Katrina Victims: Justice is Coming

Associated Press ran a story last weekend about the heroic effort of hundreds of townspeople, volunteers, and National Guardsmen to hold back the swollen Mississippi River at Winfield, Missouri. All to no avail. Sadly, the levee failed before dawn on Friday.

The Army Corps of Engineers was quick to point the finger.

The culprit was a burrowing muskrat who allegedly dug undetected holes in the earthen levee, permitting water to penetrate and blow out the floodwall.

That’s right.

A four-pound muskrat.

WANTED: for levee burrowing and other mischief!

I must say that this excuse reminds me of my schoolboy days when I didn’t finish my homework.

“Dog ate my homework,” I would tell Mrs. Rochford with all the sincerity that I could muster.

Now, whether or not she believed me, I never knew. But I do know that after the third time I blamed the paper-eating canine, Mrs. Rochford suggested that I get a new dog that ate more conventional food.

According to the official version of the Muskrat Attack, this cagey critter had drilled quite a few holes in the levee, but they were covered by sandbags.

“They allowed constant pressure from the river to turn the relatively small, private levee to mush,” the Associated Press uncritically reported.

No one has yet explained how such lethal muskrat burrows had gone undetected for so long or why the levee was so flimsy that a few small holes could undermine the whole structure. The Army Corps is supposed to inspect levees, but maybe they were too busy trying to fix all their defective floodwalls in New Orleans that drowned the nation’s 35^th largest city.

Now the muskrat has inhabited rivers, streams, wetlands, swamps, ponds, and lakes a lot longer than humans have been building levees. The large aquatic rodent (Ondatra zibethicus) is native to North America. Its levee-mangling prowess can be attributed to its front feet that are adapted primarily for digging and feeding and its large, unrooted incisor teeth that are well designed for gnawing and cutting vegetation.

Eradicating muskrats is problematic.

While young muskrats are preyed upon by owls, hawks, raccoons, mink, and coyotes, predation is not effective in minimizing damages to aquatic vegetation, crops, and pond dams. The predominantly nocturnal critters can live up to four years and are prolific. With a gestation period of about a month, females can produce five to six litters per year.

So with so many muskrats, how are we going to defend the 15,000 miles of levees protecting almost half of the nation’s population?

Maybe we need another one of those Presidential commissions like the blue ribbon panel that President Clinton appointed after the Great Flood of 1993 that devastated communities up and down the Mississippi River.

But maybe not since the study group’s report recommending comprehensive reform in flood plain management and levee planning, construction, and maintenance went largely ignored.

Another thought is to declare the Army Corps’s levees an endangered species. After all, competently built levees that are properly maintained and inspected seem to be a dying breed.

Forget it—Congress would tap the Corps to investigate the condition of its own levees.

One local Winfield resident seemed to have the best solution.

“It’s so disappointing,” said Linda Wilmesherr. “With all the guns in this county, couldn’t we kill a muskrat?”

That proposal might just work. Surely, there will be no shortage of weapons in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision that the Second Amendment guarantees a homeowner the right to bear arms in his home to ward off burglars. While the High Court’s decision is limited to its facts, one would hope that a farmer will still be allowed to use his Uzi to take out levee-eating muskrats.