Born free - and we intend to stay that way
Scientists send people into outer space, they dig up past civilizations to see how these people went to the bathroom, they strive to invent artificially intelligent machines that will someday destroy mankind, and they find ways to make our ice cream taste better.
So, um, aren't scientists supposed to be smart?
Yeah, yeah. They keep making nicer, shinier, more deadly bombs. I get those kind of scientists.
What I don't get are ecologists.
Some ecologists, the type of scientists other brainiacs stuff into lockers, have recently proposed transplanting African wildlife to North America.
Those cute little meerkats? Maybe a clever monkey or two? Or maybe even that barely-dressed Playboy-hot princess Tarzan found in the jeweled city of Opar?
No.
These ecologists from places like Cornell and the University of Alaska-Fairbanks want to bring camels, elephants and, oh, yeah, lions to places like Montana and Colorado.
Like lions really want to wait in line to see Pike's Peak.
Their argument is that many species of African animals are endangered from deforestation, hunting and, most importantly, second-hand smoke. In order to preserve these species, ecologists want to move some of these animals to the United States, release them in reserves, allow them to bring the North American ecology back to what it was before concrete and give them voting rights.
But just for the herbivores. Ecologists fear the carnivores would vote Republican.
These ecologists argue that species like elephants, camels, lions and cheetahs would take over the roles of their ancestors like mastodons, camels and saber-toothed cats.
OK, here's the problem. These species are extinct for a reason. They weren't compatible with us. We invented Clovis points to kill these animals, and we made fire to cook them. End of story.
But don't ask me if this is a stupid idea. Let's ask the family of a 17-year-old girl who was killed this week by a Siberian tiger ... in Kansas.
This girl was posing by the tiger at an animal sanctuary when the tiger attacked and killed her.
Why did this happen?
Because it was a tiger. That's what tigers do. They kill things, then they eat them.
Despite what Hollywood teaches us in B-grade jungle movies, there are no Siberian tigers in Africa. So these ecologists aren't proposing to bring tigers to Wyoming. Of course, I think a cheetah or a lion in the wilds outside Cheyenne would probably be about the same thing.
Although I first suspected this proposal was to take care of the ever-growing Sasquatch problem in North America, given the locations of the proposed "reserves," I'm convinced it's to take care of the East and West coast-perceived "red state" problem.
Hey, ecologists, take your African lions, hyenas and mok'ele-mbembe, your Asian beetles, kudzu and wind dragons, your European corn borers, vampires and Bulgarian tourists, and keep them the heck out of our political system.
We're Americans, and we just won't stand for it.
