Whistle-Blower #12

    Breaker! Breaker! Yesterday at the gym, I asked another lifter about fishing. I thought I had heard him talking about fishing last year. This man is a regular, and I thought he was probably law enforcement. I had never talked to him before as he's a little severe looking, but I had been told that the rainbow trout die at the place I fish. I caught a 17 inch rainbow there and hoped for a bigger one.I asked him and found out that the rainbows do die because of the heat. I also got a lead on another body of water for big bows. I decided that if  Black Panther gets published, I didn't want him to think I had blindsided him. I also didn't like the fact that I felt anxious about what his reaction would be to my book since it is very critical of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission - the old Game Commission in a new package. Since I am trying to become more assertive, I felt it was necessary for transparency and my own growth as a man to give him page 300 of Black Panther. I had just made copies of it. I went out to the truck and brought it to him. He snatched it out of my hand, and I poked it with my hand as he held it. Macho stuff. I told him, "Just in case this is published and becomes famous, I don't want you saying 'That son of a bitch blind-sided me!'"
He laughed and said, "I'll read it."
    This page features my question to two Pennsylvania cat hunters if they thought Florida Fish and Wildlife would shoot black panthers. This was the first and only time I had the courage to ask such an inflammatory question in the Banana Republic of Florida. I can only hope that game wardens up here are aware that they are not Florida game wardens in general, and that they are more professional, especially scientific, in their profession than Florida game wardens. The fountainhead of being scientific is being curious. I found only one person in Florida Fish and Wildlife who had a scintilla of curiosity. He was a field biologist. Everyone else was completely invested in the party line that there were no panthers in Florida beyond the hundred in south Florida, and there was no such thing as a black panther or black puma, or black cougar or black catamount or anything in Florida. Their demeaning behavior toward those who had sightings was not that of a scientist but of someone he would hew to the party lie or lose his job. That brought out the worst in people.  Peter Nickerson, MS, MSW. Investigating the black panther phenomenon since 1998.