A Yahoo News item I saw earlier focuses on the growing problem of deer-related traffic accidents:

....there are 1.5 million deer-related traffic accidents in the U.S. each year, resulting in $1.1 billion in vehicle damages.

State Farm Insurance Co., the nation's largest car insurer, began tracking deer-crash data in 2002 and also estimates 1.5 million vehicles collide with deer annually.

Pennsylvania, with its heavily wooded areas and dense population, has one of the highest numbers of deer-related crashes, with about 35,000 deer carcasses removed from state roads annually, according to a state transportation official. Other states with large numbers of deer-related crashes are Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota, Virginia, Indiana, Texas and Wisconsin.

Most occur in either the spring, when deer are most likely to be on the move at dusk and dawn, and during the fall mating season.

Some of the collisions can be quite messy. A California friend who worked in an ER near Eureka told me about a buck that went through a windshield -- embedding its antlers in a passenger's head. Paramedics had to kill the still-kicking deer, then sever the antler portion from its head, and a neurosurgeon spent the rest of the day carefully removing the antlers from the skull.

These days, man seems to be the only natural enemy of deer. I counted thirteen deer in a neighborhood herd, and in nearby Valley Forge National Park, the overpopulation problem is so bad that huge herds roam at will, at times seeming to actually darken parts of the landscape. In the winter, they starve, because hunting is not allowed. Meetings are held, but the default position often ends up being dominated by Bambi sentimentalists.

The National Park Service is holding the usual public input meetings about the Valley Forge deer problem. Ho hum.

With unhurried deliberation, National Park Service kicked off a lengthy legal process this month that will ultimately determine the fate of Valley Forge's deer by 2008. A Notice of Intent published Sept. 7 in the Federal Register marked the start of the "public scoping period."
At a press conference on a rainy Thursday morning in the woods bordering Pawlings Road, park officials and state legislators attributed the denuded park woodlands, prevalence of Lyme disease and deer-vehicle collisions to deer overpopulation in Valley Forge.
"This is a serious public health issue," said state Sen. Andrew Dinniman, a Democrat representing Chester County's 19th Dist.
Throughout the past two decades, the deer population has risen substantially, according to the park service. When the animals were counted by park staff between 1997 and 2006, they determined the density rose from 154 to 244 deer per square mile.
The current density is about 14 times that recommended by the state to sustain forest regeneration in the 3,500-acre park.
As the park service develops a general management plan, which will include a deer-management strategy, the federal agency must follow the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The process mandates public meetings.

And activists are sui generis -- a highly specialized, tiny and noisy subspecies in no way typifying that large mass of ordinary people we think of when we use the misleading expression "the public." "Irrational" and "emotional" don't begin to describe people who seem incapable of understanding the simple word "No" -- and who will resort to violence or threats of violence to get their way.

In the case of deer activists, here's a typical example (of an angry "BambiNo"):

Today, I am not asking you to stop killing the deer, I am TELLING you to stop killing deer. There will be no more deer-killings at our metro-parks. It is off limits to you and your hunting buddies. If the HCMA continues on its bloody path, then I will execute justice the way I see fit ... and that means constructing a rogue, independent, deer-police unit to protect them from you. KAPISH!

After the rest of the speeches ended, one HCMA member talked about the importance of civility in discussions. The HCMA commissioner then stood up and claimed - once again - that something had to be done about the deer because they were eating the plants.

I started waving my hands in a gesture of disgust that signified he was lying. He responded by saying, "Young man don't wave your hands at me."

I interrupted loudly, took over the floor and said the following:

"I am waving my hands because you have no idea what you are talking about. And don't give me that nonsense about civility. You don't care about civility and you don't care about the truth. I could tell you Gandhi said, 'The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.' Is that civil enough for you? Is that truthful enough!

How about Œ'The life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. The more helpless the creature is, the more it is entitled to protection from humans, from the cruelty of humans.' That's Gandhi too. Is that truthful enough! Is that civil enough! Does that mean anything to you or anyone up there? You don't care about the truth.

I told you before these deer are off limits. No more killing. No more! For 80 years there have been organized deer kills throughout Michigan. And after 80 years, the deer are still over-populated. When is it going to get under control? When? Another 80 years? I'll be damned if you're going to spend 80 years killing deer in these metro-parks. I am livid and I am fed up with this nonsense. No more killing. There will be hell to pay if you decide to kill these deer."

Then, I walked over to the row of hunters. There were six of them.

I pointed to each one and loudly said, ŒSissy, sissy, sissy, sissy, sissy ... PUNK.'

You think you're tough guys. Put your hands on me and show me how tough animal killers are. Come on!"

