Lions Like Living

I commented recently on an article in the paper suggesting that the increase of attacks by mountain lions should be met with a measure allowing hunters to kill the animals for trophies. Apparently I was not the only one who thought three attacks in the last ten years do not constitute a crisis.

One of the people attacked was a woman hiking in the Kern River Canyon. She was badly mauled but managed to survive, and recently appeared on “Larry King Live” talking about her harrowing ordeal. Today there are six letters in the Opinion section commenting on the issue.

The author of the first letter evidently has no soul. He basically said the woman who was attacked got what she deserved because “she acted stupidly.” (I SO do not want to party with that guy.) The author of the second letter claimed that there is no problem and blamed The Californian and Kern County for being “one of the most red-necked counties in California and the nation.” (Oh, come on now…the nation? No way. There has got to be some place in the Ozarks way more redneck.)

The next two letters support hunting the lions and one of them suggests that there just aren’t enough deer for all the lions to eat. (Shouldn’t we just stop hunting deer then?) The next letter is my favorite. John Thrasher asked “Who wrote this editorial? Was it ‘Bungalow Bill’?” (Heeey, Bungalow Bill, what did you kill? Bungalow Bill.) Mr. Thrasher thinks he has a better chance of “winning the lottery 100 times than seeing a mountain lion in the wild.” Uh, I beg to differ with you here John. My brother (who trust me has never won the lottery) has spotted (and been spotted by) the lions on two separate occasions while fishing.

In the final letter, by Fred Colcer, he emphatically states that he is not an “animal activist or environmentalist.” Nevertheless he believes the real problem lies with the humans, not the animals. He suggests that all the problems we struggle with are man made.

I think he said it best when he said “You don’t have to connect the dots to understand the real problems. Just observe disconnected human beings.”