The Douglass Department of Animal Control: Statement in Response to Complaints, August 2120
This story is part of Dispatches from 2120, a speculative-fiction project that imagines Washington, DC a century into the future. To learn more about the origins and intentions of this project, read author Josh Kramer’s introductory post.
In light of the ongoing crises revolving around DC’s urban wildlife, the Douglass Department of Animal Control issues this statement. We would like to thank the community for your continued patience while we adapt to our new normal.
Rock Creek Park
The northward expansion of crocodiles up the East Coast has done wonders for DC’s deer population management. The Rock Creek Park forest has an understory for the first time since wolves roamed. Yes, crocodiles also eat small dogs. Yes, this is a tradeoff.
Food Webs on the Mall
Operation Slither might have benefited from more public buy-in before we released 30 rat snakes into the former Federal buildings. Our thinking was they’d cull the mice and rats and then starve. Unfortunately, our herpetologists estimate that the snake population in the former Capitol alone now exceeds 500. Complaints from the Free Housing apartments, located in the former offices of the United States Congress, imply that our removal efforts in their area of the building aren’t executed with the same urgency as the removal efforts in the tourist areas. Animal Control would like to state for the record that snakes will be snakes, and urges all residents to locate any suspected snakes or cold-blooded reptiles using their apartment’s thermal sensors. Please report snake concerns to Keith Gonzalez, acting head of Operation Mongoose. The deadline to place a mongoose order is next Thursday, so don’t delay.
Bugs and Spiders
During its history as a District, stormwater and flood management went through many iterations as DC weathered shifts in political will in an ever more challenging natural environment. Conditions deteriorated until it became obvious that the cheapest and least disruptive option available was to unpave DC. Not many young people today even realize just how impermeable DC used to be. Hardscape covered miles of DC in the form of streets, parking lots, and even parks, absorbing heat and not absorbing water. (It sounds incredible, but it’s true.) We even had rock-hard “lawns” made of nothing but compacted dead soil and grass monoculture, because people thought it looked peaceful and ritzy. (!) Flash flood warnings were weekly events, as stormwater overwhelmed a pathetic network of pipes. The decision to replace much of the city’s land with gardens and newer, more permeable surfaces must have been both difficult and a relief. Obscure fact: some of our largest orchards are converted streets. (Ever wonder where the Fourteenth St Orchard got its name? It was a thoroughfare!) Gleaners today would never know they’re standing on an old problem area when they harvest peaches, but there are certain spots where they can dig beneath the layers of soil and microplastic to find the odd asphalt hunk.
Blame the increased damp for the spike in cockroach, silverfish, and house centipede populations. Reports to Animal Control this year increased 300% over ten years ago, a change we attribute to the constant damp, the rewilding of DC, and the warmer winter temperatures. We didn’t immediately fathom why these sacred encounters were being directed to the Complaints Department, but when we caught on, we tasked our intern (with permission from Douglass Interns Union Local 341) with putting together a virtual reality cognitive nudge called Sensitivity Training 2120: Nature on your Pillow. The anticipated 2121 drought, which meteorologists warn could be protracted, may resolve some of these “issues.”
Mammals
From an Animal Control perspective, converting some of DC’s streets into orchards was like laying out the red carpet for coyotes and wild boars.
Coyotes have always been highly adaptive scavengers, but their territorial squabbles at the compost heaps have definitely affected the local quality of life and reduced participation in the compost program. Animal Control urges parents to adhere to all child safety laws and regulations. Remember, it is illegal for a minor, including an adolescent, to be out of sight of their parent or guardian while in public.
Furthermore, coyotes mark their territory with urine, an affront to a community that overwhelmingly passed sweeping anti-urination ordinances more than fifty years ago, after pet dogs in decadent areas collectively made the city smell like a cloth diaper after a cross-Atlantic plane ride. Let’s remember that within the last century, well-loved and closely supervised dogs peed willy-nilly with no regard for public or private land, hardscape or landscape. Owners would take their dogs outside on purpose to pee, and no one thought it was rude. They even called it “house training,” which might simply be Millennial irony lost to time. Tracking errant dog owners through DNA is one thing. What exactly does the public expect us to do with wild coyote pee?
Meanwhile, feral pigs have continued their Sherman’s March to the Sea. They have now been spotted in Toronto, Panama City, and of course in Douglass. Please submit management ideas to Animal Control’s community listening sessions. Virtual Reality format preferred, and please no longer than 60 seconds.
Conclusion
The urban orchards, while definitely a social good, have put enormous pressure on our department to manage wildlife from roaches to rats to feral pigs. Public opinion about our “brutality,” and the alarmist, ill-informed, and unhelpful comparisons on social media with police practices of yesteryear has stymied that important work. (Far be it from us to decry the decline in public discourse, but people were so much more civilized 100 years ago.) If Animal Control takes the tone of a beleaguered victim, may we remind you that the governor, citing all these problems with animals amok, has proposed to cut our funding as some sort of solution.
We want to hear your vision for the future. Email us at hello@730dc.com if you have an idea for an artifact from the future (blog post, comic, song, video, you name it) that we could incorporate into the world Josh has created for Dispatches from 2120.
