Washington, D.C. is chuckling at the news that two vultures–real live vultures, the sort that circle the sky over roadkill–have settled in to nest in the very urban setting of K Street, symbolic home of lobbyists. Washington Post reporter Theresa Vargas spoke to a raptor expert about what it all means: “Unlike hawks that find their food by seeing it, he said vultures use their sense of smell, following the scent of decay to its source.”

That’s a funny line, but as libertarians at nearby Cato could have explained, it contains a bit of an embedded fallacy. In Washington, the ultimate source of decay is not so much the lobbying but the government’s gathering unto itself an endless array of powers enabling it to punish some economic actors and reward others. Some of those sharp-clawed K Street raptors are looking for fresh carrion to drag back to their paying clients, but they wouldn’t find much to do if Congress and the White House weren’t willing to take down the prey for them. Other lobbyists–maybe we could pick some more admired bird to represent them?–work to keep their clients from becoming today’s lunch or tomorrow’s roadkill.

If you want to cut down on Washington’s growing flock of professional vultures, the best strategy is to cut off the carrion supply by shooing the government away from areas of life it shouldn’t be in.