Hairy Animal Control Tactics

April 19, 2005 — -- Like capital punishment and abortion, cat hunting is fast becoming one of those hot-button issues that ruins family dinners, breaks up marriages and causes political pollsters to break out in fits.

A proposal to allow the shooting of feral cats went before statewide hearings of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress last week, and hunters overwhelmingly supported it. Free-roaming felines are said to be killing off songbirds and other wildlife. If declared an unprotected species, they could be shot by licensed hunters -- a possibility that has kitty lovers all over the world waving their litter shovels with righteous indignation.

For Wisconsin to legalize cat hunting, however, the proposal would have to be approved by the Natural Resources Board, the state Legislature and Gov. Jim Doyle, who has already said he would reject it.

In a sense, the issue is already dead, at least for now. But all around the country are reminders that humans and animals are having a tough time co-existing. America's deer population is exploding -- and so is the number of deer-related vehicular accidents. The number of stray dogs has reached such epic proportions that one company has now gained FDA approval for a chemical castration drug for puppies.

If you thought cat hunting was strange, here are some other bizarre manifestations in the never-ending battle of man versus beast.

1. Teeing Off on Toads: Australia has given the green light to golf club-wielding toad vigilantes. Officials in the country's Northern Territory last week urged citizens to start smashing cane toads with anything they can get their hands on as the country gropes to deal with the toxic little creatures that are killing other animals and multiplying quickly.

Australia imported the cane toad from Hawaii in 1935 in a failed attempt to combat the greyback beetle, which was ravaging sugar cane fields. Now, millions of cane toads populate Australia's tropical region, and they're encroaching on the territory's capital city of Darwin. The green menace is so lethal, a wild dingo dog -- or even a crocodile -- can die of cardiac arrest within 15 minutes of snacking on one tiny toad.

Environmental groups were outraged by the call for a national toad tee-off, but Australia's Economic Minister Ian Campbell backed the plan. "I would encourage anything that has a practical effect on stopping cane toad numbers," he told The Herald Sun on Friday. A citizens group called "FrogWatch" is now contemplating what to do with mounting toad corpses. One member believes that toads can be mashed into a liquid fertilizer -- known as "Toad Juice" -- and used for home gardening.