#78 Black Panther Story, Freedom's Vigil

BLACK PANTHER STORY: I asked Wendy if there had been anything exciting happening, and she replied, laughing, "I almost stepped on an eight foot alligator!" I told her, "I've been talking to David Maehr at the University of Kentucky on the telephone. He wrote a great, little book, 'The Florida Panther.' It's about when he worked for the Florida Game Commission and the experiences his team had catching, examining, treating, and radio-collaring panthers over a period of nine years. I heard that game wardens were telling people who had seen black panthers that they had actually seen black jaguarundi. I told David about it, and he just laughed, saying that the closest jaguarundi were in parts of Texas."
A couple days later I listened to some of our telephone messages at the house, and it sounded like a Reed Allen had returned my calls. Reed was the man who was hunting the Lake Butler Game Management Area near a landfill when he kept feeling he was being followed. He was dragging a rag drenched in Tink's 69 Doe-In-Heat liquid scent. He was trying to attract a big buck and mask his own scent. Reed kept looking over his shoulder and turning around to see if anyone was behind him. Finally, he got so apprehensive that when he saw a big live oak tree with branches characteristicallly close to the ground, he climbed the tree and waited. In about ten minutes, a black panther cautiously approached the tree. He was obviously following the Doe-In-Heat scent trail. The big cat went right up to the tree Reed was perched in. Reed could have touched him with the barrel of his rifle. The panther sniffed the side of the tree, but probably since deer had never climbed trees in his history or the history of his predecessors, he did not look up. Instead, the cat preceded along the trail Reed had been walking. I was told this story by Wayne Cox who was the State Of Florida Turkey Calling Champion for five years. Wayne told me this account at The Deer Stand, a sporting goods store in the city of Alachua, where he worked. Wayne thought the incident had just happened.
FREEDOM'S VIGIL: We had a McCain-Palin sign up at the paved highway, but in a couple of weeks, the sign was stolen. It was probably the work of our neighbors from hell. We used to have a nice little sign up at the road that gave our address with an arrow pointing down our lane. Our house number is not in order with the other house addresses so that little sign was very helpful. Probably our malicious, drunken neighbors tore that down too. I have noticed that three McCain-Palin signs have been destroyed in areas where there was a lot of foot traffic by blacks and Hispanics. Friday, I was waiting for my order inside at Burger King in Gainesville, and two tall blacks wearing University of Florida tee-shirts were looking at my McCain-Palin cap and making comments. Due to my shot-out ears, I could not tell what they were saying or I'd have said something back.