You Got Your Problems. We Got Ours.

There is no raging debate here in Bland County about HOV lanes or illegal Mexicans or about unconstrained real estate development (unless you include all the talk about my neighbor's nice new barn ...). No, we have other problems:

Bland may put bounty on coyotes
Justin Harmon, The Wytheville Enterprise

While not dexterous enough to operate a set of rocket skates or clever enough to rig an elaborate pulley system to capture their prey, true-life coyotes are still a menace to farmers in Bland County.

So much so, in fact, that a bounty on the rather crafty predators has been proposed.

At the March meeting of the Bland County Board of Supervisors, County Administrator Jonathan Sweet presented the text of a proposed ordinance that would put a price on the head of the county's coyote population. (link)

The good news is that we don't have a recurring beaver problem on Big Walker Mountain. The bad news is that our state legislators, if they get wind of it, will probably raise taxes to pay for the removal of our coyotes (if you don't tell them, I won't) when, truth be known, everybody in Bland is heavily armed and more than willing to shoot (each other on any given day and ...) the pesky varmints - just for the fun of it.

The worse-case scenario involves my Congressman declaring the coyote to be an endangered species (he's not much for jobs in the area but he's big on trees, rocks and wildlife) and holding Bland County off limits to economic development - just when we were about to lure to the area a major multi-billion dollar multi-national pharmaceutical conglomerate - any day now.

Anyway, we got us a coyote problem. Round up the boys.