The deer. I think we really do have our villain.

There has been way too much combination of cataclysmic and incomprehensible in our worry list lately. (See: euro.) So it’s a nice change of pace to be able to put the blame for bad developments on simple-minded critters who have no idea that there’s anything in the world outside their own need to feed and reproduce. Like deer. Or ticks. Or Donald Trump.

We have now reached the point where the exurban deer population is so large and so omnipresent that soon they’re going to start setting up trailer camps. Paul Curtis, the extension wildlife specialist at Cornell University, says that to get the tick population down to a reasonable level, “you need deer densities of six to eight per square mile or less. In the urban-rural fringes of many large metropolitan areas, it’s not unusual to have densities of 100 to 200 per square mile.”

Image Gail Collins Credit... Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Really, whenever you get to the point where the main source of deer fatalities is traffic collisions, you have way too many deer. Curtis says Cornell has had great success with a program to sterilize the does, but it costs about $1,000 per animal. I am going to go out on a limb and guess that if Congress can’t bring itself to spring for an adequate number of bank regulators, it’s not going to fork over that kind of money for deer birth control.

Also, Curtis says it would help if hunters had to bag two females before they’re allowed to shoot a stag. The problem with this is that hunters do not like being told what to do, and nobody wants to offend them. These days the whole gun thing is so volatile that even the most ardent weapons-control advocates try to keep on the right side of the hunters, just so you know they’re regular guys. (See: Senator Chuck Schumer holding dead pheasant.)