The Great CNN Suburban Mountain Lion Incident

It started innocently enough; I was home for lunch and the Hummingbird said, "You look like you could use a head rub..."

Before you get your mind in the gutter, that's exactly what happened--we put on CNN while the Hummingbird rubbed my small pigeon head (and that still came out wrong).  But the key data here isn't the head rub:  it's CNN.

For the next 30 minutes, the combined resources of the vast CNN empire focused their efforts on a single mountain lion that just happened to be stuck in LA suburbia.  Now there are a few different points I'd like to discuss here:

POINT 1 - Reaction to the Mountain Lion:  So here we had a single lion lounging lazily in someone's back yard--not that I'd like it to happen in my own backyard, of course, but there it was.  In response to this one lion, the town locked down local schools and sent out what seemed to be every game and law enforcement officer within a 100 mile radius.  Eventually the lion was tranquilized and returned to the wild. 

But here's my take:  It's one [PIGEONED] lion--here in South Dakota one guy with a shotgun would've handled the incident in about 10 minutes, and there wouldn't be a police tape stretched around the county.  Crimey, the suburbia kids probably had a greater risk of getting beat up by a school bully while on the school side of the lockdown padlock.

POINT 2 - CNN's Reaction to the Mountain Lion:  While sectarian violence in Iraq actually killed people and a Georgia Warehouse fire destroyed thousands of dollars of personal effects, CNN instead sent a crack commando team to chase down the lion in LA suburbia.  A helicopter hovered over the insouciant lion as it slowly shambled around the yard, while the anchor provided real-time, up to the minute coverage of the lions whereabouts.  CNN was even kind enough to highlight and magnify the lion's location, which was already clearly visible to anyone who wasn't legally blind.  For 30 minutes, folks.  30 minutes. 

Returning to South Dakota, after the fellow with the shotgun plugged the animal, mounted the head on a wall and made a rug and hearty stew from the remainder of the carcass; odds are the event wouldn't even make it to the open column between "Ask Abby" and "Zippy the Pinhead."  At the most, we'd get a mugshot of the smiling hunter in Saturday's outdoors section.  In short, a non-issue.

POINT 3 - One of the officers threw a stick at the lion and then pulled on it's tail.  What a dumba[PIGEONED]s.   You don't need to be the Crocodile Hunter to know pulling on a mountain lion's tail isn't a recommended solution. 

So in 30 minutes I A) observed CNN gloss over real news, B) watched city slickers who had no capacity for dealing with wildlife which was there before suburbia arrived, but C) received a magnificent head rub to make up the balance.  How 'bout a toast for the lion!

Comments

[canuckistani]

Home for lunch, eh? No kids around? Forget CNN, I would've tossed that remote right out the window...heh, heh, heh.

[Amal]

:)) Poor lion.