Why ‘Pick’ On Dr. Pollack?

Condemn Brae Burn Country Club to Help Deer in Newton

By Mickey Mouselover
August 2001

“You people in Newton make me so mad!”

I couldn’t believe my old friend was talking like that. She lives way out in the country, in Sudbury.

“You call yourselves environmentalists,” she said. “But you force us to bring all our food in by jets from California or Mexico. You’ve driven every farmer out of Massachusetts. Think of the wasted fuel and smog because of selfish people like you.”

I couldn’t understand why my friend was so upset. She continued to yell at me.

“One farmer tells me that deer even destroyed his tomato plants this year. And deer don’t like tomatoes! He’s talking about selling out for building lots. Why don’t you people take care of some of the deer that you always want to protect so badly?”

And then she really hurt. She said, “You don’t care at all until they’re eating your petunias and then you get excited.”

She’s right, you know. She makes me feel really guilty. I’ve been so concerned about the mice that I haven’t even thought about helping deer. I guess they are a serious problem to the few farmers we have left.

But we’re lucky. We do have lots of space in Newton that we could use to help those poor animals who have so little food. After all, we don’t want hunters to be allowed to kill them.

We have lots of parks where we could grow hay and let the deer graze. The grass around City Hall would be great. We could even condemn Woodland Country Club and maybe Brae Burn Country Club and turn those acres of golf into a pasture. Maybe they would donate the land to us. We could even require houses to grow alfalfa instead of grass and let the deer become really healthy.

This is exciting. I’m sure that all of my tolerant friends will be happy to join in and show that Newton really has diversity. I can’t wait to get going on this. Please let me know what you will do to help.

Until next month, your friend, Mickey