To Kill a Mockingbird
WOODYWEST
To Kill a Mockingbird Make sure you have a federal permit—and watch out for reporters. BYWOODYWEST AN INTERSECTION of cultural vectors occurs from time to time that is magnificent in...
...Shortly, though, workers from the District of Columbia animal control agency responded...
...So the workers removed three hatchlings from the nearby tree where the mockingbird’s nest reposed and, as the reporter delicately phrased it, they “were put to sleep...
...Department of Health . . . declined to discuss the matter...
...BYWOODYWEST AN INTERSECTION of cultural vectors occurs from time to time that is magnificent in its absurdity, a confluence that exhaustively defines how goofy an advanced society can be when it earnestly sets its mind to it...
...Neither would another “spokeswoman” for the department itself, “saying the incident is under review and officials will not comment until the review is completed next week...
...Well, fine, a cute trifle, of the kind that scruffy newspapermen of an older day would have characterized as, at best, a “barking dog saves family of four” story...
...2) the Washington Post...
...A “spokeswoman for the U.S...
...For any reactionary who might snicker at this piffling skein of action and regulatory reaction, she added, “[T]here’s nothing funny about babies being killed...
...Babies...
...The elements are (of course) the federal government, journalism in witless mode, and a public sensibility of such softness that it is not far from emotional rot...
...It is unclear who called for an anti-bird special-ops team (the building houses hundreds of State Department workers, the paper reported, and it would be invidious to speculate whether a member of that department was driven to desperation so easily...
...Two days later, this time under a bold four-column headline, the Post informed its readers that the animal-control workers who zapped the hatchlings “are now subjects of a federal investigation...
...There were bird-andbunny volunteers available, and she contended her organization was not called after the hatchlings were hijacked...
...Has anyone heard that mockingbirds are on the endangered species list...
...And, anyhow, two of the three might have become cat snacks long before they arrived at a level of development to dive-bomb State Department helots...
...animal control, it turned out, did not have a permit to remove and later “euthanize” the hatchlings...
...The Post went into Woodward mode in following the trail of the crime...
...workers’] actions clearly violated the Migratory Bird Act Treaty of 1918, a federal statute designed to protect wild birds by making it illegal to seize a bird, hatchlings, eggs or nest without a federal permit...
...And an intra-departmental “review” convened, consuming how many hours of meetings and how many pages of findings...
...homicide is recounted these days...
...Specifically: (1) the U.S...
...Dear, dear...
...And a good thing, too, no doubt...
...But it was enough to make the sushi hit the fan...
...one might wonder, and wonder as well whether the crack enforcers of wildlife protection didn’t have bigger fish to fry, so to say...
...The three tiny mockingbirds were killed because it was too late in the day to send them to federal rehab—or so the city flack-catcher averred...
...All of this awfulness could have been avoided, it seems, if the animal control workers had taken the three mockingbird hatchlings to a local rehabilitation center—federally licensed centers which care “for injured or orphaned wildlife and gradually reintroduce them to their natural environments...
...The riveting episode began with a three-column story on one of the Post’s local pages recently...
...It is a trait of the territorial mockingbird, the newspaper explained, quoting an expert source, to attack any passerby near its nest...
...Woody West is associate editor of the Washington Times...
...Not so, responded a woman from the Wildlife Rescue League, which transports orphans and other of nature’s detritus to the federal rehabilitation centers...
...If this were an aberrant case of what Hamlet called the world “disjoint and out of frame,” why all hands could gulp and carry on...
...D.C...
...Might there, however, be a teensy disproportion involved in this mockingbird affair—a six-figure fine, a year in the slammer, a major agency of the mightiest government on the globe invoking a 1918 treaty clause...
...Fish and Wildlife Service...
...and (3) that excessive public sensibility, alarmingly pervasive, that shudders when a flea or a frog is summarily dispatched...
...Maximum penalties under the statute, the Post somberly reported, include fines up to $100,000 for individuals and $200,000 for organizations, and a year in the Big House...
...These weren’t osprey chicks or bald eagle nestlings...
...It was odd, though, to see it reported under a multi-column headline and at greater length than the average D.C...
...The “chief of animal disease control for the D.C...
...It is admittedly a day now pretty much gone when “animal control” consisted of putting the latest litter of pups or kittens in a gunny sack and dropping them off the nearest bridge...
...And all the while, the government officials responsible for sorting out this crime against nature are twitching, knowing the Post is out there . . . waiting and watching...
...How did the feds get into it...
...But there is something disturbingly, ah, normative about this episode...
...Fish and Wildlife Service said [the D.C...
...Seems that a mockingbird (presumably a female, but one hesitates to attach a sexual label these days) was “dive-bombing” federal workers at a building in downtown Washington...
...three apprentice mockingbirds...
Vol. 5 • August 2000 • No. 47
