On Wounded Animals
Not to foreshadow anything...
“Jane Goodall made me believe I could just go up and hug any wild animal.” - Derek Guy
This article is a prelude to the forthcoming series, Charlie Kirk, His Alleged Assassin, and the Grooming of America’s Children, a deep dive into some really, really dark stuff. Too dark for one article. I didn’t really want to write about Kirk, but his death opened up a whole can of worms… and we collectively need to dive into that. In order to prepare you—the reader—for that series, I’ve decided to talk about cute and adorable animals first.
This may at first seem like a much different article than my typical fare, but rest assured: there is a point to this trip down memory lane.
I grew up volunteering at a local wildlife refuge in San Angelo, Texas. It was one of the highlights of my childhood. I don’t have many happy memories of my childhood, but the animals somehow made it all worth it.
I later went on to attend college there for a few years—an education that quickly took on a new meaning of the word as I took on overlapping responsibilities, forcing me to leave the honors program that I so loved. Due to my scholarships, I didn’t pay for anything, and I wouldn’t have had to until I went to Texas Tech Law School, which I had already been accepted into as part of their 3-for-3 program at the time (it seems a few detractors missed that). But this article is about the good times—the animals, and what they taught me before my life turned into… whatever the hell this is.
A significant number of the animals I took care of were orphaned wildlife. Often, animals would come to us when either one or both parents had been killed. Fawns were common, because if you kill Bambi’s mother… Bambi needs a home. Raccoons and possums were also very frequent customers, their parents having been hit by cars. For some reason, we also got a number of bobcat kittens. One of my best memories as a kid was going to bed with one of the bobcats curled up next to me, nuzzling gently on my chin. I woke up in the morning with a bruise from her constant attempts at nursing.
This is where I first learned of the real evils of humanity. Here were perfectly innocent creatures, literally harming no one… slaughtered merely for existing, or out of ignorance. In one instance, a rancher shot a mother great horned owl because, I shit you not, he was afraid it would scoop up and hurt his calf. In another case, a local vet amputated an injured deer’s leg instead of putting the poor thing down because he simply wanted to get into the pants of the blonde bombshell who was begging him to spare the animal’s life.
The result was that the deer couldn’t stand—and its leg soon became infected from dragging along the ground and rotted. The look of betrayal in its eyes as our technician gave him the lethal injection still haunts me. All of this suffering occurred because some dude—who knew better—wanted to get laid (for the record: he did not, in fact, get laid).
Yet, it’s also where I learned of the good in humanity. I remember one farmer who came to us in tears carrying a shoe box. He had installed a new irrigation system on his property, and inadvertently flooded a rabbit burrow. Rabbits and farmers aren’t exactly the best of friends and he wasn’t upset that the two adults living there had to relocate, but he was devastated to find about a half dozen, week-old bunnies drowning. He begged us with tears running down his cheeks to save them.
I also learned a lot from watching the animals interact. As a kid, I was absolutely terrified of raccoons. I might still be. I think it had something to do with the whole rabies thing—I don’t know, look: phobias are never rational things. Of course, this didn’t mean the raccoons were afraid of me. Quite the opposite. Having been raised from a very young age around humans, they had no fear of me. To them, I was just another raccoon.
You see, raccoons have this game they play amongst themselves. It’s remarkably similar to the human game, tag. One chases the other, touches them, and then the roles reverse. They will do this for hours on end, especially as they are growing. It is an absolutely remarkable phenomenon to watch, and it demonstrates the very real intelligence of these creatures. However, that’s not the point of this story.
The point is that, naturally, they tried to play this game with me.
Unfortunately, there is no good way to communicate to a juvenile raccoon the phase, “please don’t chase me, I am absolutely MORTIFIED of you.” This resulted in numerous instances of yours truly being chased throughout the rather large facility grounds by upwards of twenty juvenile raccoons, all chattering happily as I had “joined” in their games. In at least one instance, I found myself sealed in a car as my tormentors desperately tried to figure out their way in. In another, I found myself in front of a locked door as my pursuer sat confused, having put his tiny paws on me and run away several times only to realize that I wasn’t chasing him.
I was much more fond of the fawns. They were of a far calmer, gentler temperament—or so I thought. I had noticed that the raccoons typically weren’t around when I was with the fawns. This was peculiar, and I soon noticed a trend: whenever I went on walks around the property, a couple fawns would follow, positioning themselves between the raccoons and myself. But the real dynamic didn’t dawn on me until I saw something really amazing: one of the raccoons who thought particularly strongly of me as a “friend” tried to sneak through a rather large gathering of fawns we had one year, only to be spotted and given a thorough stomp to the head when he got too close to me.
