FOX 5 in D.C. was reporting a story in last nights news cycle on a request from -- if memory serves -- Fairfax county, or another D.C. area suburban area that had put in a request for $200,000 in homeland security funding to development a plan to evacuate peoples pets if an emergency hit the D.C. area (... that required evacuating the people from the area).

Look, I'm a pet lover myself.  I have a home full (so it seems with at least 7 of them here) of birds.  If I could, I'd have a cat and/or a dog, but other family members are allergic so birds it is.  I'd do everything reasonably possible to take these pets with me if I had to evacuate the area in an emergency, but first and foremost would be the safety of myself and my family.  Sorry, but we are at the top of the food chain for a reason.  While I love these pets, and don't want them to suffer, if I have to leave because there is a radioactive/biological cloud floating over the area, I'm getting in the vehicle and I'm leaving asap.

I don't pretend to assume that I'd be able to take the pets with me, and I'd hate to think that they may suffer if left in my house, but I'm not going to ask my fellow man -- i.e., fellow tax payers -- to pay for rounding up my pets and getting them out of the area.

$200,000 is a pittance in the grand scheme of things, but in this case it seems like a complete waste of money to me.  Developing a plan to have some, uh, volunteer stay behind and round up pets and then put them in trucks, buses, or some other vehicles to move them outside the area is the last thing I think anyone should be tasked to do, especially if it means spending government money on doing it.  The government, and society in general shouldn't be involved in this operation unless, sadly, there was clean up work to be done that required removing the carcasses of the pets that were left behind.

Just my $0.02.  If you don't like it, or if you agree, speak up below.