October 30, 2015

"Standoff in Boulder, Colo.: Prairie dogs hold Buddhist college at bay."

Headline in the L.A. Times.

"If you replaced the 'dog' in prairie dog with 'rat,' would they elicit the same emotion?...I wonder," asked Bill Rigler, spokesman for Naropa University, in what the L.A. Times suggests is sort of kind of a Zen koan.
For years, Naropa has battled some 150 persistent prairie dogs over 2.5 acres of prime real estate on its Nalanda campus.... The struggle is especially poignant in this famously liberal college town, where Buddhists and prairie dogs occupy exalted positions within the local ecosystem....

"We bought this land in 2004 to expand on and the first prairie dogs showed up two years later," Rigler said.
The Buddhists got there first, and — on Buddhist principles — did nothing. The doing of nothing was a nice ecosystem for the "dogs" (which I originally typo'd "gods"):
The industrious rodents swiftly built a prairie dog town of some 200 burrows extending from the campus parking lot to busy Arapahoe Avenue to almost the front door. Plans to expand classroom space stalled, and in 2011, Naropa began searching for ways to relocate the animals.

Four years and $100,000 later, little has changed. Trapping and moving the rodents is easy enough; finding someone who wants them is not. 
I think a lot of people who set "have a heart" traps would be surprised to know that it's illegal to move the animals elsewhere and just set them free, without permission. (And I hope you won't hate me — have a heart! — for burdening you with the knowledge of which you were once free. Who can free you from the trap that is knowledge? Even with the door left open — you're free to seek to believe what is not true — you find it hard to scamper out and run wild in the landscape/parking lot that's just inches away.)

The Buddhists seemed to have decided to kill the "dogs" — I typo'd "gods" again! — inciting protest. On Facebook: "Mommy, I heard that Naropa University is going to have all of us killed" and:



As Rigler put it, quoted in the above-linked L.A. Times article:
"All of sudden it was, 'The Buddhists want to kill the prairie dogs,' but we had no intention of killing them," said Rigler, who isn't a Buddhist. "The very act of applying for a [lethal control] permit triggers an open comment period, which gives everyone the opportunity to say, 'I have a site for relocation,' or put forward other ideas."
This sounds like the doctrine of double effect. Your desire or intention is not to kill the animals... but they may end up dead as you pursue what you do want and intend. The college wants to relocate the prairie dogs and the threat of killing them is a way to get somebody to step up and accept them onto their property. Another way to think of it is like this:



It's a threat. Let us use your land or we'll kill these "dogs."

Later in the L.A. Times article, there's a quote from the director of the Prairie Dog Coalition, an "environmental scientist," with the sublimely perfect name Lindsey Sterling Krank. Krank, who believes Naropa was never going to kill the prairie dog, tells us: "Black-tailed prairie dogs — the kind we are talking about here — have declined by 98% [and] are considered a keystone species because their colonies create islands of habitats that benefit approximately 150 other species." (Is he counting the Yersinia pestis?)

We're also given this background on Naropa:
The private university was founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa, whose followers flooded into Boulder and influence it to this day. The school has about 1,100 students on two local campuses and is home to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, co-founded by the late beat poet and Buddhist Allen Ginsberg.

"People have an impression of Naropa from 1974 of barefoot hippies, but we have grown into a major university," Rigler said. "There is a genuine desire to do what's right, but we have a responsibility to provide our students with a good learning environment."
I read a book about the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, "When I Was Cool," by Sam Kashner. It was one of the first books I blogged about, back when this blog started in the winter of 2004. 5 things from the book that caught my attention in 2004:
1. William Burroughs said he would never have been a heroin addict if he had realized how badly constipated it would make him when he got to be an old man.

2. Allen Ginsberg made a pass at Kashner and, after Kashner declined, started to find Kashner's poetry terrible. Kashner is still angry... about the poetry critiques.

3. Ginsberg's guru ordered him to shave off his beard because he was too attached to it--and he did!

4. Kashner's first assignment was to finish one of Ginsberg's poems and when it turned out to be a poem about having sex with Neal Cassady, Kashner went to the Boulder Public Library to ask for information!

5. It was Kashner's job to do Ginsberg's laundry, and the method he used was to ship the dirty laundry in a box home to his mother. She did the laundry and shipped it back!

36 comments:

Expat(ish) said...

