The Martlet

After almost 30 years of unchecked rabbit breeding, UVic’s rabbit vasectomy program is now in full swing.

Although removing the bunnies’ genitals may seem cruel, it’s a relatively tame approach to animal control. Let’s take a trip around the world and look at what other organizations and countries do when they find themselves neck-deep in feral creatures.

Where you once belonged

Between 1860 and 1907, Australians imported 12,000 Bactrian camels to help them in their middle-of-nowhere walkabouts. When automobiles were invented, the newly-obsolete camels were abandoned and left to fend for themselves.

Left to their own devices, these vermin of the outback have thrived, with a total population of more than one million.

In the community of Docker River, the camel infestation has reached Hitchcock-esque levels of horror. They contaminated the water supply, knocked over fences and blocked the airstrip, preventing any possible evacuation from the humped, spitting hordes. The two-toed terrors have even learned how to open doors (really).

To deal with the problem, the Australian government has outfitted teams of sharpshooters to battle the camel hordes. With helicopters or automobiles (how ironic), the teams are sent out to gun down anything with a hump. In 2010, the Australian government expects to spend $19 million on all things camel killing.

London’s war on pigeons

Pigeons — lots of pigeons — have long been a mainstay in London’s public places. But, as with any urban bird, their highly-acidic crap has been a headache to London’s window cleaners and public statues.

In 2000, London mayor Ken Livingstone declared an all-out war on Trafalgar Square’s “rats with wings.” The public was banned from feeding the birds, high-powered hoses were turned on pigeon flocks and a pair of hawks were hired as pigeon-killing mercenaries.

A quarter million pounds sterling later, 2,500 pigeons have disappeared from Trafalgar Square — but 1,000 remain.

Radio collar betrayal

Goats were intentionally set free into the Australian wilderness in the 18th-century. Just in case the settlers ran out of food, they could at least be assured of forests filled with mouth-watering goat. Kangaroos are far too stringy for British cuisine. Two hundred years later, millions of feral goats freely roam the Australian countryside. It wouldn’t normally be a problem, but goats made the unfortunate mistake of directly competing with sheep for grazing land.

It’s called the “Judas goat technique” — wildlife officials start by snaring a single goat, fitting it with a radio collar and setting it free. Then, once the collared “Judas goat” returns home, helicopters pinpoint its position and swoop in to gun down its entire family.

Fat cats in Ottawa

Right around the 1970s, the Pierre Trudeau government unleashed a gang of cats onto the unsuspecting mice of Parliament Hill. The mice vanquished, the felines soon retreated into a nearby wooded area and founded a close-knit society of feral cats that remains to this day.

Fortunately for the cats, coordinated feline genocide usually looks bad when it occurs right next door to Parliament.

Instead, Rene “Cat Man” Chartrand built them a village of stylized cat-shacks and has spearheaded an effort to provide them with food and medical attention.

Bacon, bacon everywhere

Europeans made sure to bring a lot of pork along with them when they set foot in North America. It wasn’t long until small bands of pigs were escaping their pens to form new hog civilizations in the forests and swamps of southeast Texas.

The hogs kept mostly to themselves, until, in the 1990s, a wave of hog-conquest overtook the America south.

Chomping their way through Texas, the hogs began invading the eastern borders of New Mexico. Feral pig sightings were even reported as far as snowy Colorado.

Currently, game wardens are begging hunters to go after the wild animals, and state officials have drafted free hunting instructions and hog-trap-blueprints.

But these pigs aren’t your average Wilber variety. These pigs have heft.

Two years ago, 11-year-old Jamison Stone took down history’s largest hog in the Alabama backwoods.

Nine feet long and weighing more than half-a-ton, the pig was only killed after taking nine bullets from a .50 caliber (comically large) handgun.

“I probably won’t ever kill anything else that big,” said Stone.