Be Veewy Quiet! I’m Hunting Opportunity…

hat looks like disaster to you and me can look like paradise to someone canny enough to find opportunities amidst the wreckage. At least that’s what an odd pair of good-news-bad-news articles I came across in the Detroit News seems to suggest. First, the bad news. It’s no secret that Michigan isn’t exactly the happiest state [...]

What looks like disaster to you and me can look like paradise to someone canny enough to find opportunities amidst the wreckage. At least that’s what an odd pair of good-news-bad-news articles I came across in the Detroit News seems to suggest.

First, the bad news. It’s no secret that Michigan isn’t exactly the happiest state in the union at the moment, what with its imploding auto industry and all. What’s still a bit surprising is the sheer number of people who are simply packing up and leaving the state — and they’re not all former autoworkers either. “About 109,000 more people left Michigan last year than moved in,” the Detroit News reports. “It is one of the worst rates in the nation, quadruple the loss of just eight years ago. The state loses a family every 12 minutes, and the families who are leaving — young, well-educated high-income earners — are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild.”

All in all, the paper notes, this migration has cost Michigan nearly half a million people since 2001. Empty homes drive down property values, and the loss of some of the state’s highest earners puts a drag on the already-slumping economy.

The good news? The exodus of humans from Michigan’s cities means more room for the animals — and new opportunities for urban hunters, like retired-truck-driver-turned-raccoon-stalker Glemie Dean Beasley. In Detroit, where he lives, abandoned houses are everywhere. “As nature abhors a vacuum” the News points out, “wildlife has moved in,” with coyotes roaming the Federal Courthouse and foxes trotting about on the city’s golf courses.

“This city is going back to the wild,” Beasley told the News. “That’s bad for people but that’s good for me. I can catch wild rabbit and pheasant and coon in my backyard.” The raccoons he doesn’t eat, he sells for $12 a pop — and another $10 or so for the pelt.

That’s city living for you these days.

–David Futrelle