Every so often something comes along that throws me a mental curve ball. Some times it’s because I don’t hear as well as I used to, and sometimes it happens when I’m listening to a jackass and just didn’t notice the ears.

A couple of weeks ago I was sleeping peacefully after a stressful and protracted road trip when the contraption I refer to in lighter moments as “A.G. Bells Curse,” sang out ringin’ and rattlin’ all over the coffee table I was sleeping under. The person on the other end said she was taking a poll about a new evil that was threatening Mississippi wild life.

We weren’t getting a good signal (possibly because there were a few cans on the coffee table I was bunking under) and all I could pick up out of the static sounded like she was talking about boll weevils and criticizing my wild partying habits, both of which have faded with age.

Well, I have never been a very happy camper after being disturbed at the crack of noon and crawled out to the porch where the signal and air was better so she could hear the cussin’ I was working on  in   her behalf.

Well, the reception was not getting any better until I remembered the cotton in my ears I had wisely inserted the night before when my ex-wife had called me to talk about burial plots and criminal activities of prepubescent  grandchildren. I deactivated the cotton wads and finally caught the drift of the conversation I’d been having for the last five minutes. It was about Frankendeer. I’d thought she’d been talking about another Frank who I knew to be a notorious thief and card sharp and had strong and blasphemous opinions of, but all that dialog was wasted because we were talking about the pros and cons of raising genetically altered deer on private lands.

These lab rats have been “franked up” as to the number of points, horn spread, and body weight, in order to produce a better trophy for some urban hunter to shoot in a pen and hang on a wall, and claim tainted braggity’ rights on, at the expense of the real hunters who claimed their trophies the hard and old fashioned way by studying the habits and idiosnycrasies of the natural beast for 10 1/2 months of the year to get the opportunity to match wits with it for 45 short days.

That time-worn and traditional form of harvest will be cheapened and degraded in the hearts and dens of true hunters.

If the lab rat wranglers can alter genes to specifically build their version of a super deer, maybe they can alter him into a jersey cow with horns on a Boone and Crocket scale and then the next generation can go out to the milk barn and shoot old Bossie and brag about the murder at a pioneer convention.

Boone and Crocket, who set the standards for “points” on deer, moose antelope, etc., will not recognize these bogus trophies but the general public will, because they don’t know any better.

When I was a pre-teen Davy Crockett aspirant, Old Rockin Chair was a much hunted and never “harvested” natural born buck that survived until he died of attrition and old age (apparently). His remains were discovered by Herman and Nan Austill of Birdie, Miss. in the summer of 1976. Sixteen ring hanger points (we weren’t tuned in to Boone and Crocket points back then), Ol’ Rocker might  have gone anywhere from 200 to 250 pounds in his time.

He must not and need not be duplicated. It would be an insult to his memory and an abomination to his progeny.

Raise hell at or to or about your Congressman. In memory of Old Rockin’ Chair,

Ricky Harpole