Recently, there has been some public discussion about the flocks of crows that plague our fair Iowa State campus. People have written to the Daily to express their displeasure over the annoyance these crows and their droppings present. “When does the crow-hunting season open?” they ask. That’s an important question.

They’re incorrigible, these crows. They converge on the campus trees, swaggering around the branches as if they owned the place. In the evening they take flight, en masse, and blacken the sky like some airborne pestilence surveying its domain. They relocate for the night to the trees around my dorm and plot their defecating revenge on my fellow innocent students.

They must be stopped.

Farmers used to put up scarecrows to scare the crows. Now we’ve got these boxes we hang on trees to do the job. (You know those ones that make that awful “help-I’m-a-crow-and-I’m-in-big-trouble-help-help” sound.) Boy, are those things loud! When I first heard them they almost scared me off, but they don’t seem to have any lasting effect on the crows.

I say it’s time we stop messing around. I think we gotta attack this crow thing way more aggressively.

“When’s open hunting season?” Ha! It should be open season all year ’round. You can’t try to regulate a natural urge like killing crows. In fact, to effectively rid our city of this epidemic, we must think even bigger.

We need to get people involved. Promote civic programs that encourage people to take action in removing this thorn from our side. Get the kids out in the streets with pistols. Everyone needs to take part in making our space decently habitable.

It’s our duty and our right. This is our civilization and we have to protect it from whatever threatens.

This is the American spirit that I want to reinstate. This is the spirit that’s built the America we know and love.

When we came to this soil hundreds of years ago, we didn’t have it easy. Nosiree. We had to fight every inch of the way through the vast, uninhabitable wilderness and hack out a life for ourselves.

We had to tame the weather, the land and all the ferocious inhabitants indigenous to the region. When the land didn’t produce the food we wanted, we let it know who was in charge. We ripped it up and created it anew with the contents we wanted it to have. We threw up fences and ranged it in.

Same with the wild inhabitants. If they had stayed out of our way, things would have been fine. But they insisted on pestering us, so we had to put them in their place. Unfortunately, some were nearly annihilated, but that wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t pushed us to it.

Today we have our surroundings pretty much whipped into shape, but, as with most things, there are a few exceptions. “Mother Nature” sometimes gets out of hand. Every once in a while she gets a little surly, just to see what she can get away with.

She’ll get these deer of hers running out across the highway, getting in the way of cars and that sort of thing. She’ll sprout a little bundle of weeds in every planted plot of ground from the fertile fields of Iowa to the White House rose garden. Or she’ll dispatch legions of wretched birds to disrupt a civilized college town.

Mother Nature may be clever, but we’re strong. And determined. When we’re doing something for our own good, you just can’t keep us down.

Some of you may balk at the idea of disposing of the crow populations. Maybe you think that, in the right light, even crows can be cute and charming. Well, don’t be fooled. That’s what they want you to think.

There’s no room for sentimental hogwash about the allure of nature. We’ve gotta be bold. As Ferris Bueller once said, “The bold survive.”

It’s time to act. It’s time to stand up for ourselves, like so many generations of Americans have before us.

“The crows are calling my name,” thought Caw. (These are the prophetic words of Jack Handy from “Deep Thoughts” fame.) But the crows aren’t just calling to egotistical Caw. They call, boldly and irreverently, to you and me, to all of us. Can you hear them now? Sitting in the trees, mocking us?

Their little flappy wings and insolent beaks dare us to take them on. They obviously don’t know what they’re asking for. Their little crowlore apparently doesn’t include stories of our past triumphs in this area. But they’ll learn. Oh yes, they will.

So mock on, little birds. Mock on. Your day will come.

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Juli Hisel is an undeclared sophomore from Richland.