Protests After Palo Alto Cops Kill Mountain Lion

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instead, they go on and on for 3 weeks about how evil America is and how they were so mean to those poor Iraqi prisoners. Oh, and that poor mountain lion!!
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Now you see why I agree with the protestors. It isn't MOUNTAIN LIONS running down our troops in Iraq.

We need more mountain lions and less Kalifornians.:D
 
Yep, the animals rights people are right up in arms over this trying to crucify the officers for the decision. But then........ how up in arms do you think people would have been if it had killed one of the kids in that neighborhood.

We had a similar situation here in Maine last year. A moose wandered out of the hills into the Back-Bay area of Portland during the height of the rut. Officers ended up having to shoot it, and the public went nuts.

This is the problem, people who have never been in the outdoors never understand how dangerous a wild animal CAN BE. They just stand there going "Oh, look at the big kitty." or "Awwww look at the cute moose." That usually lasts up until they're going "OH MY GOD, IT'S EATING/TRAMPLING MY CHILD!"
 
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They just stand there going "Oh, look at the big kitty." or "Awwww look at the cute moose." That usually lasts up until they're going "OH MY GOD, IT'S EATING/TRAMPLING MY CHILD!"
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Tip your hat and say, "Sorry about that, Ma'am. Just think of it as cholorine in the gene pool.":D
 
Quote by MarineTech:

"how up in arms do you think people would have been if it had killed one of the kids in that neighborhood"

Well said. It's like a doublebind - if they kill the lion, eveyrone throws a fit: "it was just trying to sleep peacefully!!" But if they don't kill it and the lion kills someone, then they'd cry "Why didn't someone kill it!?!? It's a dangerous animal!"

Although, if I recollect, a few months back a man out for a run was killed by a mountain lion - once caught, the mountain lion was, of course, killed. After that, animal lovers started raising money to help the cubs of the lion who was killed - put them in a zoo habitat or something. No sympathy or money-raising for the dead MAN's family - wife and kids. Just some sick, twisted values these days, equating animals with man.

Ryan
 
I came across this great editorial on the subject, Debra J. Saunders:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0504/saunders.html

Excerpt:
+++
Furrier's children, Tyler, age 2, and Caroline, 3, were playing in the yard when Kelsey began barking at the puma. If the dog hadn't confronted the lion, it might have attacked his tots and dragged them away. Now, there's a shrine in Furrier's neighborhood for the fallen mountain lion.


"What would the shrine have been like for my kids?" Furrier asked.
+++

For those of you who are looking for some great conservative editorials delivered daily, check out www.jewishworldreview.com. I'm not Jewish, but I read it daily.
 
Looks like a good conservative column - I plan to read it more when I get home today.

Isn't it sad that having the view that humans are of more worth than animals is considered conservative?:scrutiny: Seems like it should a belief that every person should have, at least those that value life.

Ryan
 
Haha, oh God, I love it how so many fat white women try so hard to be "ethnic" in order to be "fashionable". God they disgust me......I wish they'd just clamber back up into their Suburbans (with the "Friends of the Earth bumper sticker") and engage their fat white Birkenstock clad hooves to the pedal, and go on back to the nearest Cold Stone Creamery where they and their fellow heifers can indignantly rail against all of the wrongs in the world, keeping it to themselves within the herd.
Click to expand...


Thanks a lot!

I just blew coffee ALL over my monitor!

:D :D :D ROTFLMAO!!!!!
 
Just what was feared has happened in the recent past - a friend formerly from MA who now live in the SF Bay area informs me:

"This isn't the first time the moron crowd came out following the shooting of a lion out here. In 1992 a woman was killed by a lion at Tahoe as she was jogging. She left two small children. The female cat was shot and killed. Fish and Game discovered that she had 2 cubs of her own. Prepare yourself for this is "only in California".....the fund set up for the cubs received more than double the donations that the woman's family recevied!"
 
natedog: Anyone know how to take a screenshot of the desktop?

Works if I hit "Print Screen" - then paste into Paint or MS Photo Editor or whatever.

CR
 
Next time, let the protesters to up the tree and try to bring the hungry mountain lion down.

I'll take a ticket to that one!


+++ Might go something similar like this: +++

A tourist is in Spain, and goes to a fancy restaurant for dinner. As he looks around, he notices a diner being served a beautifully garnished dish with two gigantic meatballs in the middle. When the waiter asks him for his order, the man asks him about the meatball dish. The waiter explains that the meatballs are bull's testicles, and when the bull loses the bullfight, the bull is brought to the restaurant, and this beautiful dish is made.

