People are funny about racoons. These flea-bitten, sometimes rabid, garbage-eating vermin with no visible means of support, elicit, in some people, feelings of love.
A woman in Canada was feeding dozens every day. When she died – of cancer, not rabies – her dying request to her husband was that he continue to feed the racoons. He has done so. And they’ve been fruitful, or at least they’ve multiplied.
A woman in Indiana feeds 25 or more a day. She buys 50-pound bags of dog food for them.
A woman in Colorado found what she called “a baby racoon.” She took it home and adopted it. She and about 20 of her friends adored it. When it grew bigger and problematic, she offered it to the local animal shelter. The shelter refused, and instead called the Health Department.
You can see where this is going. The Health Department showed up at the lady’s door, tested the racoon for rabies, the test was positive, and the lady and her 20 friends had to undergo rabies treatment.
Animals respond to incentives and disincentives. When you incentivize them to come around, they do. They’re soon at your doorstep, in your yard, in your trash, and, if you leave a door open, in your house.
National Geographic – not exactly a group of animal-haters – warns that wildlife experts say feeding the racoons ultimately endangers them by habituating them to busy streets, contributing to their overpopulation, and compromising their ability to fend for themselves.
So it is with vagrants. These flea-bitten, sometimes rabid, garbage-eating vermin with no visible means of support, elicit, in some people, feelings of love.
Those people feed the vagrants. Sometimes food but mainly money. The results are predictable. They’re not fruitful but they do multiply.
Word gets out, and they come from miles around for the freebies. Soon they’re camped under the viaducts, then in the parks, and finally on the sidewalks in their own poop. If you leave a door open, or even closed, they may wind up in your house.
Squatters.
Vagrants rarely have rabies, but they usually have other diseases such as alcoholism, drug abuse, insanity and lice. Their panhandling – presented as a pathetic attempt to get food – is typically a fraudulent means to get money to buy alcohol or drugs.
People who give vagrants money at the stoplights are contributing to their substance diseases. For a moment of selfish feelgoodery, those people are accomplices in the vagrants’ self-destruction.
Giving them food is not as bad as giving them money, since liquor stores and drug dealers don’t take food in payment for liquor and drugs. But it still enables and encourages their lives on the street.
The vagrant-enablers who’ve read this far now think I’m an evil and sadistic person who wants to see vagrants freeze and starve.
That’s not so. I’d like to see them get help. But giving them food or money does not help them; it enables them to keep their lives miserable and to spread some of their misery to the rest of us.
Real help is available at the homeless shelters. There, they can get food and shelter, and can get pointed in the right direction for treatment of their substance addictions and other diseases. The shelters are not likely to call the Health Department, though in appropriate cases they might test them for rabies and they’ll certainly call an ambulance for anyone with a serious, imminent medical condition.
I was interested in the phenomenon of “homeless” people when they first became fashionable some years ago. I spent some time on the streets, did a little panhandling (I scored a Benjamin on the streetcorner in Aspen!) and spoke with many people at the shelters.
Somewhat to my surprise, the staff of the shelters invariably begged me to tell people not to feed the vagrants, for the reasons I’ve stated. Money given to them goes to buy drugs and alcohol, and food given to them enables their vagrancy.
The way to help the vagrants, I was told repeatedly by the shelter staff, is to give them directions to the shelter where they can get food and shelter along with real help and real treatment.
These people don’t need sympathy and freebies. They need treatment and consequences. They need tough love.
For some, their treatment should include involuntary hospitalization in specialized facilities – mental hospitals. Before we became so “compassionate,” we used to give such treatment to people who needed it.
The movie called “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was instrumental in discrediting such treatment. It was a brilliant movie, but a destructive message that mental institutions are cruel.
It’s a fact that some people need treatment, are not willing to undergo it voluntarily, but are immensely grateful afterward if they get it. It’s a Catch 22 situation, to borrow from another great movie. The people are so insane that they need treatment but are so insane that they won’t voluntarily undergo it.
