Project MERCATOR

Two days hence, on my drive home, I diverted over to the Courtland Mall to see the "Lone Wolverine," the only wolverine seen in the wild in the Wolverine State in two centuries: (Wayback Machine). She died of natural causes in '10, has been stuffed & mounted, & is now touring the state as the centerpiece of an educational exhibition. From whence did she come? Wolverines are Arctic beasts & have not been native to the land now known as Michigan for centuries; it is quite possible that wolverines were never endemic to these pleasant peninsulas, but wandered in from time to time as they are wide-ranging creatures. The lone wolverine's origins remain a mystery.

Later that same day, at the public library, I encountered an acquaintance, who was gathering signatures to initiate a referendum on Michigan's new wolf hunt; the petition & referendum's aim is to lower the boom on the hunt & allow the numbers of reintroduced wolves in Michigan to swell. I declined to sign her petition because, as I explained, I'm quite in favor of the wolf hunt. (I'm not advocating for the wolf to be driven to extinction, but having extirpated the wolf from many regions it is madness to now reintroduce these apex predators into areas populated by humans & livestock. It is only a matter of time, a simple but inescapable trap of numbers & probabilities, before a child is slaughtered by a pack of reintroduced wolves. Madness! But I digress.) I asked my acquaintance if she'd been over to see the lone wolverine. She replied that she had not, that she thought it was cruel to keep a live wolverine caged at a mall. I admit that I stared incredulously for a second before responding. There is no living wolverine at the mall, I assured her; the beast was found dead years earlier, without external injuries & thus presumably of natural causes, & has since been stuffed & mounted. She blinked in dull recognition. Oh, well, a friend had told her that there was a live wolverine in captivity at the mall. Armed as she was with falsehood about the lone wolverine, one has to wonder what errors, falsehoods, & outright lies she believes about the wolf hunt that motivated her to stand out in the cold collecting signatures.

Gulo gulo!

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Wanz, "Thrift Shop" courtesy The Watergirl (T.L.A.M.)