Word: rodents
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...policy. After all, no Los Angeles coyote has been known to have attacked a human, while there were 52,000 dog-bite cases in the city last year. Says Dennis Kroeplin, the San Fernando Valley wildlife control officer: "We tell people the coyotes are very beneficial. They keep the rodent population under control." Besides, he adds, "the coyote is part of the West...
...Rodent Enriched. The Department of Agriculture has much to answer for. According to a report written by the department's Office of Audit in 1973 and made public last week, the department's Grain Division once held back a plan to determine uniformity in export shiploads because of the objections of a single trade organization, whose members included large exporting companies. In addition, the report said grain inspectors often failed to notify the Food and Drug Administration of "deleterious substances" in grain destined for human consumption. Among them: poisonous mercury-treated kernels, rodent excreta and insect-damaged kernels...
...flood control provided by the dam has posed other problems. Residents along the Nile's banks now endure increasing rodent populations that were previously curbed by the cyclical floods. In towns bordering the river, sewage systems that once were regularly flushed out by the flooding and subsequent receding of the river have become badly clogged. The most serious criticism of flood control is that the drainage of more than 1.2 million acres of the nation's rich farm land below the dam is now insufficient Much of that land has become increasingly saline, reducing agricultural productivity...
...that live on the Durrell preserve are in danger of extinction and are treated accordingly. A recently arrived spider monkey that refused to eat ("Apes are the hypochondriacs of the animal world") was finally coaxed into feasting on smoked cod roe. A sulking capybara, the world's largest rodent, was found to be partial to spaghetti. "An animal likes variety just as we do," says Durrell, a skilled cook. "If you give it a tomato day after day, it goes mad. It may want a bloody watermelon for a change...
...thought about the forest near her family's place in South Carolina and could then feel the low-key steady rushing of the wood creatures heading home. She laughed a small animal laugh; feeling the furry rodent-like animals and the dark birds, settling in for the night; fleeing to their burrows and nests. She was absorbed in the late afternoon rustling of the world's weak creatures hiding away, from night and the predators it cloaked...