Crocodile tears

Read this entry with your best southern drawl now, you hear?

There are a million stories to be told in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. And in the south, they just love a good story. This one needs no embellishment.

As the floodwaters rose, a family sought refuge on the second floor of their house in Pearlington, Mississippi. From time to time they glanced down the stairs into the detritus of their main floor, and saw that a veritable menagerie of animals had congregated there. There was even a deer.

After night fell, the family awoke to the screams of the deer. In morning light, they saw the cause of the fright - an alligator with a suspiciously large belly.

Yes, an alligator.

In. The. Living. Room.

Poppa shot that gator.

The end.

Now there's a story, y'all.

I want to draw your attention to a story that falls even further outside the realm of plausibility. After this story was posted on an MSNBC blog, with the picture to prove it, a veritable s--tstorm erupted in the blogosphere. The comments section was bombarded with accusations of cruelty to animals. It was said that killing the gator was just unnecessary, that the poor gator was just trying to survive, that the shooter was cowardly and trigger-happy.

Now, I get sad and a little nauseated this time of year when I see all the dead deer being hauled away from hunting camp, strapped on the trunks of cars or crammed into the backs of pickup trucks. I don't consider hunting to be a sport, and I get the heebidijeebies when I see the heads of animals mounted on walls. But I just don't have a problem with shooting a gator if it's in your living room in the middle of a hurricane!