MORE MIXED METAPHORS

In other animal-bashing news, ranchers on public land are crying wolf. In a literal sense, they mean it - wolves are "threatening their livelihood" by occasionally killing livestock. But in a figurative sense, the ranchers themselves are the wolves in sheeps' clothing. After destroying public lands with the ravages of large livestock operations (including, to no small degree, the manure and urine thus produced) now they want to overturn federal wildlife protection programs rather than find some safer and less bogus livelihood. Bruce Babbitt pointed out that while many ranchers have come to regard the federal land they lease as their own, it is not: "These are public lands owned by the people of the United States." Too bad so few of those people even know that, much less care.