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Survival Of The Fattest and Laziest
English upper-crust wing shooters can be prone to throwing snits and fits, but this one has nothing to do with a servant’s tipping over the toddy or Lord Muddleford wearing incorrect knickers on the moors.
Now, the genteel gentry is accusing British pheasants of “unsporting behavior.” That’s pheasants, not peasants, folks.
“They are no longer flying high enough or fast enough to make a decent shot, and the (older) ones are too lazy or fat to take off,” sniffed an editorial in a London paper. “Game birds must be bred to fly up … and play the game.”
Over the past few years, outraged pheasant hunters have complained that birds raised for private shoots have grown sluggish and docile, refusing to break madly from cover and flap at Mach One.
One widely-discussed theory lays the explanation squarely on Darwin: high-flying, fast-moving birds get blown out of the sky, while ground-hugging slowpokes are loftily ignored.
The couch potatoes, however, laugh all the way back to the breeding pens, where they presumably pass on their genetic predisposition to woof a second helping of suet and lumber through the air like a DC-3 with the starboard engine out.
“A perverse Darwinism of the survival of the unfittest seems to be working its natural deselection,” asserts the Times.
“A little poke in the tail feathers with an 870 might help,” asserts American Handgunner, “It’s the American way.”
Return to the Scene of the Crime
Just four simple rules of armed robbery, and this rocket scientist couldn’t learn ’em. Rule number one — Don’t return to the scene of the crime. Number two — If you do, don’t bring a friend. Number three — If you do, don’t approach one of the clerks you stuck up at gunpoint only five days previous and mutter to your compadre, “She’s the one.”
Number four — If you’re stupid enough to violate rules one through three, don’t hang around window-shopping until the cops arrive.
Police in San Diego were at first elated, then mystified, and then just a little let down when they arrested the suspect in an armed robbery of a Toys-R-Us store in the metropolitan area. Five days after the original stickup, the suspect waltzed back into the store with a companion.
Smirking broadly, our criminal mastermind sidled up close to the female clerk he had so recently terrorized, gave his buddy a knowing nod, and said, “She’s the one.” If there was any doubt left in the clerk’s mind, it vanished in an instant.
Young Einstein and friend then proceeded to casually window-shop the area, as the clerk first called the gendarmerie, then stalked the villain on foot. SDPD’s finest arrived in a timely fashion and took no guff, cut no slack, hooked ’em, booked ’em and didn’t look back.
They were pleased to make the arrest and clear the crime, but as one cop asked, “How proud can you be of arresting a cretin like this?”
Hey, pal, it all counts toward 30.
Sometimes Love Hurts — A Bunch
Linda Dillon says she tried to commit suicide with a .22 but the cops are having a tough time buying it. First, she can’t produce the weapon. Second, one shot in the head could be a suicide attempt, okay, but seven pops in the gourd? Something just ain’t right.
Hermosa Beach, Calif., officers went to Dillon’s apartment after a downstairs neighbor reported hearing moans. They found Dillon, a 57-year-old computer consultant, lying incoherent in the hallway of her blood-spattered apartment.
Hospital X-rays showed three slugs still lodged in her head, and other wounds to her neck, cheek, and behind her left ear. A powder-scorched pillow was found at the scene, but no weapon.
As soon as Dillon could talk, she claimed she had tried to commit suicide. Police said she was uncooperative and evasive about such minor matters as when, how, and why she made the alleged attempt, much less how she maneuvered a pillow into position to muffle the shots, then found the determination to fire six or seven rounds into her noggin, then get rid of the gun.
The usual suspects — an ex-husband and a friend — were rounded up, questioned and released. Police were convinced neither was involved in the incident, and agreed they were unlikely to come up with a guilty party as long as Dillon claimed to be her own assailant.
Dillon’s survival was amazing enough, but a doctor’s report made it all the more puzzling.
“The wounds are old,” said police Captain Mike Lavin. “The doctor estimates at least 48 hours or more old. I’m not kidding, it’s unbelievable … We’re talking at least a few days, maybe three or four days.”
Lavin expressed just a tad bit of doubt at Dillon’s suicide story. If she was covering up for someone, he theorized, “It must be someone she really likes.”
Author’s Note: Don’t even think about it. I don’t like anybody that much.
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Mark Moritz hung up his satirical spurs to a collective sigh of relief from America’s gun writers whom he had lampooned in Friendly Fire for two long, painful years. The 10 Ring is written by Commander Gilmore, a retired San Diego police officer who bases his humor, like Mark did, on actual occurrences. All the incidents described by the Commander are true.
