Sealing Off the Perimeterby
Tom Chartier The plan was simple. A twenty-foot high, barbed-wire-tipped steel wall was to encase the homeland and to keep those damned insurgents out once and for all! Unmanned surveillance drones were in place to patrol for interlopers. "Smart Dust" wireless sensors were to be spread. Yeah, baby that’ll keep out the illegals and their terrorist honchos! There’s trouble in Paradise. My island is infested with… and I shudder at the thought… chickens! They are everywhere. I’ve foamed at the mouth about this in the past. Chickens are running free and loose on this island. And let me tell you, "cock-a-doodle-do" does not mean "time to get up"! It is a vile obscenity (unsuitable for sensitive readers) screeched out at all hours, day or night. Time has not altered my heart: I want them "liberated" pronto! Unlike the Great Liberator in Washington DC, I’ll be honest here. I have no interest in bringing democracy to chickens. Hell no. I want them dead! Roast them all! I love the smell of Napalm Chicken in the morning! Two years ago the chicken haters here were … uh, shall I say blessed with a Category Five hurricane. Ivan wasn’t really a good thing, but I always try to keep a positive attitude. With a ten-foot sea surge, thirty-foot waves and 150 mph winds, Ivan left 85% of the island under water. That should have been enough to exterminate the bloody chickens. However, liquidating chickens is like ridding the Middle East of insurgent terrorist groups: if you kill 100 of them, a thousand more will rise up to avenge the martyred. Today, two years after Ivan, this island has a bumper crop of chickens running all over the place and leaving vile bio-hazardous decorations on pavements and lawns. No one is safe from this menace. My landlord stared at me like I had full rooster comb growing out of my head when I pitched the idea of a security wall. Possibly I reminded her of Colin Powell’s February 2003 presentation to the U.N. Her decision? "Disapproved." Well I can’t have The Cock of the Walk strutting around all night screaming obscenities at me! If that were what I wanted I’d move next door to Dick Cheney. So no more Mr. Niceguy! It was time to bring out the Bunker Busters! Enter Nimrod and Little Brain, two purebred West Bay Shepherds. A rare and exotic breed, these dogs are Shepherd in appearance and proudly boast a dubious descent from the scions of a section known here as West Bay. A whole slew of shady characters (a.k.a. my kind of people), hang out there. The Westminster Kennel Club dog show puts West Bay Shepherds in a class by themselves: strictly verboten! However questionable their lineage may be, Nimrod and Little Brain are state-of-the-art guard dogs. With this rampant chicken infestation it was time to Release The Hounds! All that I need is Francis Ford Coppolla to film the slaughter while The Ride of The Valkyries blasts from a loudspeaker. That little ditty helps get The Hounds in the killin’ mood. Now, Little Brain is the beef. She’s the one we hook up to the kayak to pull it down to the beach. Don’t let her sniff your butt! And the lissome Nimrod is the high-speed hunter-killer of the pack. Since first she got a taste of fresh juicy payback there has been no stopping her. Oh the joy of beholding Nimrod as she bounds home with a mangled dead rooster in her mouth! It warms my heart and brings a tear of pride to my eye. To date she has eleven confirmed kills! It’s not quite enough to earn her The Blue Max but it’s better than I could do with the Suzuki Samurai Dive Master Special. Thanks to Nimrod and Little Brain, the population of chickens has begun to plummet. We were hitting the right targets. Now, we don’t live in a heavily populated area… except for the chickens. We enjoy the tranquility of a festering mangrove swamp, which locale is loaded to the gills with mosquitoes. It also offers a discreet stash for crime scene evidence. I usually toss any martyred fowl out into the swamp for nature to recycle. No one is too eager to clear the Bog of Repugnant Stench. Nevertheless, we are not the only nutcases to live close to the swamp. Unfortunately, not everyone believes in true freedom. There are those who hate The Hounds for their freedom. We’re all meant to be free but I maintain that some of God’s creatures are meant to be more free than others. Sad to say, some left wing commie who resides nearby fails to agree with my philosophy. He has been critical of my war on chickens. One fateful afternoon, while Nimrod and Little Brain were culling the weak from the flock, I heard the expletives of the neighborhood socialist. Nimrod was being threatened with death! Oh… "The horror… the horror…" After a none-too-pleasant discussion, it was made clear to me that I must contain my troops. Lordy, I hate it when that happens. They weren’t conscripted and trained just to dig holes in the ground! Mr. Pinko informed me that my dogs were breaking the Leash Law. What leash law?! We don’t need no stinking leash law! Who the Hell did this jerk think he was, John Bolton? To no avail I echoed the noble words of Our Eternal President: "So what? Why is that not within the law?" As a result of that encounter, I have sealed off The Perimeter with an Electric Dog Fence. Now with hi-tech electronic agonizers strapped to their necks, Nimrod and Little Brain must endure a new form of humiliating torture. Let me tell you, those agonizers cause some serious howling and leaping about! Strap some of these agonizer gizmos on those Gitmo detainees and they’ll tell you… anything. So much for freedom. And will this electric fence do anything to keep out the illegal alien terrorist chickens? Hell no! But at least The Green Zone is secure from freedom-seeking escapees.
October 3, 2006 Tom Chartier [send him mail] played lead guitar in legendary Los Angeles punk band The Rotters for 26 years until their final appearance in January of 2004. He has lived in Tokyo and Los Angeles. Currently he resides somewhere in the Caribbean. Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com |
Elizabeth
Gyllensvard edited and contributed to this article.