Tweeters,

To the overwrought and rhetoric-shrieking people who flamed me...if you had
bothered to actually READ the plans for the trap, you would have seen that
the trapped starling is totally unharmed by the experience until it's removed
from the cage. The cage is large and roomy.........far larger,
proportionally, than the one that the chicken you had for dinner last night
spent its entire life in, until it was slaughtered. (in a way far more
painful than mine, but a whole lot cheaper).

Amazingly, considering how knowledgeable he is about birds, Mr. Anderson
conveniently forgot to mention that it's legal, both by federal as well as
state regulation to trap and kill, or even keep as pets, starlings, house
sparrows and rock doves. It's legal because they are non-indigenous species.

So are Norway rats and German cockroaches. Do your feelings of love and
concern extend to these creatures as well, disgusting and unpopular as they
are? Do you allow them to live in your house with you, because they have a
right to live, too?

That's your business, but when they overpopulate your house, they're going
move into your neighbor's house, and then it becomes a health hazard. Will
you then stand and scream platitudes, and threaten to sue the Health
Department when they come to kill the rats and spray the cockroaches??

Do you live in a house made of wood? Plywood is made with glue made of bovine
blood. Does your child keep goldfish in a bowl (a totally unnatural
environment for them ) far too small for them, using chlorinated water (a
poison to aquatic creatures) on the few occasions when he or she remembers to
clean the fish bowl? By the way, did you have children? I didn't. I cannot be
blamed for the over-population of this planet that is the very base of all
our environmental problems. Did you try to fight the appointment of Gail
Norton to the position of secretary of the Interior, where she will
undoubtedly destroy all the gains made in the past decade? No? Was it too
much effort to email our Senators, who, by the way, wholeheartedly endorsed
her nomination?

We are the cause of this mess, and we need to clean it up. I realize that my
killing two dozen starlings a year may not put a dent in the total
population, but it has certainly benefited the native bird species in my
immediate neighborhood. Perhaps you should extend your misguided benevolence
for non-indigenous species to your own.

Michelle Blanchard
MBlanchrd at aol.com
Oly, WA