The Vampires Cometh

Species Debacle brewing

Zoo Effect

The Vampires Cometh

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            The suggestion that man made climate change is tipping the balance of nature is in line for another high power jolt.

            The slow, but steady northward march through Mexico by vampire bats is expected to hit Texas and Florida within three to ten years. Just wait until we start hearing about that little soirée from the progressive pulp manufacturers of the mainstream media. This may relegate the northward flight of the Africanized bees to bush league status.

            Remember the blow by blow progress of the Afrikaners?

They were four miles from the border, killing people, and carrying off babies for afternoon hive snacks. They were 1.3 miles inside the border evicting victimized European honey bees with ruthless abandon. They were four miles north of the border capturing slaves and carting off good looking queens for evening conquests by the sinewy drones. Why, it was a veritable minute by minute face book account of the collision of two bee universes.

            What was missing were the calls from the victim hotlines to go easy on the illegals. When it was their collective potuties that appeared to be endangered, the progressives issued nary a single suggestion for empathy.

At that time, I was in California contracting with commercial beekeepers. One of our providers had experience in South America with the Afrikaners and he suggested we would grow to like them. Contrary to hysteria, he said the Africanized bees were certainly aggressive, but that aggression was reflected in working harder and flying longer.

“You just have to manage them,” he continued. “Just like the South Americans who now deal with them on a permanent basis.”

Nothing close to that message was ever offered by the press, though. The fear factor was played to the hilt. The question we can now ask is whether it was commercial dramatics or was their real personal fear of the outcome. I will offer that it was the latter. When their personal safety was involved, there was no politically correct lecture on sensitivity.

“Kill those mongrels and kill them dead!” was their demand.

The vampires cometh

The stakes may be higher this time.

The march north by the vampires is tracked by livestock rabies cases. For those of us old enough to be exposed to the horrors of Ol’ Yeller, we know what rabies can mean. We went in looking forward to seeing another adventure in the life of Lassie’s favorite cousin, but came out crying and being led off into the dark by incredulous parents trying to convince themselves Disney had scored again. What a great memory, eh? It is reminiscent to a visit to a WWII era dentist who was seeking a backwoods place to end his career and where the booze was cheap.

 The commonality, though, runs deeper than 14 gauge 1½” needles. The bats use their razor sharp incisors to open a small incision and then lick from the blood flow. Their saliva has an anticoagulant and they will lap blood up to 20 minutes. Following a night of blood letting, evidence to the layman will be dried blood on livestock or rabies if the bats are infected.

Control is where the green heartbreak commences.

The bats are fairly easy to capture using mist nets on approaches to and over corralled livestock. They can then be treated with a rodenticide which can be transported back to their running mates for a wider kill ratio. It will be interesting to observe the complaints from the biosocial justice crowd when the vampires start biting the dust. Will they scream for illegal animal rights or will they seek to protect their collective derrieres when the threat starts knocking on their doors. If history repeats, it will be the latter.

            “Kill those mongrels and kill them dead!”

The Zoo Effect

The further this country departs from a republic form of governance to rule by an environmental crazed hegemony, the closer the electorate is subjected to what we must recognize as the Zoo Effect. The phenomenon has always existed in a zoo setting whereby the sweaty commoners gather, eat popcorn, and observe the exotic fauna. They take pictures of their kids standing in front of exhibits and then finish their back to nature trip by eating overpriced hotdogs at the nearby cement table. They swat flies and remind each other how wonderful the thrills of nature are.

They load their cars and head off into the electronic jungles to compete for their share of the pie. They text and distribute their posed selfies to their comrades-in-cause and pledge to unite in an ever expanding web of saving stuff. It adds to their pet Chihuahua and subscription to a progressive rag for demonstration of caring about the world.

It also adds to the voting block to fund conservation causes and empower liberal bureaucrats and ensconced career politicians. It is easy and it is painless. They can frolic and dance to their great deeds.

That isn’t the case, though, with the individual who faces the wrath. Those Mexican ranchers who now face the vampires know the reality of the beast. To deal with adaptable arrivals that seek prey that are not genetically robust to deal with their menace is a whole different paradigm.

The Zoo Effect outcome is invariably devastating.

North of the border, it isn’t the natural spread of an adaptable nonresident that is disrupting communities. It is the shortsighted reintroduction of an animal that simply doesn’t have the genetic aptitude to survive under evolving, modern conditions. It is demonstrated in the artificial reintroduction of the Mexican Gray wolf. The polarizing impact and the real implications on the ground are catastrophic. Communities, already at high risk, are floundering. In those rural settings, agriculture, especially livestock operations, remains the only market driven industry aside from recreational hunting and tourism. The hunting, established by long standing tradition but now driven by growth in the recreational product business, is finding itself competing head to head with the government’s pet recovery effort. Two major alpha predators, man and wolves, are competing for a prey base that simply isn’t large enough to support them both. The result is the struggling livestock sector is the cupboard left standing to rob.

It is a terrible socio-economic debacle that has long past eroded the customs and culture of an area that is truly rich in natural resources, but garnered poor by the citizenry’s limited rights to access them. In every aspect, it is becoming the aristocracy’s forest with growing and conditional limits for the local citizenry. Under no circumstances does it equate to the visions of the Founders who knew full well the oppression holding them in bondage through the King’s reach.

In the modern version, though, the propagandized supporters that have become the proxies for local support don’t even live nearby. They reside far from battleground and do their part by supporting the grand, contrived spectacle on the basis of democracy. Votes count even if they are not real, but, rather, phantom votes through the actions of the environmental crazed hegemony.

This view through the zoo prism is rosy and void of vulnerability or responsibility. Unlike the locals who have to face the wrath, there is no adverse impact to the nonresident advocates. That isn’t the case for locals who face the ravages of the wolf, and it will not be the case of any citizen in the path of the vampires.

When rabies cases start appearing in safe and inoculated suburbia, watch for the squealing to commence.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Some modifier has to occur to alter impact of the ESA. Politicians don’t have the will to do it without something catastrophic. That may change with the vampires.”