Althouse: "France was punished on Thursday for not taking proper care of its hamsters."

June 9, 2011

"France was punished on Thursday for not taking proper care of its hamsters."

The NYT reports.

15 comments:

Chip Ahoy said...: Maybe France can buy some camel credits from Australia.; 6/9/11, 10:43 PM
Andrew said...: Oui, les bourgeoisie peuvent être très méchant... Vive les animaux!; 6/9/11, 10:44 PM
Fred4Pres said...: I assume "proper care" in France is to serve those tasty rare hamsters as a fine entree in a 3 star Michelin restaurant.; 6/10/11, 12:56 AM
edutcher said...: Remind me again why we liberated these people.; 6/10/11, 5:56 AM
Toad Trend said...: "If France does not adjust its agricultural and urbanization policies sufficiently to protect it, the court said, the government will be subject to fines of as much as $24.6 million."

According to my calculations, that's approx. $30,750 per hamster.

In my local pet store, they are sold for about $10 each.

Being the LAST wild hamster species left, you'd think they'd want to take more drastic measures (relocation/recolonization near their favorite food source) rather than levy a fine.

Maybe the french needed to know which cost would be less, first, before they acted...because a good frenchman is a stubborn frenchman. Heck, they'd be germans if it weren't for us.; 6/10/11, 6:06 AM
Lockestep said...: So, an international court has ruled Alsace must 1) tell farmers what to grow and 2) stop projects to protect an Agricultural pest.
There is an object lesson here.; 6/10/11, 6:17 AM
Fred4Pres said...: I did not know the Endangered Species Act was effective in France.; 6/10/11, 6:56 AM
gerry said...: Unleash the hamsters!

I wonder what the Great Hamster's methane load is? I mean, In Australia they are killing camels to reduce camel methane pollution.; 6/10/11, 7:31 AM
Synova said...: Do like Prairie Dogs here and make the road verges Hamster habitat, plant some alfalfa (it's sort of pretty anyway) and let people give them food like corn.

There will be a few that get run over by cars, but probably not that many, not compared to however many there are that stay undercover.

Rabbits seem to want to run across the road all of the time, but Prairie Dogs like to dig their holes and stay as close to them as possible. I'll be hamsters are more like Prairie Dogs than Rabbits.; 6/10/11, 7:52 AM
Quaestor said...: So the hamsters like alfalfa, do they? It's obvious they are already dependent on humans if human-planted crops are vital to their survival. Ergo it's it's in their genetic background to adapt to our agricultural activities. Let evolution take its course. Yes many will die, but the survivors will be those which have successfully adapted to the later maturing crop.

I really despise environmentalism, which isn't science, but a religion based on 19th romanticism run amok. If one is really respectful of nature then one must refrain from trying to impose one will upon it simply to satisfy a jejune sympathy for "cute and cuddly" fuzzballs.

Evolution has created in mankind yet another species empowered to radically alter the environment to suit our own survival. There's nothing unique about that, per se, many species in the past and the present have that ability. The only thing special about humans in that regard is that we are eukaryotes.; 6/10/11, 8:42 AM
Wince said...: The Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Union’s highest court, ruled Thursday that France had failed to protect the Great Hamster of Alsace, sometimes known as the European hamster, the last wild hamster species in Western Europe.

No one expects the Hampster Inquisition!; 6/10/11, 8:43 AM
Anonymous said...: At least hamsters don't suffer the same horrible fate that sometimes befalls gerbils.

Peter; 6/10/11, 8:46 AM
Phil 314 said...: Fred;
I assume "proper care" in France is to serve those tasty rare hamsters as a fine entree in a 3 star Michelin restaurant.

Yes, but "free range" hamsters taste so much better.

(PS I had hamsters as a kid. they still get to me.); 6/10/11, 10:47 AM
Anonymous said...: This is the punishment for France's role in making the EU into a fascist superstate.; 6/10/11, 11:15 AM
Casey said...: This is the end result of the Nanny State. Louis XIV would weep.

Now, if the Court of Justice were serious about this, they would give every hamster a teeny Karabiner 98k and an itty-bitty Wehrmacht helmet. Problem solved.; 6/10/11, 8:48 PM