Even Rats Get the Better of the Deal

Consider one advantage of being born into the world as a kangaroo rat in Riverside County: You’re exempt from malathion spaying. Now it’s we humans who are saying “rats.”

Only the guests at an outdoor church event a couple of months ago in Orange County have ever gotten a spraying exemption. The Crystal Cathedral got its reprieve when the Medfly Project made an exception it later came to regret. State officials received howls of protest and later pledged that there would be no more exemptions from the aerial application of malathion over Southern California.

But now, it seems, the kangaroo rat also has friends in high places. When it appeared that malathion would be sprayed near Woodcrest, where the rats cavort on the grasslands, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stepped in. The agency worried about the safety of an endangered species. State agricultural officials were compelled to retreat on their pledge.

Given these developments, what can humans worried about malathion hope for? That the human race itself be elevated to the status of an endangered species, and thus exempted by law from malathion spraying? Or, if the ancient theory of reincarnation has merit, perhaps humans might return to Riverside County as a protected kangaroo rat? Short of these solutions, they can hope the spraying stops, or resign themselves to living with the unsettling conclusion reached by an anti-malathion activist in Burbank: “This says to me that kangaroo rats are more important than humans.”