The Dogs Are A Gift

 Nobody seems to honor that the feral dogs are part of the ecology on the isle of Puerto Rico. Pick up and euthanize them, tell us it’s in the dog's best interest to be dead.


We have here a historic relationship between man and dog, fighting a common enemy.


People aren’t aware of the valuable services these dogs provide. Perhaps, if school children were taught what the satos do for us; they would be more cautious drivers later.


For years I’ve watched the satos turn down edible stuff. Dog people would authoritatively say things like, “ He doesn’t know it as food.” Let me get this straight, a starving omnivore doesn’t know food. Okay, how about we try, they’re going out for fresh later and don’t want your crappy food.


Like any wise consumer, Stormy avoids highly processed foods. The less self sufficient satos scour the roadside for discarded human trash. Owl has a taste for geckos.


Rat hunting goes on at night; you don’t see it. The acoustics of this region allows you to hear well. The hunters don’t have the distinctive bay of hounds hunting in the mountains at night, but what sounded at first like squabbles in the night, now makes sense as some dogs after a pair of rats.


Lucky Puerto Rico has a friend to combat the invasion of rats. A recent Yahoo news article told of the Galapagos spending one million dollars for phase one of a program to get rid of rats destroying the environment.


So Puerto Rico what’s it going to be; care for your satos or a few million dollars? Please, don’t tell me you’d think about illegal poison! I just read about the neighborhood that lost so many loved family pets to a person, who just poisoned some rats.


Puerto Rico will have better policies for handling the dogs when she sees her satos as a special gift, maybe then we'll have an animal control plan suitable for the island.