborhoods all over the city are now routine. The there are the nesting birds that lost their homes during the storm but that make so much noise at night in trees next to homes...or the ant invasions in houses, the....uh ..never mind. You get the idea.
More animals and insects are returning to the city than humans. That's what happens when a city is destroyed and the Bush administration pretends we don't need help.
Forget New Orleans. There was a furor in Wellington the other day. No...It isn't the result of anything I did when visiting there last month. It seems that masked thieves armed with a Kiss a Snake chisel stole the penis of a wooden Maori figurine, or tiki, at the entrance of a public library in northern New Zealand.
That's right! Someone cut off the statues winky finger. Security cameras captured pictures of three masked men using the chisel to remove the tiki's penis early on Sunday morning. The figurine is one of two indigenous Maori designs that stand on "pou" or posts astride the entrance to the library in Whangarei. Carver, Kerry Strongman, said the theft had damaged the "mana" or pride of the city. Strongman said he would begin work immediately on a carving that would restore the tiki to its original state.
Police said they were at a loss to explain the theft, particularly as a nearby statue of Tangaroa, the Maori god of the sea, was better endowed with a bigger winky.