We used to live trap the mice in our old house and I would, after carefully washing off the glue, release them at the DMV just up the road.

I figured no jury would ever convict me if I were caught.

-XC

mccullough said...

Even Buddhists are NIMBYS

SeanF said...

Althouse: This sounds like the doctrine of double effect. Your desire or intention is not to kill the animals... but they may end up dead as you pursue what you do want and intend. The college wants to relocate the prairie dogs and the threat of killing them is a way to get somebody to step up and accept them onto their property. Another way to think of it is like this:

It's a threat. Let us use your land or we'll kill these "dogs."


Pro-Choicer (to a Pro-Lifer): Are you going to adopt all those babies if we can't abort them?

Curious George said...

Could use them to recreate a play in a football game:

http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2015/10/28/michigan-msu-fumble-taxidermy-chipmunks-photo

Nonapod said...

Prairie dogs are kinda like fat little fury Buddhas, you'd think the Buddhists would be more accommodating.

Bob Boyd said...

This is a job for Carl Spackler.

"Licensed to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. A man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote."

tim maguire said...

5. It was Kashner's job to do Ginsburg's laundry, and the method he used was to ship the dirty laundry in a box home to his mother. She did the laundry and shipped it back!

In On The Road, Kerouac refers to living with his aunt. It was his mom. He just didn't want to admit it.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Heartless Aztec said...

If that classic National Lampoon cover from the early 1970's was seen by modern college students in a campus bookstore they would go running in tears and anguish for the nearest "safe place" and hold campus wide protests over the "micro-aggression" of having to view this cover in the magazine rack. We college students of the late 60's and70's were built of sterner stuff. As a classic alumni prank it would be fun to digitalize some covers of this issue to place them in the mag racks and secretly record the anguish horror imposed of 2015 freshman. The horror, the HORROR! Perfectly apt for this Halloween.

n.n said...

The Environmentalists have jumped the prairie dog.

Clear the land to construct a windmill or solar farm and the Environmentalists will abort the prairie dogs for them at a cost of about one million dollars per head. It's a non-profit operation.

Heartless Aztec said...

I'm thinking they need Carl Spackler to tackle this job.

Birches said...

Ugh. Colorado and their "precious" Prairie Dogs. A Target was due to go up a few miles from our house; that triggered protests about wiping out one of the last Prairie Dog habitats in our town. People were standing on the street corner for weeks. I bet they were shipped in from Boulder; I can't see that many people from our area actually giving a crap. In fact, the Soccer Moms practically live at Target now; large Michael Kors bag in one hand, Starbucks in another.

MadisonMan said...

Can't the College buy a bunch of endangered ferrets?

Roger Sweeny said...

There is a drug for constipation caused by opioid use. It is called Movado. Seriously, I saw an ad for it on tv last night.

robother said...

If only Ginsberg were living today, I feel sure he would've come up with a politically correct relocation program for the cute wriggly little beasties.

James Pawlak said...

How do they taste?

mikee said...

Colorado is the location of the invention of the prairie dog vacuum cleaner - a giant, truck mounted suction device that pulls the dogies out of their dens and into a large container, usually with zero damage to them.

Then relocation can be performed, either to a site that wants holes in the ground that break horse and cow legs, or to a landfill after execution/euthanasia/gassing (choose euphemism of your choice).

I'm just pointing out that the dogies can be moved, if there is a place to move them, and the Buddhists are doing the right steps to move them alive.

The goal, however, is to move them. If that ends with dogie deaths, it is not a real problem in the world.

Compare self defense to moving the dogs: The goal of self defense is to stop an attacker's violent assault. If the attacker dies or gets perforated with bullets while being stopped, that is too bad, but not the intent of the self defense, which was to stop the attack. So with the dogies. If they end up dead, it is because there is no place for them after they are moved. But moved they will be. See Kelo v. City of New London for precedents.

mikee said...

As to the National Lampoon cover, it is exceeded in pure comedic value only by the highly regarded article "A Woman's View of Sex" from the same era, in the Sex Issue.

Big Mike said...

Fortunately for the Buddhists they were invaded only by prairie dogs, which are legal to hunt year-round in Colorado, and not by the black-footed ferrets which prey on them and are an endangered species. In their shoes I'd go ahead and start building -- prairie dogs are quite bright and will simply relocate themselves out of the way as soon as the backhoes start digging. Of course they might well relocate to the back yards of some of the school's neighbors, earning a degree of enmity, but that's a problem for another day.

traditionalguy said...