The diner tells the waiter that he wants the bulls testicles for dinner, but the waiter tells him that only one bull a day is brought to the restaurant, but he can have it tommorrow. The diner agrees. The next day the diner goes to the restaurant, and orders the testicle dish. When his food is brought out, he notices that the meatballs are extremely small. He mentions this to the waiter, and the waiter replies, ''Well sir you have to understand, sometimes the bull loses, sometimes he doesn't!"
 
Interesting little followup......


Dangerous cats, like most dangers, are uncommon in mellow, affluent Palo Alto, California. Then two horses were attacked by a mountain lion near the Stanford campus earlier this month. Stanford University’s response to this assault was decisive and emphatic: Jeff Wachtel, Senior Assistant to Stanford’s president, immediately announced that no firearms could be used to capture or kill the creature, citing concerns about public safety. Nothing would actually be done to capture the panther.

Following the horse-slaying, the cat apparently worked its way up creek channels into residential Palo Alto, and rumors of its arrival followed. A professor I know correctly instructed his children that, should they encounter the beast, they should shout and raise their arms over their heads to look big, in order to frighten it off. His concern was appropriate: Mountain lions, though rare, have killed at least six Californians over the past 114 years and mauled eight more.

On Monday, Palo Alto police tracked the mountain lion to a tree on Walnut Drive. According to a grim video report by area TV station KPIX, police considered using a tranquilizer dart, but decided against it because local elementary schools would soon release their students, and darts might take 20 to 30 minutes to knock the animal out. So an officer aimed her rifle at the mountain lion's heart. The sleeping cat stirred, and the officer fired. It tumbled through the tree past a child's swing, ran behind a hedge, crossed a driveway, and lay down to die amid some cactus and lavender.

That is quite a bit of excitement for these parts, and it is not surprising that it has generated some headlines. What is surprising is the way a wildlife-control operation unleashed such a torrent of moralizing and outrage. Second-guessing and recriminations began immediately. KPIX showed a video of the shooting to Alfredo Kuba, a member of a group called In Defense of Animals. "I think it's absolutely atrocious the way the police behaved," Kuba told them. "Obviously the animal was not posing a threat to anyone. It was in a tree."

Meanwhile, the Palo Alto Daily News headlined Wednesday's paper with "Lion's Killing Sparks Furor." It included a picture of flowers and written tributes left at the base of the tree, including this eulogy: "Your death will not be in vain. Tears are shed for you, and this brutality will inspire ACTION. You are loved." (This was not the only written message directed to a specific animal in connection to this incident. The San Jose Mercury News reported that the owners of Kelsey, the Labrador retriever who chased the cougar up a tree, received an e-mail calling their dog a "traitor to animal-kind.")

The letters page of the Daily News carried four notes condemning the shooting. A letter asked where the "backup plan" was to prevent the suffering of the dying animal. Another from a South African biology student faulted the "trigger-happy", "incompetent" police for not packing adequate firepower, and noted that the lion was not a threat because it was chased up a tree by a dog. Another allowed that, had the cat been "alert and aggressively approaching something or someone, then shooting the animal might have been the only option," but insisted there had been time for "trained professionals to be brought in."

A fourth letter — by Robert More of Palo Alto — compared the shooting of the mountain lion to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and found both unnecessary. "It seems to me that what is potentially dangerous is the attitude that we need to annihilate anything determined to be potentially dangerous."

I disagree with More’s conclusions, but we both draw the same analogy from this situation: There are underlying cultural ideas at work that inform both reactions to the cougar’s shooting, and to the war in Iraq. It is not a perfect analogy: The young cougar was a genuinely beautiful creature and its death is regrettable, while Saddam Hussein’s regime was a hellish travesty of government mourned only by the deluded and the complicit. Nevertheless, these (over)reactions to the cougar’s demise stem from some of the same ideas that drive opposition to the current worldwide war against terrorism. Whether on the local scale of a dangerous predator loose in the neighborhood, or on the grand scale of rogue states that sponsor terror and proliferate weapons, many of the same ideas about the legitimate uses of force shine through.

Idea #1: Weapons are bad, and taint those who use them.

The comment that "trained professionals" should have handled the situation ignores the fact the officer who killed the mountain lion was herself a trained professional, not some jackleg vigilante. There is a notion shared throughout these letters and comments that the force used was excessive, and that a tranquilizer gun should have been employed. But tranquilizer guns are not instantaneously effective, and they are not standard issue. There was no non-lethal option at hand that could neutralize the threat quickly. The officer on the scene could have stood there wishing for such a device, but instead she did her job with the best tools and judgment at her disposal.

In the right hands, tools like that rifle make civilization possible. Without them, we'd be up to our navels in mountain lions, or worse; and we'd have no time for civilized pursuits like writing panegyrics to feline martyrs and e-mailing canine traitors.

