Brickbat: Fly Away

For some 20 years, Susan McKee has cultivated a pollinator garden for monarch butterflies at her London, Ontario, home. But she recently returned from vacation to find that the city had cut down all of the chicory, milkweed, periwinkle, wild rose, and other plants after a neighbor complained. Officials also gave her a $125 ($98 U.S.) ticket. Some of her neighbors managed to collect some of the monarch caterpillar eggs on the milkweed plants and are taking care of them. Neighbor Jillian Smith said her children loved the garden, and it broke her heart to see it cut down. But she said that some other neighbors considered it overgrown.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Property rights are powerless against a neighbour's delicate sensibility.

[SQRLSY One]

Complainer-neighbor-Karen (standoff-weapons-firing, police-goons-deploying but hoity-toity and oh-so-prim-and-proper lover of nature and the environment) will now go and vote for MORE policies concerning how Government Almighty LOVES the environment and the butterflies, and feel then OH so GOOD about herself!

I fired off a fire-and-forget butterflies-seeking-and-destroying weapon, and VOTED for the environment! My job here is done! You can thank me later!

[Brandybuck]

A group of Elk: Herd
A group of Crows: Murder
A group of Karens: HOA

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Excellent +

[markm23]

A group of baboons: Congress
Perhaps we should reconsider this one, it's an insult to feces-flinging lower primates.

[Adans smith]

Milk weed sucks, horrible plant. It was actually a weed garden, she most likely has Queen Ann's lace shumac also. I'm all for property rights, but that's what it is.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

What's your point? Okay she had a weed garden, so?

[Brandybuck]

I love milkweed. Favorite of monarch butterflies and the only place you can get those awesome white, yellow, and black caterpillars.

Yeah, it's a weed. So is dandelion. Deal with it.

Also the milk from milkweed gets rid of warts. Or so the old wives say.

[Rossami]

A weed is any plant growing where you don't want it. So I'll concede that it might be a weed if it's in your garden but you have no right to make that same statement about anyone else's garden. You say you're "all for property rights" then make yourself a liar in the same sentence.

Queen Anne's Lace, by the way, is both a fairly pretty plant and a decent food crop. The roots can be harvested and eaten just like carrots. Sumac is an excellent source of vitamin C and can be used to make a passable lemonade. You don't have to like them - but you have no right to harass anyone else for liking them.

[mad.casual]

As a libertarian largely indifferent to milkweed as it's not as noxious as something like stinging nettles, wild parsnip (both of which are also edible), or jimsonweed:

1. The common name is literally milk*weed*, so get off your high-horse Mr. FDA.

2. If he doesn't value the weeds growing in his neighbor's yard, he's perfectly within his 1A rights to call them weeds. Saying he can't is an equally oxymoronic infringement of his rights.

[Agammamon]

Weeds are just flowers some people consider ugly.

[Jerryskids]

Did the city bill her for the bullet clean-up?

[Jerryskids]

It seems to me that destroying monarch butterfly habitat should be a violation of some sort of environmental statute - maybe the Migratory Bird Act? (Hey, if bees can be fish, surely a butterfly can be a bird. Monarchs migrate, they have wings, they fly, they lay eggs - they're birds!)

[John F. Carr]

This is in Canada. Their laws are in metric.

[sarcasmic]

Laws don't apply to government.

[mad.casual]

See below. It's not exactly the destruction of monarch butterfly habitat, it's the destruction of "undocumented" Monarch butterfly habitat. Native, non-migratory Monarchs, literally and figuratively, aren't going anywhere.

[John F. Carr]

One of my considerations in buying a house was finding a place without lawn police. I like my overgrown lawn. So far no monarchs have found my milkweed.

[CE]

The monarchs have found my milkweed, and fight over it. So also have the Oleander aphids. And the milkweed bugs have found the aphids and started eating them, and the butterfly eggs as well. If any caterpillar emerges from that gauntlet, the local birds are quick to scarf them down. It's like a whole ecosystem back there. No new butterflies yet though, after 2 years.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Weeds are violence!

[CE]

Weeds are the native flora. Pulling weeds is an assault on nature. At least that's what I told my parents when it was time to weed the garden.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

Did the goverment also seize her bank account and hane the mounties trample her?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Was there a Reason slumber party last night? 9:30am on the east coast, and only this lame brickbat so far today?

[sarcasmic]

It's vacation season.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Maybe in D.C. (and France). Most of the real world is still at work, play, and war, but I guess that shows us what Reason is focused on.

[Libertariantranslator]

Gardeners nearer the equator crush those butterfly eggs lest the caterpillars defoliate their passionfruit vines.

[Bubba Jones]

If they just "cut it down" it will all grow back in a week.

[Adrian Smith]

Lumi Space has been studying the space environment for a long time and therefore is working on the manufacture of new tools for in-depth scientific activity https://orbitaltoday.com/2022/07/05/space-domain-awareness-part-of-cornwall-launch/. The proven data can be accelerated only by using more innovations that can help in this.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

For those not aware, Monarchs are seriously endangered due to habitat loss and pesticides; their numbers are down something like 90%, but that cannot possibly trump Canadian authoritarianism, right? And certainly not the ire of neighbors.

[mad.casual]

For those not aware, this is a bit duplicitous. TL;DR: Fuck native, non-migratory Monarchs, immigrant Monarchs are important!

*Eastern* *Migratory* Monarchs are down something like 90%, but this somewhat whimsical and tautological distinction doesn't account for Western Migratory Monarchs, which are also down (but rebounding) and the comparatively larger populations of non-migratory Monarchs all over C. and S. America, the Caribbean, Australia, parts of Europe, and New Guinea, which are not down/going extinct.

And, to be clear, when I say 'whimsical' I mean, unlike other animal species like bears, where a polar bear is both phenotypically and genetically distinct from a black bear, various migratory and non-migratory Monarchs are not genetically and not necessarily phenotypically distinct. The statement of 'the migratory monarch is going extinct because of habitat loss' is like saying the "Florida snowbirds" are going extinct due to habitat loss.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Check out the entomologist over here.

[mad.casual]

I can answer the question "What is a woman?" too. Turns out you don't have to be the very model of a modern Major-General to see through environmentalists' scaremongering or the one-way ratchet of the Endangered Species Act.

[Daddyhill]

I think it would have been appropriate for the city to wait until Ms. McKee to return before applying any enforcement measures. Someone could perhaps have mediated the dispute and found a way to satisfy (more or less) everyone. The offended neighbors could certainly have put up with such a minor nuisance for a short time. Regarding the neighbors, however, I'm reminded of the words of a wise individual I met in Pittsburgh years ago: "There's never a shortage of assholes."