Mood:
irritatedTopic: "Here Kitty-kitty"(5)
Troup County surrounds West Point Lake, and is only about an hour south of the Atlanta airport on the Alabama State line. This past November 16th, an unidentified deer hunter, herein referred to as "Rufus" for the sake of simplicity, was sitting in a "tree stand" waiting for Bambi's Dad to wander into his sights. A "tree stand," for the uniniated, is a chair, with a safety belt, which these bulbous athletes use to rest their tired feet, and to camouflage as much of their torso as possible. In this case, Rufus was about to be confronted with the only thing that fell outside his realm of preparation, i.e. a decision.
"Puma concolor" properly identifies a subspecies of the American Mountain Lion known as the "Florida Panther." There are fewer than 120 of these creatures still alive on our small, blue planet, predominantly because of the ancestors of the intrepid Rufus. What Rufus saw beneath him that day proved to be a 140 pound, four-year-old male, who had wandered over 650 miles from the last remaining territorial expanse of these endangered creatures, presumably in search of his own home. We know all of these facts because of the autopsy performed on the panther by veterinarians at the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia.
Frodo recognizes that a 140 pound panther does present a certain level of threat, but to a fat guy in a tree, with a high-powered rifle? That's right sports fans, our good ole boy Rufus didn't know what it was, so the only thing to do was to kill it.
Frodo is hopeful that Rufus is not in anyway involved in the current unrest in the discourse about Health Insurance Reform. We can't be sure however, since what wildlife law enforcers have refused to do is identify Rufus, much less charge him with any crime whatsoever. To, Frodo, it is worth noting that it wasn't all that long ago that no charges would've been filed against someone like Rufus who might've shot at a black man, who probably weighed more than 140 pounds, and could probably climb a tree.
The victims get equal justice in Georgia, despite the written word in the book of laws.