I suggest issuing the Buddhists AR15s and lots of ammo. That is a twofer. it gives them a fun solution to the rodent problem and it gives them a reputation as NOT being a gun free kill zone for mentally ill guys.

Meditate on that!

Left Bank of the Charles said...

What an unbelievable story, that they applied for the kill permit in order to help find the prairie dogs a new home. The Buddhists at Naropa should be mindful of the first rule of holes, stop digging.

If all they need is the permission of a landowner, the obvious solution is to buy some land in rural Colorado and relocate the prairie dogs there.

Here's a nice little parcel of 6 acres in South Park they could buy for less than $25,000. Or, for $40,000 they could buy 35 acres.

tomaig said...

Two words - peregrine falcons.

Bilwick said...

"Dammit, we haven't any other choice! Send in Richard Gere!"

(Because he's a Buddhist, and--you know--that other thing.)

exhelodrvr1 said...

Prairie dogs are major pests for farmers, even just in pasture land. The burrows are dangerous for cattle, and they eat a significant amount of the same plants that cattle eat.

Bay Area Guy said...

Aw man, I LOVED National Lampoon. So much laughter and humor. Mad Magazine dominated up until, age 13 or so, but then National Lampoon dominated as a teenager, giving us a glimpse of what college would be like.

The Left used to be funny! Now, they are humorless scolds.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Many NL's are available as scans at archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/national_lampoon

Mr. Fabulous said...

Did you hear the one about the dyslexic atheist with insomnia? All night long he tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He kept wondering: “Is there really a dog?”

Seriously, prairie dogs are disease carrying rodents, and unchecked, breed like rats. For public health reasons their population should be held to a minimum, just as we work to keep the number of (non-human) rats to a minimum. I live in Frederick, Colorado, about 20 miles or so east of Boulder and the prairie dogs are a real problem. The robust local population of hawks isn't anywhere near adequate to keep their numbers in check. Prairie dogs carry bubonic plague, and this year several people have died from the plague in Colorado: https://www.rt.com/usa/311747-plague-kills-two-colorado/

Plague has been identified in prairie dogs in Boulder: http://www.9news.com/story/news/health/2014/08/21/plague-found-in-boulder-county/14379025/

Like rats, it's almost impossible to actually kill all of the prairie dogs around, but ensuring public health demands civil authorities take measures to minimize their numbers. The town I live in actively takes measures to try to keep their numbers in check, but in Boulder, they are allowed to breed and spread unchecked in the middle of the city. The Naropa Institute is just blocks from downtown Boulder, and less than that from Boulder High School.

Boulder "buddha" take measures before they also have humans dying from the plague.

MadisonMan said...

BTW -- am I the only one who glanced at the title of this blogpost and subbed Bullshit in for Buddhist?

Clyde said...

"What is thes sound of one prairie dog burrowing?"

Mr. Fabulous said...

The young student asked the Buddhist Master "What holds up our earth? The Master replied "the earth rests upon the back of a giant turtle, grasshopper." The young student then asked "But what holds up the giant turtle Master?" The Master then said, "Young sprout, the turtle rests upon the back of a giant prairie dog." "And what does the prairie dog rest on Master?" asked the student. "After that, it's prairie dogs all the way down." replied the Master. :)

gadfly said...

@James Pawlak asked...

How do they taste?


Coyotes like them.

Which makes me want to suggest that the best way to get rid of them is to trap them live and give them to the Denver Zoo to feed to their larger carnivores. This suggestion is courtesy of Garden Web.

iowan2 said...

Its way more fun than trap or skeet. Prafie dog shoots. Get your 222 500 rounds of ammo. Good binoculars and wait for the cute furries to stand up, and BLAM! Blow them 20 ft in the air. You'll get tired or run out of ammo, before you run out of these destructive vermin

uffda said...

Crowdsource teeny tiny parachutes and then air drop the undocumented lil immigrants into Mexico.

DanTheMan said...

I don't see the problem here. After all, the central message of Buddhism is "Every man for himself."

Scott said...

I hear that prairie dogs are a really fun challenge if you're into long-distance target shooting. You can even get guides.

Rusty said...

Prairie Dogs are assholes.
I thought everybody knew that.