Human Droppings

After being staked out recently at a big river rat hangout (a place where people who have fun in the water congregate every year, tell stories and buy stuff), Rat heard an earful.

I don’t get human organizations very well, but if these people who work in them are willing to tell a mere Rat how bad things are getting, it must be getting bad. My hearing is better tuned to basements and sewer pipes and stuff, but I’m pretty sure I heard right: it sounds like some organization that takes care of rivers and lakes will merely pretend that’s what they do.

Permits? Get ‘em out the door before the ink of the rubber stamp is dry. Work load? If you don’t have enough people in the organization to do something, hire a private contractor who knows even less, and costs more. Ten years of and tens of thousands of hours of citizen and DNR staff time spent revamping standards to protect lakeshores and river banks? One phone call from an unhappy friend of a high-level DNR official, and ten years of work, and new law, are put on ice. Oh, there’s also the middle school-style attendance system instituted last month.

Rat suspects there’s more, so my ear and eye will be trained on my rat hole, just to see what more comes my way. I have rat friends inhabiting buildings with a high window over the door we rats can never reach, but they say when things come “over the transom,” it lands with a dull thud, but the humans in the office get giddy about it.