• Call to help clean up Kauai • Raising taxes wrong way to go • VA should help our warriors Call to help clean up Kauai Last Saturday or Sunday, driving up Rice Street, I noticed a dead animal in the middle of
• Call to help clean up Kauai • Raising taxes wrong way to go • VA should help our warriors
Call to help clean up Kauai
Last Saturday or Sunday, driving up Rice Street, I noticed a dead animal in the middle of the crosswalk just east of Kress Street. I don’t know what kind of animal it was because the carcass was so mangled and bloody, obviously from being run over so many times.
May have been a dog, or a pig or maybe a large cat.
Situated right in the crosswalk, I assumed that someone else would call it in. WRONG! ( I admit, I should have called it in then.)
The next time I drove by that location was on Monday around noon and it was still there.
Then on Tuesday morning I drove by again and it was still there. This time, just driving by, I could smell it.
I pulled over into a parking lot and called the humane society, (808) 632-0610, to report it. I was asked what kind of animal it was. I told the nice lady that I didn’t know because it was too mangled and bloody.
Then I was informed by this lady from the humane society that they will pick it up only if it’s a dog. Then she gave me a number at the county to call, (808) 241-4847.
So I called. A lady answered at public works. I told her about it and asked her if anyone else had called it in. She said that I was the first.
Amazing! For three or maybe four days, with all the people driving by, or walking by, and pedestrians having to walk around it and likely holding their nose, and with just about everyone having a cellphone on them, no one thought to call someone. Someone with the authority, and who’s job it is to pick up the rancid, putrid, decaying animal carcass with blood and guts spewing out in the middle of a crosswalk in the middle of town, on one of the busiest streets on the island.
I wonder how many county employees, or police officers, drove by it, or maybe over it, and didn’t even think to report it. A disgraceful example of “community pride.”
By that afternoon the carcass was gone, leaving just a dried pool of blood in the crosswalk. I wonder if any pedestrians will notice that. Or will they just walk over it.
I’ve provided two phone numbers above. I encourage everyone who reads this to store those numbers in their cellphones and call them when they see dead or injured animals in the roadway or in a park or in any public place.
And that includes chickens.
Dead animal carcasses are an incubator for sickness and disease and the flies that spread them. “Pilau!”
Let’s clean up Kauai.
Larry Arruda
Lihue
Raising taxes wrong way to go
Brilliant! Raise our taxes and our fees to cover the holes in your budget! I believe I have a better idea. How about all our elected officials take a pay cut say 50 percent of their current salaries and also give up their expense accounts. That will put them more evenly on par with their constituents for gross annual income.
Then they can learn about not taking their wives out because she needs new tires. They can learn you just can’t take money from your neighbor because you don’t have enough.
In the real world, that makes you a thief and will land you in prison. Our politicians belong in prison.
The job that they have managed to bungle beyond what could even liberally be construed as a cacophony of ills given our forefathers intentions, is something I do not know how they sleep with.
My education and experience would easily allow me to pursue a career in politics, unfortunately I do not possess the ineptitude of ethics and morality it would take.
Joseph Lavery
Kapaa
VA should help our warriors
My brother served in Vietnam and was exposed to Agent Orange. He served in Thailand. Following the hurricane in Biloxi, Miss., he was assigned to body recovery detail. He spent eight years in the Air Force serving his country and has never been quite the same. Sometimes, I think he hasn’t come home from the war yet.
Six weeks ago, at the age of 65, he slipped and fell, breaking his upper arm in nine places and dislodging his rotator cuff. Due to the back-up at his local VA hospital, he has yet to have surgery. They will have to re-break his arm, put a rod and screws in it to hold it together, repair his rotator cuff and put it all in a cast. I haven’t been this angry in years.
Is this how the military treats their wounded? This delay in treatment will cost him the full use of his arm and shoulder as well as undue, and unnecessary, pain.
Our fathers were soldiers from the time of the Civil War (I’m a genealogist so I researched it). All served honorably either stateside or overseas; our mother’s father was permanently disabled when serving in the trenches in France during WWI. Mustard gas took him from being a young vibrant man to someone requiring two canes for walking and only able to get the most menial of jobs. Our uncle served in Korea. Only a near-fatal car accident prevented my husband from being drafted.
In August, we will be placing our mother’s ashes with our dad’s at a military cemetery in Washington state. Barring infection, my brother will be meeting me there.
It’s time to support our warriors, not only as they serve, but after they come home. They deserve the best America has to offer them. Why aren’t they getting it?
Susan Campbell
Kalaheo
