I’ve become largely desensitized by all the recent news coverage of layoffs and job cuts across the country. Partly because the topic has come up virtually every day for over a year now, and partly because, as I’ve spent the last eight months working as a glorified janitor just to pay my third of the rent, my feeling is that your average troubled corporate executive can sell one of his houses, pick up a mop, or shut the hell up. Nevertheless, there are special cases in this tiresome recession which still possess the ability to tug at the old sympathy strings. Sure, maybe you don’t care about bank managers or autoworkers, but what about porcupines?

In case you’re confused at this point, let me just confirm that, yes, I did just show you a video of the Director of the Bronx Zoo firing a porcupine. This video was made by the Wildlife Conservation Society in response to budget cuts in New York State (with a specific jab at Governor Paterson thrown in) which are scheduled to drastically reduce funding for all 76 of New York’s zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens. This is a problem because zoos in New York rely heavily on government funding, and New York’s budget is in the same toilet that every other state’s is.

Now, unlike human workers, “fired” animals aren’t literally going to be tossed out onto the street or put on Welfare. CNN’s Christine Romans (who is the most adorable financial advisor I’ve ever seen, by the way) explained the Bronx Zoo’s emergency strategy for gradual animal layoffs:

“Zoo officials say some collections with ’short life cycles’ will not be replaced when they die, and other animals could be sent to other zoos or wildlife sanctuaries.”

I’ve actually seen this strategy in offices, too. Some long-time employee retires, they throw him a party, and then his desk sits empty for months as his position goes unfilled and the people who used to work below him end up doing double the work without a pay raise. While the remaining animals won’t have to increase their Excel spreadsheet output, they will have to be twice as cute to maintain the current level of zoo patronage.

Short of lobbying for changes in the state budget or begging for donations, the only way I see for the Bronx Zoo to keep its full complement of animals is to somehow make the zoo more independently profitable. Not sure how, though. Perhaps they could rent their elephants out for experimental mammoth cloning projects. With, obviously, a clause in the contract that if they actually manage to birth a baby mammoth, the zoo gets to put it on display. That shit would bring in plenty of money.