Relocating raccoons and other detainees

Squirrels, rabbits, opossums, and raccoons are on my father’s enemies list. We have ridden quite a few vermin out of town in a cage, depositing them in wooded areas a short drive from the house. I, sitting quietly in the car and watching the operation, am not so certain. I have read that to be sure the unwelcome guest will not revisit one’s vegetable garden, one should drive at least 10 miles out.

People are not vermin, but even the Bible suggests that we can learn lessons from animal behavior. We are exhorted to imitate the wise ways of the ant:

“Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest” (Proverbs 6:6-8, ESV).

We are exhorted to avoid the unwise ways of the dog:

“Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly” (Proverbs 26:11, ESV).

Whether it is wise or unwise for our president to release detainees from the prison at Guantanamo Bay will eventually be borne out. But here is some worrisome data: Abdalla Salih al-Ajmi (home country: Kuwait) was repatriated in November 2005 and three years later killed himself in a suicide attack in Iraq, taking down seven others with himself. Abdullah Mehsud (home country: Pakistan) was an early release from Gitmo, returned to Taliban leadership, and was killed in Pakistan in July 2007. Taliban commander Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar (home country: Afghanistan) was released in 2004 and later turned up dead at the hand of coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Some in the U.S. government believe that if we conduct ourselves courteously with our terrorist enemies, they will behave themselves. These functionaries would do well to review the parable of a scorpion who talks a frog into giving him a lift across a pond on its back.

The frog is initially nervous, having heard of the arthropod’s reputation. But the foolish amphibian finally agrees to offer his taxi services when he is won over by the scorpion’s persuasive logic: “If I stung you, I would kill not only you but myself.” The shocking outcome of the fable is that the scorpion stings his host after all. As the dying frog asks why, his killer coolly replies that it is his nature.

It may be that my father’s banished raccoons will not come back for his cabbages, and it may be that any Yemeni detainees released from Gitmo may decide to pursue a life of quiet domesticity. But the Son of Man was not so easily persuaded by a philosophy of making nice:

“But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people … and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man” (John 2:24-25, ESV).