A story Townies may understand
(This has nothing to do with the ban on Fox hunting)*
Let me tell you a story about a fictitious animal, let’s call him the Dox. Small pretty dog like creatu
re, brown with white spots and a little white tip to its tail. Soooo cute. It lives mainly in towns. The problem is the Dox loves to eat tyres, and what is worse if it get into your garage it will not just take one tyre, it will take big bites out of all the others.
People would get really cross when they come out in the morning and find “That bloody Dox has got into the garage and killed all my tyres”. This could be very frustrating if driving was how you got to work or if you were a taxi driver. People would put their cars in the garage at night lock all the doors to try to keep the naughty Dox out. But all it needed was a small gap and it would open the window or dig past the door.
Now eve
ryone in the town knew where the Doxes lived. They lived in bright yellow skips by the side of the road (you must have seen them they are all over towns). People were so tempted to sort out the Dox problem. There was just one problem. Golf!
The one redeeming side to the Dox was golf. The DOX was a very good (and free) caddy. The bosses of all the local businesses, they liked their golf. They also like to have a Dox caddy for them. Everyone knew this and so they put up with the Dox because they wanted to keep their jobs.
Now one day this person, we’ll call him Mr Doogooda, came along and was appalled when he saw people using these small animals to carry around golf clubs. I must do something about this, thought the very short sighted Mr Doogooda. He campaigned and campaigned and got the (also very short sighted) government to ban the Dox from golf courses.
In this situation as a townie, what would you give the life expectancy of the Dox? Of all the Doxes in the country ?
If there is one thing history has taught us, it is that humans are very good at killing things. Wiping them out, extinct. Shooting, poisoning, gassing we are good at all of it, very efficient. I am afraid our little Dox is now heading for the same fate as all the other wild predators, going to join the wild wolves and bears (they became extinct in the middle ages). There was a balance, and that balance has now gone.
*If you believe that, you probably think the Dox is real.