Die Feathery-Footed Fowl! Die!

Ahhh…another day here at the compound and all is as it should be.  The wind is blowing, the sun is hot, the fire ants are taking over my yard, those creepy little bees with spotted wings are trying to keep me from entering or leaving the house, and I’m facing a deadline for a project back east.  All in all, a great day.

It was made even better when I was re-reading yesterday’s digital version of the Woodward News (today’s edition is late for some reason…that darned digital paper carrier overslept I’ll bet) and saw something I didn’t see yesterday.  There was an article about a federal judge in Texas who has “stripped” (no, the federal judge didn’t strip – must learn to structure my sentences more carefully) the lesser prairie chicken (LPC) of federal protection!

Gadzooks…egad…great googly moogly!  What does this mean for the bird with feathered feet (yech…who wants to pluck feathered feet) and striped plumage?  Probably nothing since no one I’ve ever known has ever even seen one. 

We at CCB have discussed efforts to return the LPC to former glory and the efforts of Oklahoma wildlife people to leverage their use of helicopters and jack-booted thugs counting LPCs into an effort to keep an eye on the compound.  Frankly, as near as I could tell, the biggest dangers to the lesser prairie chicken were the government goons trying to save them.

I even considered making a movie about lesser prairie chickens.  You’ve heard of cinéma vérité?  This would have been more like cinéma sommeil (hint – push it through a Google translator).  The protagonist of my lesser prairie chicken movie is a deranged naked shooter bent on destroying lesser prairie chickens before the jack-booted thugs can count them (or arrest him for being naked and deranged)! 

Talk about cinéma vérité…now that the federal protections have been lifted it’s only a matter of time before we’ll find ourselves in the middle of lesser prairie chicken hunting season.  Of course, that assumes you can find the damned things to shoot at them.

Oh…and for those of you who say I’m just a little too paranoid in thinking that the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (aka, jack-booted thugs) are surveilling the compound from their black helicopters.  Well, even the federal judge in the news story agrees (I guess).  According to the AP article (AP – whose motto translated from the Latin is “Well, at least we outlasted UPI) the judge said that the government “FAILED” to properly evaluate data from the states involved when it declared the lesser prairie chicken as a threatened species.  That’s because the Feds and ODWC were too busy keeping track of me to properly evaluate anything.  And, yes, it is all about ME!

So there it is folks.  Ranchers…turn your cattle out to roam free across your pastures.  Oil companies…drill at will.  Hunters…prepare to shoot feathery-footed fowl on sight.  It’s a new day in Oklahoma, people!  Lesser prairie chickens must die!  But only if you can find one. 

By the way, I’ll be out all next week while retrieving my motorcycle from the east coast.  But, I’ll daily run a best-of of CCB (of which there aren’t too many). 

Have a great Labor Day!