On an international scale, weapons under the command of a competent and disciplined military are especially good for deterring human threats, because humans are social animals that can occasionally learn from others' experiences. An excellent example of this sort of behavior is Muammar Qaddafi's relinquishing of Libya's WMD programs. After seeing how dictatorial regimes like Taliban Afghanistan, Saddam's Iraq, and Charles Taylor's (remember him?) Liberia fared against American resolve, Qaddafi folded, without a shot being fired. This example is antithetical, however, to the blue-state mantra that violence absolutely never solves anything.

Idea #2: We had it coming.

What do you expect, when development expands relentlessly into the habitats of wild creatures? Each new house and road and parking lot destroys more habitat area, and then the creatures have nowhere to go. We have two choices: somehow stop the expansion of civilization, or learn to live with bears rifling through our garbage, deer crashing through our windshields, and mountain lions carrying off the occasional cyclist. A third option, resisting these incursions, would be immoral, since we are all complicit in prosperity's depredations and the animals don't know any better.

The same principle is writ large in the opposition to the war on terror. Western success, according to anarchist philosopher Franz Fanon, rests on slavery and oppression — an idea shared by both the American and European Left, and the terrorists. So what do you expect when unjust Western prosperity establishes a toehold? It causes an inevitable reaction, in the form of terrorism. This principle assumes that, like wild animals, potential terrorists are utterly incapable of exercising the restraint we demand of ourselves. This idea is dreadfully condescending, of course, as well as wrong: See Qaddafi, above.

Idea #3: Treed animals don't pose a threat. And Saddam was up a tree.

Nice theory — but in fact, threatened, cornered, or wounded animals are at their most desperate and dangerous.

Saddam was boxed in, all right. The problem was that the population of Iraq was boxed in with him, and paying a terrible price for our forbearance. And the other problem is that through the corrupt U.N. Oil-for-Food program, through payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, and through relationships with terrorists like Abu Abbas, Abu Musad Al-Zarqawi, and possibly even Mohammed Atta, Saddam continued to threaten and corrupt the world.

Idea #4: A deadly attack must be imminent to justify deadly force.
In criminal law, this statement is strictly true. But when dealing with rogue nations or terrorist groups seeking WMDs, just as against stealthy predators in the neighborhood sizing up the schoolchildren, imminent is far too late. As President Bush put it in his 2003 State of the Union address, "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?"

Considering this list of reasons shows how simplistic and wrong it is to accuse the antiwar left of cowardice. In fact, they are quite brave — I would even say reckless — to bear the risks of predatory felines and predatory states so cheerfully (if, that is, they truly understand the risks.) But that bravery is simply the logical outcome of these deeply held, deeply flawed principles that deem effective resistance to be immoral. Stoic resignation is the only option left to them.

I, on the other hand, remain an unabashed coward. Hungry cougars, sarin-spewing terrorists, nukemongering dictators — I lack the courage and the intellectual agility required to keep on ignoring them. Threats to civilization must be confronted, with deadly force when necessary. Waving our arms around, shouting, and trying to look big is no way to go through life.

— Clinton W. Taylor is a lawyer and a Ph.D. student in political science at Stanford.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/taylor200405210925.asp
 
My thoughts on this:

1. The real hero of this situation isn't being talked about. Who was the hero? The cop with the m4orgy using it for something that a decent duty revolver would have done better? Nope. The protesters? nope. The lady with the ankle biters? Nope. Can't guess? The dog. GOOD GOD PEOPLE A FREAKING LABRADOR THAT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MORE THAN 60 LBS SOAKING WET FACED DOWN A 100 LBS + MOUNTAIN LION! that is pure guts. that dog must need a wheelbarrow. realasticly it would have taken 3-4 large dogs to fight and kill that mountain and atleast one of those dogs wouldn't have lived. Dang i have always known Labs were one of the best if not the best over all breed of dog but even i'm surprised. If he was my dog he'd be getting his fill of grilled steaks for a month.

2. This situation only confirms what the entire rest of the country knows.
edited: I realized if i state what the rest of the country thinks about californians i'll be banned.

3. 223 isn't enough gun.
 
What do ya mean, .223 ain't enough gun? Knocked the cat down, and it died seconds later. I've seen deer run for miles after being hit by .308s for crying out loud.

I want to know more about the officer that took the shot. I watched the video fully expecting to see 4 or 5 cops light up that cat like a x-mas tree. "34 shots fired, and the cat was hit 3 times" you know the routine.

Wonder if she's a gun enthusiast or a hunter? That was a decent shot too, looked to be maybe 30 yards, one shot and no more needed. I don't think alot of city cops put alot of time into their tactical carbine training. She also seemed very confident and sure of herself. Wasn't yelling or asking for advice. Just shouldered....waited, took the shot.

