The World Shifted

My first gun! Red Ryder special. The goal: go forth and kill something. I was 9 or 10 and out for blood. The most common living things in our woods were Cat Birds. Now, Cat Birds are related to the Mockingbird and have similar song patterns. They sing their little hearts out. But sometimes they make a whining cat-meowing annoying sound. My rule: Leave them alone when singing, shoot them when mewing. So over the course of a few days 4 or 5 fell to the mighty hunter. Then, a small woodpecker caught my attention: stalk, aim, shoot, HIT. I walked over to pick up the bird but it wasn’t dead. In my hand, it looked at me with that one-eyed look birds give you and the bottom fell out. I felt sick, sorry and terribly wrong. The woodpecker said (not in words, but emotion) “What have you done? Do you have any idea what you have done?” in my brain, and then died. I can’t really explain it, but except for one other series of shameful behavior (I may confess this later), I never killed another bird for “fun”. Woodpecker spoke loud and clear. And I heard loud and clear.

image: http://flickr.com/photos/99998929@N00/2037775547/

Truth? Why not sue me?

I just had a conversation with someone that related the story of someone getting sued for telling the truth, and without even mentioning the individual that did the suing. No details please. I don’t want to get sued either. But here’s the thing: I thought that to be sued you had to either do something wrong or at least appear to have done something wrong. Apparently not so. All you have to be is alive, and in somebody’s sights. Probably you will win the suit if your facts are correct, and maybe you will get your costs paid by whoever sued you if the judge thinks the suit was frivolous. But come on for Pete’s sake. If I have an opinion about, say, onions, and I think they might hurt you if you eat too many, can some Texas onion farmer sue me? Can he or she claim I am hurting the sale of onions from Texas? You would think that since the Supreme Court claims mega corporations are persons as far as the First Amendment is concerned that I would be protected too. Am I? I guess the way to find out is to push the envelope and wait for the suits to flow. Anybody out there want to start a “Woody Search Defense Fund”? Who knows, I may already have pissed off a whole species of goose by claiming they stink when you cook them. And, they aren’t the only thing that stinks.

Image:http://www.yale.edu/terc/democracy/may1text/images/McCarthyandCohen.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.yale.edu/terc/democracy/may1text/may1text.html&usg=__smxDlp2zOpmkwBeV705mx_cCJB0=&h=750&w=993&sz=90&hl=en&start=6&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=ik2e5Uzp9I2tzM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=149&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djoe%2Bmccarthy%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

Where did we go wrong?

Once the symbol of a proud and defiant young nation, the Rattlesnake is now hunted mercilessly. Where did we go wrong?
Remember the tale of the Tortoise and the Hare? In the end, the tortoise won the race. What about the tale of the Tortoise and the Rattlesnake? In this story the tortoise loses everything. The story? Well, in Georgia there is a game called “Gas the Rattlesnake”. This is done so they can be captured and taken to one of two Rattlesnake Roundups. Here snakes are “milked” for venom, killed and skinned, cooked, gawked at, sold and generally mistreated. The tortoise is an innocent bystander. The way it works is this: the snake lives in the burrow that the tortoise digs, kind of like a roommate. When the strong and fearless snake hunter blows gasoline into the burrow, the snake leaves and the tortoise dies. And so do the many other creatures that live in the burrow. And the point? The point is that the whole exercise is pointless and destructive. Nobody needs to catch and kill these beautiful and increasingly rare snakes. The whole exercise is for a certain kind of person to demonstrate “manliness” and a few cities to make money on the festival. And over 300 species that live with the tortoise die for the morons. And of course the snakes die too. What a total waste of life.

Gadsden Flag Image: Public domain.