Berkeley Professor Paul Licht, Head of the Berkeley Botanical Garden, describes one of his adventures in hyena management:
Oakland Hills fire.... Threatens the Hyena Station up on the hill behind the Berkeley Campus.... 40 hyenas--full-grown... have to get them out of the possible path of the fire before it's too late... move them to campus... go up to Hyena Station... shoot hyenas with tranquilizer dart... stuff two or three hyenas (large!) into back of pickup truck... drive like hell to campus because tranquilizer wears off... stuff them into rooms in ones or twos (paying careful attention to pack social structure)... shut and lock door and drive like hell back to the Hyena Station to get more hyenas...
After the fire is under control, have to move them back. Problem: at Hyena Station, shoot hyenas with tranquilizer dart by shooting through chain-link fence; on campus, no chain-link fence--only door... decide to have one person kneeling with gun cocked and loaded while other person unlocks door and then runs like hell while marksman tries to tranquilize hyena before it rushes out the door.... Problem: hyenas have ripped off the metal doorknobs on their side and damaged lock mechanism so doors will no longer open...
That's when I decided to become a botanist...
The Berkeley Botanical Garden Dawn Deer Hunt (Berkeley social occasion of the year). A mile of fence around the Berkeley Botanical Garden. Fence eight-feet high covered with barbed wire. Not all of fence clearly visible. Tree falls on fence. Fence breaks. Deer enter: wreak havoc on the rare-plant Botanical Garden collection.
When deer intrusion suspected, entire staff of Botanical Garden gather at the main entrance at 6 A.M. with their dogs. Hunt deer. Drive them out of garden. (Alas! No red coats, no horses, no hunting-horns, no stirrup cups, no post-hunt ball.)
One especially wily deer. Considered bringing in hyena from Hyena Station, but trading a deer loose in the Botanical Garden for a hyena loose in the Botanical Garden not an improvement in situation. Besides: still hole in fence caused by fallen tree.
Lack of sufficient suburban carnivores to keep suburban deer population down. Roadkill insufficient. Suburban mountain lion (suburban lion?) population very low. Suburban coyote population reasonably high--but suburban coyotes have all learned that it is easier and less stressful to survive on domesticated cats (often declawed to protect the furniture!) than on deer.
Anybody hugely rich and thinking of spending a fortune on their own garden should, instead, call Paul Licht at U.C. Berkeley (510-643-8999; licht@socrates.berkeley.edu). The Berkeley Botanical Garden is one of the four largest scientific collections of plants in the U.S. and one of the fifteen largest scientific collections of plants in the world, and has a woefully-underfunded budget of only $1.5 million a year. In addition to 13,000 plants from all continents save Antarctica on 34 acres it includes one of the world's loveliest redwood groves, and at least two places in it are among the very best places for an outside wedding in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Posted by DeLong at November 17, 2003 01:59 PM | TrackBack
Source of these stories? They were really funny.
Posted by: Cindy on November 17, 2003 08:35 PMI agree: very amusing!
We have the same deer problem in spades here on the East Coast. Carnivores eliminated (no significant mountain lion population here in the DC suburbs!) but thanks to the Bambi-huggers humans have not filled the carivore niche. No-brainer result: prey animals (geese as well as deer) are a serious problem. If I plant a tree smaller than 3" or so trunk diameter I have to fence it for years to save it from destruction. Flowers? Forget it!