Stapleton residents know that there is a prairie dog problem in Stapleton. The mostly harmless creatures are overpopulated, and pretend to be delaying the yet-to-begin park on 26th St. The little creatures are certain not to attack you or your dog, and whether or not they actually spread disease we do not know, but they certainly look like they do.
The Stapleton consensus is that they have to go, but relocating them is challenging for a number of reasons. Where would they go? Plus, humans view moving as more stressful than death, so we can only imagine how stressful it would be to these tiny herbivores. Killing them may be the only option, but poisoning them seems a little cruel. Are there other options?
Stapleton resident Eric Koble believes so. “We can introduce a natural predator to kill them off. In this case, Stapleton already has coyotes, so we would just increase the coyote population.” When asked what we then do with the coyotes, Koble’s eyes lit up. “That’s when it really gets fun. We simply start introducing predator after predator, until the nuisance is gone.”
Koble’s idea in a nutshell is this: coyotes kill prairie dogs, mountain lions kill coyotes, African lions kill mountain lions, bears kill African lions, elephants kill bears, and elephants join the circus.
The Stapletonion likes a lot of this plan, but wants to hear from its readers if there is a better solution, or even a more fun or interesting order of animals killing each other. Please comment if you have one of these suggestions.
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