Should freedom extend so far that we permit insane people to insanely refuse treatment – to the detriment of them and us? Should we allow insane people in need of treatment to insanely reduce themselves to something worse than a racoon?
the Aspen beat 
Isn’t it ironic that the food stamp program (EBT), part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps, ever?
At the same time, the National Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, tells us “please do not feed the animals”, their reason being because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.
“The $50 Lesson:
While I was working in the flower beds in the front yard, my neighbors stopped to chat as they returned home from walking their dog.
During our friendly conversation, I asked their 12 year old daughter what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day.
Both of her parents – proud liberal Democrats – were standing there, so I asked her, “If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?”
She replied, “I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.”
Her parents beamed with pride!
“Wow…what a worthy goal!” I said. “But you don’t have to wait until you’re President to do that!” I told her.
“What do you mean?” she replied.
So I told her, “You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and trim my hedge, and I’ll pay you $50. Then you can go over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.”
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?”
I said, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”
Her parents are no longer speaking to me.”
BWAHAHAHAHA Oh, that is sooooo rich.
I’m not surprised her parents dumped you, but the bigger question is . . . Does the 12-year old talk to you?
Her parents are lost, but she might get things turned around at least in her own family.
That’s an old story that I co-opted for the sake of this GB article. If nothing else, the young aspiring POTUS might explore the history of what has worked in the past.
If nothing else, the young aspiring POTUS might explore the history of what has worked in the past.
Not if Kamala has her way. “…unburdened by the past…”
The homeless should be arrested and sent to shelters. These shelters should be out in the middle of nowhere, preferably Death Valley. Provide all the services they need IN THE SHELTER. They can stay there until they make things better for themselves.
Hunt them down and haul them away. In the short run it would be cheaper than what is being spent on them by the government and the NGOs. In the long run it would be cheaper, too. This kind of treatment need not be harsh, but kind and caring, but not enabling.
I feed hummingbirds.
They really work hard. Nice of you to facilitate their efforts.
Its all about the ‘how’. Structured assistance vs. endless free money. The poor will always be with us. Beware blanket labels for no two people or situations are alike. Start a temp agency that incorporates drug alcohol and malnutrition treatment. Halfway houses and work-release programs can go a long ways toward helping someone turn their life around. Write about that, instead of writing about raccoons etc.
“Please Don’t Feed The Vagrants” makes for a great public service announcement!
Personally, I’ve always really liked a PSA which could go something like “Spay Or Neuter Your Democrat Today.”
Since Democrat urban policies are to blame for virtually all of America’s “homeless” problems, perhaps it’s time to launch a PR campaign to raise awareness of these two interrelated themes … we could have 30 second ads with that nice “The More You Know” ending.
I base this on my hypothesis that there is a direct correlation in that the more Democrats there are, especially in government power, then the more homelessness, street crime and drug addiction you find in the cities and communities they govern.
The genius criminologists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling nailed this with their bullseye “Broken Windows Theory” approach to crime and community disorder some 40+ years ago.
See: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/
Sidenote: If I could be king for a day I would mandate that classical like-sized bronze statues of Wilson and Kelling be put in front of American courthouses and police HQs throughout the country. Wilson’s and Kelling’s blueprints saved countless American lives, rescued communities, and raised the standards of living for so many people.
But now it has become quite self-evident that it is the Democrats who are in fact breaking the windows through their policies and neglect that results in our broken windows cities and communities. Democrat Party governance has become the brick thrown through a window, and the graffiti eyesores spray-painted throughout the neighborhood. They are the creators of chaos, using their harmful policies to divide and conquer the citizenry to pit groups against each other just to advance their thirst for more power.
Shun these Democrats, progressives, liberals, socialists, or whatever soup de jour name they are going by today. Ridicule and insult them at every opportunity. For they are the architects of destruction … always seeking to destroy what is good, noble and virtuous all for the purpose of advancing their power and re-creating their twisted vision of a perfect social utopia. They do not belong in polite society, nor even impolite society for that matter! Vote them all out at every chance as if your life depends upon it … because in reality your life may very well indeed depend upon it. G’day.
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Is Aurora the new Caracas?
Round them up.
Round them up and fly them over Caracas. No need for parachutes, just open the door and push them out.