NYS Conservationist

NYS publishes this nifty little magazine called the "Conservationist". In addition to the interesting articles on wildlife, environmental conservation issues etc., it has a page titled "On Patrol" with "real stories from officers in the field". (The officers are DEC - Dept. of Environmental Conservation.) There were two great ones this month I thought you'd like.
In Saratoga County the state troopers called the DEC because someone has dumped some snakes between the storm window and the window of someones house. The troopers didn't know what to do. Thanks to our DEC guys the snakes were identified as eight-inch garter snakes, about a dozen of them. The DEC just opened the storm window and let them go. (Sounds like the troopers might have been sitting in their car for this little adventure.)
In the other story, a man was arrested for shooting a firearm across a road at a deer decoy the DEC had set up. (Some folks will shoot at anything although, to be honest, their decoys do look like the real thing. It's just that it's illegal to shoot at them from a road.) This wasn't particularly out of the ordinary except that the man's father had been arrested the year before for the same thing. The father, in addition to his fine, was forced to buy a deer decoy for the DEC - the very same decoy his son was arrested for shooting. Let's hope the stupidity stops with this generation.