Grooming a poodle outdoors on an unusually warm January afternoon yesterday, I heard the unmistakable siren's call of an ice cream truck in my neighborhood. That sort of thing isn't surprising in Newnan. I hear ice cream trucks all summer long. Just not in January. Never in January.

What kind of ice cream truck would bother operating in the coldest month of the year, even if there was a surprisingly pleasant break in an otherwise bitter winter? What ice cream truck operator would have such a poor business model, bothering to incur the cost of gas and product for one day in January? Could there be some motivation other than profit? I wonder....

No! Drop that Spider-Man® Bar!

It's just those damn dirty deer and their latest tactic in the Great Deer Uprising of 2010: luring kids into eating delicious frozen snacks all year long! Popsicle® brand Spider-Man® Bars are both delicious and vegetarian. If Newnan's youth become addicted, their families won't need to hunt deer for sustenance anymore. It's so insidiously clever, it just might work!

You may have won this round, deer, but you haven't heard the last of humanity. We'll be back. For more delicious Spider-Man® Bars! Yum!

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Crafty Georgia hunters have already solved the problem of wildlife that has learned to shoot. The best way not to get shot with your own gun by your prey? Don't go near your own gun. The Augusta Chronicle reports:

Someone actually built an Internet-controlled network of Web cameras and shotguns aimed into a food plot on a Georgia Power Co. right-of-way last fall. ... According to a Nov. 19 bulletin from the Georgia Information Sharing & Analysis Center, "three shotguns were set up on a platform and linked to a Web-accessible camera system that allows the guns to be fired via an Internet connection."

Of course, if you're not around your gun, how are you going to stop the wildlife from just taking it and using it against you? While at first thought, this may sound like a fine plan, but it has 2 major drawbacks.

1. All this is really doing is helping wildlife avoid a 5-day waiting period at their local gun shop, and
2. Having guns connected to keyboards really helps hoofed animals bypass trigger guards.

So keep your guns where you can reach them, hunters. You're going to need them.

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While the ongoing Great Deer Uprising of 2010 has been very deadly with casualties mounting on both sides, at least there is one thing that the deer still can't do: shoot us. Hopefully they also can't use the internet, as Reuters News Service has just reported:

A wounded fox shot its would-be killer in [Grodno] Belarus by pulling the trigger on the hunter's gun as the pair scuffled after the man tried to finish the animal off with the butt of the rifle. The unnamed hunter, who had approached the fox after wounding it from a distance, was in hospital with a leg wound, while the fox made its escape.

Should these European foxes ever manage to contact American deer, I fear that hunters everywhere could find themselves in the crosshairs. Orange vests will turn red with spilled blood as deer couple their newfound knowledge with America's relatively lax gun control laws.

Let us all do our parts to keep these two parties apart lest we find that our forests filled with the smell of gunpowder and spine-curdling cries of "Remember Bambi's Mom!"

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The Great Deer Uprising continues into 2011, and things are getting serious. It appears that the entirety of Coweta County has become a war zone.

According to the Times-Herald, in the wee hours of Wednesday, January 5, a Lieutenant in the Coweta County sheriff's office lost control of his car on Andrew Bailey Road. Coweta County Sheriff Mike Yeager told the press that "speed does not seem to be a factor in this." Instead, the blame was placed where it belonged: on a deer.

The assault by the unidentified deer on the on the Sherrif's Lieutenant took place a little more than 2 miles outside the Newnan city limits in a lawless, suburban wilderness. Unlike within the Newnan city limits, wild animals remain legal in unincorporated Coweta County. Look for the county to close that loophole as soon as possible to prevent future deer terrorism.

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Battle lines are being drawn between the pro- and anti-deer contingents. Like any conflict resulting in a loss of life, the bleeding hearts protest intellectively as the warmongers march. Fortunately, the Fourth Estate is present to chronicle the affair for posterity. The following snippets were taken directly from editions of the Newnan Times-Herald last week.

I am concerned for the safety of deer. I was traveling from Atlanta to LaGrange on Nov. 14 around 10 a.m. I could not believe how many dead deer I saw dismembered along the highway from Newnan to LaGrange. I wished I had my camera to film the sight. The highway lanes were a bloody mess. I know the county makes enough money to build fences or walls to keep the adult deer and their babies safe. -- " Animal lover concerned about deer," December 4, 2010

That is what it sounds like when doves cry. The response from the opposition hawks was, like life itself, straightforward and brutal. There will be no quarter for the deer!

