So I am putting wildlife on notice: Knock it off!

To give you an idea how reckless wildlife has been, just the other day I was driving along a picturesque country road, maintaining a safe distance behind the car in front of me (those who will be getting their learner’s permit in approximately 13 months – i.e., Kevin – please take note) when suddenly from out of nowhere jumped two punk deer youth right in front of the car in front of me. The driver heroically slammed on the brakes and swerved off the road, luckily avoiding colliding with either deer, as well as a pesky telephone pole and a nearby tree.

The two deer, as I find typical of today’s wildlife youth, ran off without so much as checking to see if everyone was okay.

The moral of the story is simple: wildlife hates us. And it is only getting worse.

Take squirrels, for instance. For years now they have been the leading cause of major power outages in the United States. At least I think they have been. I’m sure lightning storms are up there, too. And hurricanes. But I’m sticking with squirrels as my answer, because it seems a lot of the time when there’s a power outage, workers later discover the fried carcass of a suicide squirrel nearby the sabotaged transformer.

And I don’t buy the innocent-squirrel-not-knowing-what-it-was-doing excuse given by the apologetic, tree-hugging, don’t-hunt-from-helicopters, living-with-wolves-types out there. If it is always an “accident” how come the squirrels seem to know exactly which wires (all of them) to bite through?

Also, who still believes that it was a “double router failure” that caused TBS to be unable to broadcast the beginning of Game 6 of the American League championship series between the (Tampa) Bay (Devil) Rays and the Red Sox? The incident had all the earmarks of terrorist squirrels. First of all, who knows if TBS even needs a router to broadcast a baseball game? Not once in all the years of watching baseball have I heard an announcer start a game by saying, “The pitcher is ready, the batter is ready, the umpire is ready, and the routers – both the primary and backup – are ready. Let’s play ball!”

Homeland Security officials probably floated the fake router story to the media hoping to keep the real cause on the down low until they can flush out the responsible terrorist squirrel cell from the tree they are secretly nesting in.

You might be wondering, “Since you brought it up, Lee, what is up with that guy living with wolves? He recently got married and now he and his new wife are both living with wolves. Are they whacked, or what?”

First of all, let’s leave the name calling to the McCain campaign. Secondly, yes, they are whacked. I first heard about the wolf man and his wife last weekend from a neighbor. Since then, I’ve read how their exploits living with wolves is being filmed for a reality TV show airing on Animal Planet. We must remember, though, that while a majority of us correctly believe that all wildlife hates humans and is trying to destroy our way of life, there is a significant number of people who truly and honestly admire nature, animals, and stuff like that.

Still, only a tiny percentage of these nature lovers are completely out of their gourd. To my way of thinking, if someone wants to live, howl, growl, and eat raw meat with a pack of wolves, well then they’re probably a part of that percentage.

Unfortunately, I now suspect that wildlife has begun recruiting formerly domesticated animals. For instance, I like cats but, no, you can never trust them. Also, over the summer my wife, Beth, headed to work one morning and saw, she swears, a cow stealthily cutting across several front yards.

No cow-related disturbances were reported that day, so the cow might have only been on reconnaissance. Should we worry? You betcha. It’s bad enough when deer and squirrels attack, but when cows start turning on us, we are in real trouble.

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