How dare the police shut down such an enriching pastime! My goodness, if they strip us of our right to torture God's hapless creatures, then what next?
Granted, an organized cockfight isn't really an act of nature. Under normal farm conditions, most roosters are too busy chasing the hens to stop and disembowel each other.
But with a little human guidance and just a touch of inbreeding, a rooster becomes a ferocious fighting machine.
I know what you're thinking: chickens. Gamecocks are basically just chickens in drag. And how fierce can a chicken be?
Plenty fierce, especially if you attach razor-sharp spurs to its scrawny yellow legs. These devices are made of honed steel, bone or fiberglass. The purpose is to replace the rooster's natural spur with something slightly more effective.
Otherwise a cockfight is about as thrilling as a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon. Without artificial spurs, the birds just hop and squawk and pull each other's feathers out. Where's the drama in that?
But add those nasty little can-openers, and cockfighting becomes a macho life-or-death spectacle. In fact, matches often do not officially end until one of the two birds expires of its wounds. That's when the big money changes hands.
We're talking rich tradition. Dueling poultry goes back to the days of ancient Persia and Greece, before video games, when people were forced to amuse themselves with whatever was handy. Given the abundance of chickens, and the relative ease with which they could be dragooned, it was only natural that a mindless blood sport would evolve.
Popular among English nobility (what wasn't?), cockfighting was soon introduced in colonial America. Among its ardent fans was the highly cultured Andrew Jackson. Always controversial, cockfighting was outlawed in Great Britain and Canada. Massachusetts banned it in 1836. In recent years, the legality has been debated from Maryland to Louisiana to Key Largo.
In some places, cockfighting remains legal provided that the birds are not fitted with sharpened spurs, and that no gambling is allowed. This, of course, takes all the fun out of it. If the roosters can't slash each other to shreds, and if the spectators can't bet on it, where's the pleasure?
The argument from animal-rights sissies is that cockfighting is cruel, even sadistic. They like to mention that big raid in West Dade a few years ago, when police found live roosters with their eyes missing. It happens, sure, but at least they didn't wind up as fried nuggets in a Col. Sanders
box.
Most of those arrested last week at the Hialeah pit were accused of misdemeanors, although a few face felony charges that carry possible five-year prison terms. In Florida, it's illegal to promote, stage, attend or gamble on an animal fight.
Now's the time to take a stand against such government intrusion.Tell those pointy-heads in Tallahassee that enough's enough—what goes on between a man and his chicken, well, that's a sacred and private thing.
And who's to say these gallant birds don't relish the tang of fresh blood on their beaks! Why, you should see their tiny eyes light up when those spurs are strapped to their shins. There is no finer moment in sports.
So cheer those crusaders who carried their killer roosters to the courthouse steps, for justice comes to those who crow the loudest. Free the Hialeah 186!
Land snakes! Pythons seem to like it here
October 11, 1989
Finally, some good news about Florida wildlife.
The panthers might be vanishing, but the pythons have arrived.
You know all about Big Mama, the 20-foot beauty that was living comfortably under somebody's house in Fort Lauderdale.The neighborhood kids kept telling their parents that they'd seen this monster subterranean serpent eating raccoons and opossums, and naturally their parents didn't believe a word of it.
Once captured, Big Mama has gone on to become a star of local and national media. If you're in the TV biz, there's no video like snake video.
Then, just when you thought it was safe to be a raccoon again, along comes Junior, another semi-humongous python who turned up last week at a local construction site. Though measuring only about 17 feet, Junior was nonetheless stretched out and posed with every TV reporter in the tri-county area. The next day the poor creature died from internal bleeding. Such is the price of fame.
The authorities want us to believe that these two snakes were freaks in our midst and that their discovery within weeks of each other was just a wild coincidence. They want us to swallow the notion that these pythons were family pets that either escaped or were abandoned. But how many people do you know who own a 20-foot snake? Or even two 10-footers?
No, these carnivorous beasties had been loose for some time, doing what pythons do best—eating, sleeping and making lots of baby pythons (females lay up to 100 eggs).
Wildlife experts say there's nothing to worry about, but they said the same thing about Bufo toads, and look what happened. And parrots—every neighborhood now has its own flock of screeching parrots. Were all these birds somebody's pet? Not unless they staged a mass breakout. More likely, they've simply adopted South Florida as their new home and are merrily reproducing in the tops of our banyan trees.
Same goes for the pythons. They're here to stay. Both Big Mama and Junior were an exotic species called the reticulated python, which happens to be the longest snake in the world. Here are the most commonly asked questions about our newest tropical neighbor:
Where do they come from?
The reticulated python is native to Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Burma and the Philippines.
How big do they get?
Commonly growing to 25 feet, the largest known specimen was killed in 1912 on the north coast of Celebes.The snake measured 32 feet, 9 1/2 inches.
What do they eat?
Pythons prefer to dine on small mammals, although the larger specimens will gobble the occasional deer or goat. In one of the few documented cases of its kind, a 31-foot reticulated python is known to have eaten a 14-year-old boy on the island of Salebabu, in Indonesia. The attack happened several years ago, and there's no reason to suspect that this particular python has migrated to South Florida. Yet.
Are pythons swift, clever and keen-eyed?
No, pythons generally are slow, dull-witted and myopic. In stalking prey, however, they have the considerable advantages of stealth, camouflage and about 300 pounds of sheer muscle. They also love to climb trees and swim rivers.The good news is they're not poisonous. The bad news is they kill by brute constriction.
How do I know if one is living under my house?
If you haven't seen your poodle for a few days, it might be a good idea to check around. Fortunately, a python such as Big Mama only gets hungry every couple of months. The rest of the time they just sort of curl up and grow.
What do I do if I find a 32-foot python in my yard?
The one thing you don't do is try to kill it with a rake. Rakes work fine on pesky little garter snakes, but not pythons. All you do is get them incredibly ticked off, which is a bad idea. As any professional reptile trapper will tell you, the ideal python is an unperturbed python.
You said these things climb trees! So what happens if a giant python falls out of a tree and lands on top of me?
Then you can kiss your sorry asp goodbye.
Send in clowns—and book them, of course
January 9, 1991
Busted again.
Performance artist Kman (no hyphen), AKA Art Kendallman, AKA Monkey Joe, AKA the Missile—collared during the Orange Bowl parade.
Intercepted as an unauthorized clown.