Four officers then approached me and asked me to sit down. Since my point was made, I obliged.

And while the egalitarian bureaucrats tremble over words like that (worrying, no doubt, over whether their children will be safe from activists if they vote the wrong way), the overpopulated deer are going through windshields, destroying the vital understory on which birds and other animals depend, and infecting dogs and citizens with Lyme Disease.

The latter is a serious public health problem which, because it is relatively new, often goes unrecognized, and does not get as much attention as it should. Not to sound hysterical, but the neurological symptoms are pretty scary to contemplate:

Up to 40% of patients with Lyme disease develop neurologic involvement of either the peripheral or central nervous system. Dissemination to the CNS can occur within the first few weeks after skin infection. Like syphilis, Lyme disease may have a latency period of months to years before symptoms of late infection emerge. Early signs include meningitis, encephalitis, cranial neuritis, and radiculoneuropathies. Later, encephalomyelitis and encephalopathy may occur. A broad range of psychiatric reactions have been associated with Lyme disease, including paranoia, dementia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, panic attacks, major depression, anorexia nervosa, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Depressive states among patients with late Lyme disease are fairly common, ranging across studies from 26% to 66%. The microbiology of Borrelia burgdorferi sheds light on why Lyme disease can be relapsing and remitting and why it can be refractory to normal immune surveillance and standard antibiotic regimens.

The disease is very common here in the Northeast, and it is spreading rapidly:

Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in North America and Europe, and one of the fastest-growing infectious diseases in the United States. Of cases reported to the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC), the ratio of Lyme disease infection is 7.9 cases for every 100,000 persons. In the ten states where Lyme disease is most common, the average was 31.6 cases for every 100,000 persons for the year 2005.[41]

Although Lyme disease has now been reported in 49 of 50 states in the U.S, about 99% of all reported cases are confined to just five geographic areas (New England, Mid-Atlantic, East-North Central, South Atlantic, and West North-Central). Charts and tables for Lyme disease statistics in the U.S. can be found at the CDC website.

The number of reported cases of the disease have been increasing, as are endemic regions in North America.

Why today's Yahoo news article had not a single word about Lyme Disease, I do not know. The insurance companies are reported to be complaining about the high cost of auto accident claims, but you'd think Lyme Disease would be getting expensive too.

There seems to be a causal relationship between deer overpopulation and Lyme Disease:

The presence of Lyme disease and deer ticks indicates significant numbers of deer. The deer ticks cannot spread Lyme to humans without at least 8 deer per square mile. This has been found to be a consistent number in studies across New England.

Why aren't there as many Lyme activists as there are Bambi activists?

MORE: While I did not want this post to end up sounding like a public service message, the more I thought about the tragic possibility of Lyme Disease being misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's, the more my thoughts turned to a famous public official whose recent outbursts about dogs were so bizarrely incomprehensible that they triggered speculation about his mental condition.

I have to say, when I watched the YouTube video that Ann Althouse linked recently, I was a bit taken aback.

Stunned, really.

It is clear that the man (Senator Robert Byrd) is suffering from dementia of some sort. He lets his emotions completely overwhelm him, he stammers, pauses for inappropriate lengths of time, turns pages without reading them, and in general makes so little sense that at first I had a great deal of trouble figuring out what he was talking about.

Before writing this off as Alzheimer's Disease or "senility," I think it should be borne in mind that Senator Byrd is:

a) a dog owner, who

b) lives in an area where Lyme Disease is known to be present, and who

c) shows signs consistent with neurological symptoms of Lyme Disease infection.

Is it too much to ask that he be tested?

I mean, doesn't the guy vote for and against all kinds of important stuff? If a mere course of treatment with antibiotics could clear this up, why, there might even be positive implications for national security!

UPDATE: Thank you, Glenn Reynolds, for the link! A very warm welcome to all.

UPDATE (07/30/07): A post linked by Glenn Reynolds this morning provides a reminder that the above video of Senator Byrd (along with my comments) would be illegal in New Zealand:

New Zealand's Parliament has voted itself far-reaching powers to control satire and ridicule of MPs in Parliament, attracting a storm of media and academic criticism.

The new standing orders, voted in last month, concern the use of images of Parliamentary debates, and make it a contempt of Parliament for broadcasters or anyone else to use footage of the chamber for "satire, ridicule or denigration".

The rules apply any to broadcasts or rebroadcasts in any medium.

And you too, YouTube!

In a way, such antics are funny, but the threat to freedom isn't. I keep saying that we take our freedom for granted, and our Western allies keep reminding us why we shouldn't.