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Some years ago, some activists showed up at a city council meeting in the People's Republic of Takoma Park (MD), which sits just over the DC line to the north. The local politics are infamously progressive. The activists asserted that Takoma Park's rat poisoning program was inhumane and must be stopped. Apparently still on a crunchy granola high, the council agreed and voted to institute humane trapping.

No one, of course, bothered to ask what Takoma Park would do with the rats once trapped. Eventually, however, a sane person surfaced and posed the question. The response from a city official was timeless: "rats are wild animals and we should release them back into a wild environment, so we thought we might take them up to Frederick County [still rather rural at the time] and release them there."

This almost started CWII, but the crisis was averted. I almost regret this. Had Takoma Park pressed its release plan, Frederick County would have blown all the bridges, mined all the roads, and fortified the border. The northern suburban sprawl might have been stopped in its tracks right there.