Save the Fur Coats

I am ashamed to say that while I’ve been in Hawaii, I haven’t really kept up with the goings-on in my adopted state of Colorado aside from hearing that a bunch of tornadoes landed there. So you can imagine my excitement when I read that Colorado has seen a dramatic increase in the birth of baby lynx. Okay, so I actually couldn’t care less about lynx. I care more about the recent National Hockey League’s draft than I do lynx, and I really do not care about the NHL’s draft. I didn’t even watch the draft and I know what happened: some team in Canada or something drafted some Russian guy with five teeth and one eyebrow and seven z’s in his name.

Anyway, I figured I should find out why lynx being born were such a big deal. I mean, something has to be a pretty big deal to get news coverage during the same week Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Billy Mays die, right? (In all seriousness though, I am truly saddened by the King of Pop’s passing. The guy may have grown up to be a perverted albino elf, but I count the “Thriller” album as the third greatest invention behind the wheel and TV. Whenever I dance in my room to “Wanna Be Startin’ Something,” I will miss him.) Getting back on topic, a lynx apparently is a bobcat with pointier ears, and they are supposedly an endangered species. This of course means that lynx have more laws protecting them than the Pope and that PETA has their conniving little minds involved. I’m sure they threw themselves extravagant “Save the Lynx” fundraisers with champagne so expensive one bottle could have bought an entire ranch for the five remaining lynx in Colorado.

In the meantime, zoos of course are furiously trying to breed more lynx so they can set them loose in the wild, where they of course die. I mean, they are endangered for a reason, right? I was always taught that if a species is dying out, that means it generally sucks at life and according to Charles Darwin they should not breed. Or at least this was the reason my ninth-grade health teacher gave me when he said I should be neutered (true story, he told me that). But never-the-less, here are these zoo keepers furiously trying to breed more lynx. What’s that like anyway? I mean, do they do like an eHarmony thing to find matching lynx? I imagine it would be awkward being forced to have sex with someone you may not even like to ensure the survival of the species, with people watching you no less. That’s a lot of pressure.

But apparently some brave/horny lynx in Colorado have finally accomplished what teen girls are somehow able to do every five minutes: get pregnant. The baby lynx are apparently going to be released into the Colorado wilderness, which concerns me. I for one would rather not have large predatory animals wandering in the Colorado wilderness, especially since nowadays the Colorado wilderness is awfully close to Colorado not-wilderness, which is where I spend a lot of my time. I have enough on my hands trying to dodge hippies and liberals, I don’t need these things to worry about. Why don’t we relocate them to someplace with fewer people and more wide open space, like North Dakota? I’m sure they won’t mind. Here, let’s ask them now: Raise your hands if you don’t mind us putting lynx in your backyards? Let’s see, five hands. Well, for North Dakota that’s more than half the population, so majority rules.

Now don’t get me wrong; I love the outdoors. Just this past week, my old Boy Scout troop went on their annually weekly summer camp, and I drove out to join them for one day. The second I got out into the wilderness away from cars and cell phone reception I felt relaxed. There’s something about sitting around a campfire that puts you at ease. I’ll tell you what that something is: knowing I won’t get eaten by bears. You see, I like the outdoors in Hawaii because the biggest animals running around are chickens. But on the mainland, the outdoors contains large animals that are capable of eating me before I eat them, which is my qualification to be a dangerous animal (which is why I don’t consider snakes dangerous). I remember I once took a trip to Canada and we were trout fishing on a lake. My dad and I were fishing a few hundred feet from the camp site when we smelled the others cooking chicken. The first though I had was “Mmmmm.” But my second thought was “wait, if I can smell this, can’t the bears?” It was the most afraid I have ever been eating food; half of the chicken ended up in my ears because I was always turning my head back and forth just waiting for some large bear or moose to come charging into camp and eat me.

Oh well. It looks like we’re just going to have to deal with these lynx for a little while until some rich person needs a new fur coat. In the meantime, I think the threat of lynx attack should qualify me to be listed as an endangered species and be enrolled in a breeding program. I heard that Megan Fox is also an endangered species…