The deer, these gentle creatures, were protecting me: they knew I was afraid of the raccoons, and they were keeping the raccoons away from me. These creatures were that intelligent, and although we couldn’t communicate in any meaningful way, they were smart enough to pick up on a child’s fear, despite being only children themselves.
Among my favorite animals to work with were owls. I think this is because an injured owl has absolutely no survival instinct; instead, they merely take one look at you, walk up to you, and plop right over onto their backs, waiting for you to scoop them up all with a stupid look on their face as if they just somehow know that you’re there to help.
Yet, this isn’t about them, nor am I suggesting that you should go out and take home the first owl you see. In fact, that’s probably a very good way to suffer some serious injuries. My father still has a scar from where one of the great horned owls we raised nicked him with its talon, and that was done completely by accident—the owl wasn’t even fully grown at the time.
As one might imagine, I also dealt a lot with other kinds of wounded animals. With the aforementioned exception being made, let me tell you right here: nothing is more dangerous than a dying, scared, wounded, and/or cornered animal.
Thankfully, it wasn’t until I joined the CIA that I had to deal with alligators and crocodiles. In the wild, it’s not unheard of for the larger species to grow past twenty-five feet in size, and at that size they are surprisingly resistant to bullets and even grenades. I’ve seen them shrug off shotgun slugs and .223 rounds to the face, all the while demolishing a pontoon bridge as if it were nothing. And for the record, it was a really nice bridge.
A wounded animal is destructive. Both to itself, anything near it, and its general environment. But eventually, if you keep wearing it down, it slumps over and dies. In instances of true monsters, a necropsy (an autopsy for animals) is warranted to understand who enabled the monster to grow to such size, wreak such havoc, and recover any remains of villagers who got caught up in the monster’s rampage.
Related to this matter of wounded animals is a behavior that’s critical to understand given our current situation: the extinction burst. An extinction burst occurs when a previously reinforced behavior escalates in frequency, duration, or intensity after the reinforcement is removed. Consider dog training. One might give a dog a treat every time it barks to encourage it to bark more, like in guard dog training. If the treats stop coming, the dog will bark more often and more aggressively in the hopes of receiving a treat before eventually giving up.
Parents may experience the same thing with children. If they placate a child by giving them candy or a new toy every time their child throws a tantrum, the child will learn to throw a fit every time they want a treat. If the parent stops giving in, the tantrum will likely get louder: things aren’t going the way the child is expecting them to, and the child is getting frustrated. Their behavior isn’t being reinforced; they aren’t getting what they want. They may break things, or continue their outburst for hours or even days until they realize that their behavior isn’t going to get them what it used to, and cease the behavior. The behavior goes extinct.
The same occurs with adults in society. Here’s a pretty good explanation:
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I also recommend this excellent article:
In short, this is a VERY dangerous time: we’re dealing with a grievously wounded animal. And if it seems like other people who should be doing something aren’t doing something… well, they’re a dog expecting a treat. Maybe it’s time to fucking stop rewarding them. If we get through this, there is a brighter future for us on the other side of this nightmare.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot that’s being missed in this discussion. Specifically, the relevance of millennia-old blood feuds, holy wars, ancestor idolization, and ancient ideology. Not to foreshadow anything, of course—as you likely suspected, this post wasn’t about my nostalgic desire for days gone by. This whole thing is called A Warning for a reason.
In case you’re wondering, no—I never took up hunting myself. I much preferred bigger game.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article full of warm and fuzzy animal photos—complete with tales of raccoon terror. Rest assured, shit gets darker (and stupider) from here. As a reminder, this is a prelude for our upcoming conversation on Charlie Kirk, His Alleged Assassin, and the Grooming of America’s Children.
In the meantime, you can expect some new info to drop about Havana Syndrome —and the whole Venezuela connection. Not to self-promote, but do I encourage you to read my book before this series drops to catch up with what we’re dealing with (again, it’s available here for free in eBook form). There’s more in there than some people want you to believe.
Oh, and by the way, have you ever witnessed a cat play with it’s food before finally showing some mercy? Anyway, I forget what I was talking about… Something about detractors, I think? If only there an old Poli Sci professor of mine around who could possibly fill in the gaps about what all those alleged OSINT specialists, cybersecurity experts, and “journalists” missed, given that it was quite intentionally left off of a certain LinkedIn profile…
Much to that point, don’t get me started on why there’s suddenly an abundance of frogs everywhere, either…
