rss
mobile
Feeds
Clemson has come up with a humane way to get rid of squirrels. Since we have more squirrels than grains of sand, it's a lesson from the Upstate that could be the greatest thing since Danny Ford.
I now feel guilty for ever doubting the value of a higher education. I didn't say cost, I said value. With today's costs, parents have a choice. They can either buy their child a college degree or the Biltmore mansion.
When it comes to value, in my book squirrels are right up there with an English degree.
Squirrels gnaw the siding off the house. They eat aluminum gutters. They chew plastic garbage cans. They nest in the attic, where they sometimes die. And I have had near-death experiences in the attic, skipping from beam to beam with a flashlight in my mouth, trying to catch a darting squirrel with a crab net.
Squirrels have crawled inside the walls of the chimney, where they, of course, die. I have had to remove pieces of siding, then yank their sorry gray pelts out with a Vise-Grip. My attorney assures me this is cruel and unusual punishment -- to me, not the squirrel -- but to date the squirrels have not responded to our class action suit.
They tear pine cones into a thousand pieces, litter the yard with the pieces, then throw the core at me. They eat begonias, destroy bird feeders and fry electrical wires.
All before breakfast.
At Clemson, gnawing squirrels were killing $100,000 worth of trees and bushes each year. They killed 100 mature trees over the past decade on the 800-acre campus. The squirrel population -- 14 per acre -- grew to three times acceptable standard, despite the university's two-year effort at squirrel birth control. You read that right.
Now comes the greatest bit of news to reach the Lowcountry in years. Clemson skinned the problem by leading the dashing and scampering squirrels into the valley of death. It paid federal biologists -- who cares if they're Yankees! -- to trap and euthanize 200 squirrels in humane compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act.
Clemson now has given the world more than its coveted blue cheese, the orange bib overall, a football player named "The Refrigerator," and its famous blond brownies in the football press box.
It has given the Lowcountry a lesson in how to get up and do what needs to be done. It has identified the squirrel as a cause of "safety, environmental and economic problems." And it has acted accordingly.
Here in the Lowcountry we should call that a higher education.
