I remember the elevated tempers and harsh language when they contemplated NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Senators would pound fist on podium insisting it wasn’t fair to us and how the abolished tariffs and transparent borders would benefit our neighbors much more than ourselves.

Now, I find myself in a similar precarious position, how commerce between us and the rest of the world doesn’t seem aquatically balanced, especially so with invasive species.

Them nice fellows in Scotland are pissed senseless and on a war of extinction with the American Mink, how it’s eating cats and dogs, pillaging defenseless salmon, and scarfing all their water voles …

Heaven forbid we should lose a poodle or three …

Meanwhile the rest of Europe is declaring Jihad against the American Signal Crayfish, which any sportsman knows is %$#@ freshwater lobster – requiring nothing more than kite string and a rancid chicken liver to catch all .. you .. can .. eat.

Now that all them Scottish dames has scored a coat our vermin are no longer good enough. Ditto for crayfish now that all them rich sauces have laid both French & Danes low … that red wine immunity overcome by bushels of Mud Bugs and all the butter they swizzled while sucking them down.

Meanwhile we’re dancing around Rock Snot, Rock Vomit, and the leftover ichor from forty years of  horror movies as unwanted guests.

You can’t eat them, nor can you wear them, so where’s the equity in this trade? I’d suggest that while we had the best interests of our eurotrash cousins at heart, they haven’t repaid the favor – at least not in like coin.

… perhaps some invasive Dutch Chocolate, or at least a scone or two.