Euphemism Alert

Look, before I say anything, I'm a pretty solidly committed environmental dude and all that. That's why I was listening to Living on Earth this morning in the first place. But part of the show was about the reintroduction of wolves into the wild, because the wolves used to be there in the first place, and it was very predictable. You had the Crusty Ranchers saying they didn't understand the rationale and they'd certainly shoot any wolf they saw. Because, we're given to understand, they're laboring under some sort of delusion that wolves will kill their cattle. Tisk tisk, ranchers! Such outmoded prejudices you labor under! Then we had some new, up-to-date ranchers—they gave up their advertising jobs in Phoenix, Arizona, and started ranching—and they wanted "to ranch holistically, in tune with the entire ecosystem, and that means predators."

Well, the reintroduction happened, but there were some problems, and one holistic rancher allowed as how "there's been a lot of wolves that have been taken back out of the program due to wolf-cattle interactions."

"Wolf-cattle interactions!" I'd say that's a rather broad and general way to describe what likely happened, which is that the wolf ripped the cow's windpipe out. I wonder how this will affect the program to reintroduce the tyrannosaur?