(And yes, the Lab is also a Bigger Man than I!)
 
YOU GUYS ARE FORGETTING!!

You are talking about the land "Of fruits and nuts!!" This is California, man!
These liberal fools would give up their Constitutional rights in a heartbeat if they thought it would give them security! Firearms, for the most part are "taboo". Most of these gun grabbing idiots would protest even if you shot a guy who was in your home raping your wife, had just beat the $&#$(%!! out of your kids and was stealing the family treasure while holding a gun on you.

Well couldnt you have called the police? You could have talked your way out of it, right? :scrutiny: Did you try to reason with him?:fire:

Thats the PRK mentality. So to say that we have people "protesting" what the officer did is just a given here in this state. I am just wondering what would have happened if on 9-11-01 happened in CALI. These damn fools need a wakeup call....

MaceWindu from the Land of Fruits and Nuts (the only reason I stay here is because of family.)
 
What do ya mean, .223 ain't enough gun? Knocked the cat down, and it died seconds later.
Click to expand...
Actually, according to the paper here, it took 20 minutes for it to die, during which time it was writhing around in pain.
 
I was kind of suprised they fired at the animal like that up in the air.. Considering that she could have missed/overpenetrated.. then wheres the bullet going? I wonder if they used frangible rounds.
 
Yes, it was out of action--I believe it ran a short distance and collapsed.

Looking back at my comment, I see that it looks like I was criticizing the decision to shoot the lion. What I intended was a response to the comment about .223 being enough gun. I suppose it was enough in the sense that it did quickly immobilize the animal. It most definitely wasn't enough gun in the sense that the lion most certainly did not "die in seconds."

I guess I'm a little sensitive after reading the coverage of this in the local papers. I've seen dozens of statements in the paper that the lion was shot with "a high-powered rifle." To which my reaction was, "But, the gun in the picture appears to be an AR-15, not a high-powered rifle. Did they use a different gun than what's in the picture?" But, no, it appears that it's just the usual liberal spin that any gun that looks "evil" is "high-powered."
 
actually an ar-15 IS a highpowered rifle. To be called "high powered" it must launch a bullet with a muzzle vecolocity of 2500 feet per second. since 55 grn .223 from a 20 inch ar-15 clocks 3250 (winnie q3131 from my 20 inch mil-spec) an ar-15 is high powered. It took the cat 20 minutes to die. THAT IS INHUMANE AND UNACCEPTABLE. Just because its dangerous and needs to be killed doesn't mean it needs to suffer. 25-30 years ago, back when we had real cops with real guns instead of 5'2 110 lbs women with space guns, an officer would have arrived on scene with a pumpaction 12 guage shottie loaded with OO buck and a smith and wesson model 19 or a colt trooper .357 mag with 125 grn ammo. cat would have been dispatched at close range with the shottie and if still alive and suffering the cop would have likely finished it with another blast or used his .357.
 
Kernal the rifle wasnt the problem.

One shot took it out of the tree and off of its feet, obvioulsy it missed the heart/lungs/CNS. I would have given it another two in the hat once it was on the ground, they left it to die.

I even shoot squirrels at least once more when they fall, even though they cant last more than a minute with a .22 that ripped they're chest out. If they're still gasping, they get one in the ear.
 
First babe snatched up by a cat and the animal lovers will shut up. BTW, I love animals too. They look good in my sights. :)

Like Dr. Rob says, PETA = People eaten by the Animals.
 
CURSE THESE WILD ANIMALS! What's with these things?!? We cut down their habitat and surround them with concrete when their territory is usually hundreds of miles and they think they can just wander out of their little forest-hole whenever they feel like it?! Man, I mean -- I understand that the stupid thing was underweight probably because all of it's natural prey has fled from human encroachment, but can't it just adapt to a more vegan diet? I mean there's still PLENTY of grass and berries? The bears do it! What's wrong with these things?! I hate these apex predators that don't know better than to instinctively fear humans despite their rightful niche in the food chain. Talk about problem animals. Ya know, now that I think about it, we should just kill off the rest of the carnivores that aren't in zoos. Then we wouldn't have these kinds of problems anymore and people could wander into the remaining wild habitat with no fear of encountering wildlife.

I'll get some torches ready, who has a bunch of hunting rifles?
 
Nightspell,

Relax, relax! It's OK now--the lion's dead, you're safe for now.

We don't need to go out and kill them all, just the ones that are threatening humans.

You might want to consider a career that takes you away from lion country. Say, maybe something in Manhattan, where there aren't many wild animals to threaten you.
 
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