...when I can

It seems to me that feral cats are a better solution to the rat problem than minks.

Some municipalities are already trying that, Uncle Ken, but cats aren't terribly effective rat catchers.  What is effective is the scent of the cats; rats grab a whiff and decide to move on to less threatening environs.

Minks are fine for rat catching, especially the females who are small enough to enter the burrows.  The minks instinctively cache their prey to eat later and are trained to bring the rats to their cage, drop it off, and go grab more rats.  The best system is to use trained dogs with the minks; the minks send the rats scurrying and the dogs grab the rats, giving them a good shake to break their necks.  The top dogs are the rat terriers; those little brutes like nothing better than to kill rats, which they do with joyful abandon.  There are groups of people in large cities who take their dogs out to rat infested areas and kill rats by the hundreds.  A good time is had by all, except the rats.

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I recently discovered an excellent documentary series from twenty years ago entitled Cold War.  It's a doozy, 24 episodes in length, and covers a lot of ground; I don't know how I missed it when it came out but it's taught me a lot, like the fact that Mr. Beagles was in quite the hot spot being in Berlin so soon after construction of the Wall.  I'd completely forgotten about the tank showdown at Checkpoint Charlie.

Other actions from that era still resonate today, like ripples in a pond.  I don't think it's an accident that the caravan that has Trump up in arms is comprised of many refugees from Guatemala and the Honduras.  Those two nations were destabilized by the CIA in a response to the Cold War threat of spreading communism.  The nationalization of farmland did not sit well with American business interests and the chickens are now coming home to roost; payback is a bitch.

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During a recent ABC interview our president was caught in an unexpected moment of veracity when he said "I tell the truth, when I can..."  That speaks volumes, don't you think?  He must really love the sound of his own voice, telling lies rather than saying nothing.