When
you get right down to it, you have to admit this is a crazy
world we live in, isn’t it?
I mean, take
for instance the other day. I’m reading the paper and a story is
kind of interesting. Seems a small town in Texas found an
eleven-foot alligator wandering around a local elementary
school. Now, you find a lot of strange things at elementary
schools, what with show and tell, but an eleven-foot alligator
isn’t normally one of them. Not exactly the kind of pet someone
would bring and then forget to take home. Nope, this fellow must
have walked in from some nearby bayou or stream around those
parts. Now, the kids all went nuts, as kids should when
confronted with some large reptile caught snoozing on the
playground. The kids all thought it was great fun until the
grownups arrived and made the determination that (a) the
alligator didn’t belong on the school property and (b) someone
might not realize how dangerous it was to be around such an
animal. So, what happened? Well, some responsible party called
for the fish and wild life folks to come and take control of the
situation. Which they did.
Now, we get to
the sticky part. Realizing that the beast was someone
belligerent, they decided that it needed to be ‘put to sleep’.
In case you don’t know what this means, beware when your kids
come for you and tell you this when you get to be about ninety
years old. What it means, of course, is that they made the
decision to kill it. In order to do the deed, they thought it
best not to do so in front of the school or the children. They
prudently tied the creature up and towed it away to some remote
area and dispatched it as humanely as possible. This area is not
exactly hurting when it comes to alligators, so it isn’t like it
was the only one left and the species was in danger of dying off
or something.
These men did
what they thought needed to be done at the time and were
sincerely trying to keep the kids from being frightened. In case
you haven’t watched television lately it would take a lot more
than two men to safely pick up and carry an eleven-foot live
alligator that didn’t want to go anywhere. After they finished,
they loaded up the animal and carted him/her off for disposal.
Heroes? Not likely, there was a tremendous outrage over the fact
that they had killed this beast.
Now, my
question is this…how would these parents have reacted if little
Billy or Sarah’s leg or arm had been taken off as an appetizer?
I’ll tell you, they would have screamed bloody murder. The very
idea of letting some wild primitive beast loose on a school
ground where it might hurt children? Why they’d hang those old
boys from the nearest tree. They obviously care more for some
violent dangerous animal than our precious kiddos.
Everyone, I
mean everyone would have gotten sued. The school district, the
teachers, the state, the game wardens…and probably the alligator
if they could figure out how to do it. No, the way I see it, the
people probably leading the charge in protest were a group of
lawyers who saw this as a missed opportunity for a huge lawsuit.
After all, the family of the deceased could hardly have come
forth and filed a formal complaint could they?
This whole
thing reminds me of an incident that happened about a month
after I got out of police school. We got a call from an elderly
lady complaining about a possum on a tree in her back yard. As a
rookie cop, I wasn’t allowed to make any sort of decision, so I
let my older partner do all of the talking. I remember him
asking her if this was her possum. She said no it wasn’t. Then
he asked what she wanted us to do. She said she was very
frightened of it being in her yard and she wanted it out of her
tree. My partner didn’t ask any more questions, just whipped his
pistol out, took aim and laid that possum to rest. He put his
gun away, picked up the now deceased possum and walked to the
police car. She was standing there in total shock when he said
to her…”Let us know if there’s anything else we can help you
with, ma’am.” With that he threw the animal into the trunk and
away we went. We never heard from her after that. But, then
again those were different times.
