Florida's Rodent Problem

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Frog and Toad may be friends, but Mouse and Rat certainly are not - at least they aren't friends in the "Sunshine State" of Florida where Mouse owns at 25,000-acre amusement park and entertainment complex that generates over $18 billion a year in economic activity for the state, and Rat has an iron-fisted control of state government which he uses almost daily to keep his name in the news as he jockeys for an even higher political office.

Mouse has owned and operated his world renown tourist enterprise in Florida for over half-a-century, and until this month he has had a special agreement with the state that gave him full operational control of his park.  He set and collected taxes within the park, and if something needed to be built, fixed, torn down, or moved, he did that too.  Mouse laid out and paved the roads in his special district, handled all repairs and maintenance, and even created and ran the utilities that allowed the park to function.   Mouse even had the authority to set up a nuclear power plant for the park if one was ever needed.

But some of the other rodents in Florida, including Rat, did not care for Mouse's politics, especially his tolerant views in regard to the gay community.    Back in the 1970's when the park was still relatively new, gay people began gathering at the park en masse on certain days and declaring those gatherings to be unofficial "gay days" at the park.  "Gay Days" remained an unofficial but accepted part of the park's routine and culture for the next two decades, and in the 1990's park officials, realizing how profitable and beneficial "gay days" were to the park and both its reputation and its bottom line,  made the event an official annual occurrence at their amusement center.

Then, over recent years as Rat emerged as th political leader of Florida, he began implementing a series of measures which were designed to limit the political influence of gay people as well as to marginalize them within society.  Rat focused a lot of his attention on public schools and colleges where he tried to place limits on materials and points-of-view being expressed which showed gay individuals in a positive light.  Mouse saw this Neo-fascist attitude as a government assault on the rights of the LGBTQ community - and said so.

Rat, who was  openly intolerant of gays, was even more intolerant of a mouthy Mouse, and he went after Mouse and his park.  This month Rat got his rat's nest of a legislature to dissolve Mouse's special agreement that had granted him autonomous control of his own park, an instead placed it under the control of Rat via a special committee which he will appoint.  Now when planning, zoning, or maintenance issues arise, Rat will have to hope that his political appointees are up to the challenge of keeping one of Florida's main economic engines running smoothly.

Of course, Rat may not have to worry about that extra burden for much longer because Mouse could just lock the gates and move on down the road to some state with smarter leaders!   A move like that would be sure to jerk a knot in Rat's gnarly tail!

Disney World is an important part of Florida's culture and economy - Ron DeSantis is not.  Long live the House of Mouse!