Policies regulating animal treatment ignore the more important human element.

Red squirrels are a pain, and I shoot them whenever possible.

Squirrels on my property or the properties I take care of here in Lovell are subject to the death penalty because those little red buggers cause a lot of damage. (Besides teaching and writing, I’ve been a caretaker for 20 years.) A pellet gun with a scope is my method of execution and, if they’re in range, I don’t often miss. Sometimes they’re dispatched with one shot, but usually they need two or three shots before they stop twitching. I leave the little corpses where they fall, and some other animal eats them up. By morning of the next day, not a trace is left.

I shoot gray squirrels too, but not as often. They don’t come around much anymore. Maybe they noticed their cousins’ cadavers and decided to look for other habitat. I have no mercy on porcupines either. Rules of engagement for them? Shoot on sight with a .22.

It’s amazing that so many people put up with nuisance animals: deer eating their gardens, beavers flooding their homes or coyotes eating their cats and terrorizing their children’s schools.

Yes, we live in an ultraliberal part of the country where guns and traps are considered evil, and humans are less noble than animals, but don’t they know that coyotes chase down deer and disembowel them on the run? What would they propose to do with those marauding predators? Capture them and send them to sensitivity training?

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, is enraged that birds are slaughtered to prevent the spread of bird flu. What do they think should be done? Let it continue until all birds are infected and the virus spreads to humans? A friend e-mailed me with helpful information about bird-flu symptoms. Watch out if you have high fever, nausea, stomach cramps, diarrhea and an overpowering urge to defecate on statues or windshields. So far, I’m symptom-free.

Speaking of birds, to PETA activists who want to ban fish hooks because they’re painful to bass and trout, what about bald eagles and ospreys grabbing fish with sharp talons, then carrying them to nests to be ripped apart alive with those sharp, hooked beaks? Should sensitivity training be mandated for them too?

Perhaps you read about the bird murder in Holland. People were setting up dominoes in a large hall attempting to break the Guinness world record when a common sparrow flew in and knocked over 23,000 of them. Someone chased down the bird, shot it and got arrested. Apparently “Common Sparrow” is a misnomer. That little bird was on the Netherlands Endangered Species List.

Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Randy Johnson hit a dove with his fastball back in 2001, according to ESPN’s Web site. “It exploded, feathers and everything, just poof!'” said the batter. “There were nothing but feathers laying on home plate. I never saw the ball, nothing but feathers.” Luckily for Johnson, that dove was not endangered as a species, but only from flying too close to his pitch. Dave Winfield wasn’t so lucky, however, when he threw a ball and hit a protected sea gull. The gull died, and Winfield was arrested after the game for animal cruelty. Yankee manager Billy Martin summed it up thusly: “They say he hit the gull on purpose. They wouldn’t say that if they’d seen the throws he’d been making all year. It’s the first time he’s hit the cutoff man.”

According to sea gull research by Wisconsin blogger Gavin C. Schmitt, “Sea gulls fall under the protection of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. This law, a treaty between the United States and Canada (and later Russia, Mexico and Japan), makes it illegal to kill, sell or capture certain birds mentioned on a list by the Act. Even dead birds and bird parts such as eggs and feathers, are protected.”

So, the federal government is obligated to protect sea gulls even if they’re dead? It’s a struggle to make sense of this, especially when I read stories like the one last month in Lewiston’s Sun Journal: “Feds killing gulls to fight germs in lake.” Forty gulls had been shot and more had been sentenced to death. Why this departure from federal treaty obligations you may wonder? “The birds are suspected of defecating in the water,” suggests staff writer Doug Fletcher. Hmm. Where else did these crack federal agents suspect that sea gulls would defecate besides on the occasional windsheld? Has it occurred to them that fish are probably defecating in there too?

After shooting the gulls, will federal agents guard their corpses? For how long? After the flesh rots away, will they remain on duty over the feathers? If so, maybe they’ll be too busy to bother me about shooting squirrels and porcupines.

Tom McLaughlin, a teacher and columnist, lives in Lovell. His e-mail address is tommclaughlin@pivot.net.

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