I have here an article from the front page of the March 9, 2000, issue of the Wisconsin State Journal, written by Dee J. Hall and sent in by many alert readers. The story concerns an effort by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to ``improve the habitat'' in a marsh by poisoning a large number of carp. Unfortunately, when government agencies decide to ``improve'' a habitat, things do not always go as planned, which is how the U.S. National Park Service recently turned New Mexico into charcoal.

The plan in Wisconsin was that the carp would die and sink to the marsh bottom. Unfortunately, nobody told the dead carp, which decided to float instead. So hundreds of thousands of them drifted downstream to a lake called (really) Lake Sinissippi, where they formed a giant, reeking mass.

Here's where it gets scary. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources decided to get rid of the dead fish by -- get ready -- using manure spreaders to shoot them across farm fields. The Wisconsin State Journal ran a beautiful front-page color picture showing a man -- identified as ``Duane Ketter, wildlife technician'' -- driving a tractor, behind which is a device that is flinging dead fish into the air, apparently at high velocities. If you can look at this picture without having to change underwear, you are not human.