While economic times are tough across Michigan as its people slog through a difficult and protracted deindustrialization, Beasley remains upbeat.Where one man sees a vacant lot, Beasley sees a buffet.
"Starvation is cheap," he says as he prepares an afternoon lunch of barbecue coon and red pop at his west side home.
It's a fascinating story, and Beasley has some wisdom to share. The video is worth a viewing for his sake, though the host is annoying to the point of physical pain. Leaving aside the issue of raccoon hunting, however, my focus was immediately grabbed by the following portion of the article:
Hunting is prohibited within Detroit city limits and Beasley insists he does not do so. Still, he says that life in the city has gone so retrograde that he could easily feed himself with the wildlife in his backyard, which abuts an old cement factory.
He procures the coons with the help of the hound dogs who chase the animal up a tree, where Beasley harvests them with a .22 caliber rifle. A true outdoorsman, Beasley refuses to disclose his hunting grounds.
"This city is going back to the wild," he says. "That's bad for people but that's good for me. I can catch wild rabbit and pheasant and coon in my backyard."
Detroit was once home to nearly 2 million people but has shrunk to a population of perhaps less than 900,000. It is estimated that a city the size of San Francisco could fit neatly within its empty lots. As nature abhors a vacuum, wildlife has moved in.
A beaver was spotted recently in the Detroit River. Wild fox skulk the 15th hole at the Palmer Park golf course. There is bald eagle, hawk and falcon that roam the city skies. Wild Turkeys roam the grasses. A coyote was snared two years ago roaming the Federal Court House downtown. And Beasley keeps a gaze of skinned coon in the freezer.
So this is the future? Correction: This is the present. Yes, this is really happening to what was formerly a booming industrial metropolis, and important American city. Right now.
America is stifled by labor unions, sending our factories overseas, and not replacing them with anything. The workers don't suddenly become skilled service-based or high-tech producers, they just fade into whatever jobs are available. And the cities carved decades or centuries ago out of the wilderness begin to return. Meanwhile, out-of-touch politicians contrive "green economy" schemes in which shackling industry and business with oppressive environmental legislation is somehow supposed to produce more money magically. Perhaps the raccoons are going to subsidize them.
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