You remind me of the character "Otto", in "A Fish Called Wanda", Clinton. You're so full of compassion and general goodwill toward living creatures, and so ready to seek mutually beneficial solutions to problems.

We had a guy kind of like you as a neighbour once. He was obsessed with ridding the neighborhood of a groundhog that he felt was undermining his garden (it was not, in my opinion). He put out poison on the wooded bank between the properties to kill the groundhog, but didn't bother telling anyone about it. The poison killed not only the groundhog, but also our dog, our other neighbour's dog, and several chipmunks. There may have been other fatalities as well, I'm not sure, perhaps a few birds too and a cat or two.

All in all, I'm thinking the poison ended up everywhere except the one place where it might have done the most good. The groundhog was a far more agreeable neighbour to all of us than the idiot who decided to kill him.

Knew about another guy who regularly poisoned squirrels because they were eating his birdseed. A friend who lived next door to the guy threatened to report him for so doing, and he was enraged. "I've lived here all my life!" he fumed, as if that gives him some special dispensation to murder small animals. "Mushrooms live in the same place all their lives too," replied my friend, "It's nothing to be proud of."

Your professionals could just as well use a drug that puts the skunk to sleep, couldn't they? But that would take some imagination...

- LH