
Forget DC. We've got rabbits with tentacles the National Guard needs to fight.
I have a question for our so-called government: Why has the National Guard been sent to Washington, DC, to combat a make-believe crime wave when America is facing a literal invasion of tentacled rabbits and radioactive wasps?
An Aug.13 headline right here in USA TODAY read: 'Rabbits with 'tentacles' spotted in Colorado. Are they OK?'
No. No, they are not OK, and neither are we, because last time I checked, BUNNIES DON'T HAVE TENTACLES!
Rabbits with tentacles and radioactive wasps. What could go wrong?
Two weeks ago, CNN had this headline: 'Radioactive wasp nest found at site where US once made nuclear bombs.'
Oh. Radioactive wasps, you say? Found near an old nuclear weapons plant? That sounds like a totally normal thing we should ignore.
Look, I'm not an expert on pending apocalypses or a proven spotter of signs of the end-times, but I have a hunch that 'rabbits with tentacles' and 'radioactive wasps' might be nature's way of telling us to buckle the (expletive) up.
Ignoring our tentacled rabbit crisis, Trump sends National Guard to DC
And how is the current administration addressing our pending wasp-ageddon? By not doing a darn thing. The president is apparently too busy dispatching armed soldiers to the nation's capital because a government employee who calls himself Big Balls claims he was beaten up by children. (Google it.)
Opinion: Trump ushers in new DC tourist event: 'A Live Re-creation of Authoritarianism!'
Life in America is unfolding like a rejected screenplay for a spinoff of 'The Walking Dead,' and I, for one, am not looking forward to death-by-rabbit-tentacle.
When the government tells you not to worry about bunnies, worry
The Colorado bunnies in question, according to a New York Times report, have 'black spikes growing on their heads, tentacles protruding from their mouths and sluglike growths blocking their eyes.' Totally normal. Totally cool.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman Kara Van Hoose said the bunnies have something called cottontail rabbit papillomavirus, which can't spread to humans.
What I found notable about that comment is that Van Hoose failed to say whether the infected bunnies can use their mouth tentacles to grab humans by the face before exsanguinating them. That's certainly what I would do if I were a rabbit with mouth tentacles.
Please disregard the radioactive wasps. Everything is fine.
In South Carolina, near the facility where the radioactive wasps were found, the so-called experts tried to paint a similarly calm portrait of the looming nuclear-wasp crisis.
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Edwin Deshong, manager of the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River Operations Office, told The Times in a statement that his agency is 'managing the discovery of four wasp nests with very low levels of radioactive contamination,' saying the wasps 'do not pose a health risk' to 'the community, or the environment.'
That's generally the last thing a person hears before getting murdered by a radioactive wasp.
We need our National Guard focused on bunnies and wasps
Look, if there's one thing the Trump administration has taught me, it's not to trust the government. So if you think I'm going to read news stories about nuclear-powered wasp menaces and freak rabbits with tentacles and black spikes growing out of their heads and think everything is hunky dory, think again.
Opinion: I'm glad Trump is focused on nonexistent DC crime wave, not his campaign promises
I believe the government is trying to distract us from our pending annihilation at the hands (paws? stingers?) of bloodthirsty bunnies and wasps by claiming crime in DC is out of control.
Don't buy it, folks. We must demand our National Guard troops be sent where they are actually needed. Not to the National Mall or the streets of DC, where the leading crime lately is assault with a foot-long sandwich, but to the ravaged tentacle-bunny lands of Colorado and the toxic wasp swamps of South Carolina.
This is serious.
At least as serious as what's happening in Washington, DC.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.
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