Yes, it is disconcerting to see dead dear along the highways, as a previous letter stated, but we are viewing the unintended consequences of community growth and building high-speed highways through the habitats of all kinds of wild critters. It is cost-prohibitive to erect fences or walls to protect them. Even if governments had the money, I'm sure they would spend it on more worthwhile causes. -- "Deer die from loss of habitat," December 11, 2010

In other words, who are deer to stand in the way of the steel wheels of progress? Let the heathen savages be beaten back; they have no right to the land of their forefathers! Manifest Destiny yields to no one, man or cervine.

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Dateline: USA, today:

As deer hunting season gets underway around the country, trauma surgeons in Ohio have a message for hunters: It's not the guns but the trees that will get you. A 10-year survey of hunting-related injuries at two major trauma centers in Ohio found that falling out of trees is how the majority of deer hunters are injured.

It seems that some doctors can't see the deer for the forest. Those aren't "accidents." I read A Separate Peace. Grown men don't just fall out of trees. They're pushed.

I hadn't realized that the battlefields of the Great Deer Uprising of 2010 were so far spread as Ohio. Or that the Uprising has already been a decade in the making. Is it really possible that we're at the 10-year anniversary of the Great Deer Uprising of 2000 with no end in sight? Oh, the inhumanity!

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This week I was forced to swerve my car because the driver in front of me had was braking to avoid two deer. No, this was not on the highway as you might expect, but in a Food Lion parking lot. It can't be a coincidence that deer would be invading our shopping centers as we gear up for the merchandising bonanza that is Halloween. That's right: deer are out for your candy. And they'll take it any way they can get it.

This insidious menace is only the latest escalation in the Great Deer Uprising of 2010. Unable to enter the city of Newnan legally, the deer are now resorting to a crafty ruse in order to sneak into town under cover of darkness and steal the candy that our children earned the hard way: by going door to door and extorting it under threat of violence!

If we let the deer get away with this, we'll only be letting the terrorists win! (Terrorist deer, that is. Make no mistake, terrorist children should still encouraged: it's the American way!) So this year, check under that mask when a cute ne'er-do-well comes banging on your door. There's a chance you'll find that he just may not be human. Far worse than zombies or vampires, he could be a deer in disguise!

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They're back! Just when you thought it was safe to return to the roads, the deer are striking back as the Great Deer Uprising of 2010 continues.

At 8:27PM on Tuesday night, a deer struck a motorist, sending the car out of control across traffic, ultimately resulting in the death of the driver. It's no coincidence that the car the deer chose to strike was an Oldsmobile Intrigue. Reports The Times-Herald:

[A] witness in a separate vehicle saw [the] vehicle strike the deer and lose control. The first Coweta County firefighter to arrive at the scene also saw the deer lying injured beside the road before the animal recovered and ran off.
...
"There is no doubt she struck the deer," [Georgia State Patrol Sgt. Lance] Greene said. "That's what caused her to lose control."

It ran off! The saboteur is still on the loose!

The attack took place just outside of the city limits where deer are legally allowed to congregate beyond the jurisdiction of the Newnan city ordinance prohibiting wild animals (see February 12, 2010 for details). As a result, no charges will be filed in the case, according to Sgt. Greene. Those clever bastards! They are using our own laws (and cars) against us!

Will this reign of deer terror never end?

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According to the Newnan Times-Herald, Newnan has taken drastic, preemptive action to put down the Great Deer Uprising of 2010 before it can get out of hand. This week the city council voted to approve an ordinance that "expands the list of prohibited animals within the city to include any wild animal." Remember, the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance.

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An update to some previous blog entries:

First things first. On my last post, I covered the Scripps Howard celebrity Super Bowl poll. And now that the game is over (damn you, Saints!), it should be pointed out that the celeb who picked closest was Joe Mantegna, who predicted Saints, 28-17. Outperforming a majority of the celebs were video game simulations run by newfangled Madden 10 and classic Tecmo Super Bowl, both of which had forecast a Saints win. So keep in mind that the next time you need to turn to someone to advice, you'd be better off talking to a computer screen than your average celebrity.

On December 17, 2008, I mentioned that New York was planning to tax soda consumption. It failed to pass. According to the Houston Chronicle, a similar fate has just quietly befallen a federal measure with the same intent. Sure, raising taxes on an item to increase revenue and decrease health risks sounds good, but who really wants to pay an extra 15 cents per can of soda when they could instead pay higher income taxes? No one I know, that's for sure.

And speaking of predictions, last week I noted two separate incidents of single-vehicle accidents on the same stretch of road. Now another mysterious accident claimed the life of a third person, who was found mauled in the middle of that road. Police have no clues about the third death in three weeks on Newnan Crossing Bypass, but are guessing hit-and-run at 4AM in the morning. You heard it here first, people. Grab your .30-30s, the Great Deer Uprising of 2010 continues.

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