By Cap'n O

MAY 26, 1998:  I've been depressed and mired in a permanent, unconditional bitterness at life's unfairness ever since that day decades ago when my mother spoke those terrible words that forever drained me of all hope and joy: The Big Bad Wolf fell down the chimney into the kettle of boiling water and was eaten by the three sissified pigs.

I tried ending it all with an overdose of children's aspirin when, at age four, Ma told me that the woodsman hacked open the other Big Bad Wolf and saved wussy Little Red Riding Hood and her senile granny from the lupine's digestive tract.

My sense of loss at these events has been absolute and irreversible. I empathize with creatures that despise humans and eat raw pork. But even though I desire to shout, "I am wolf, watch me gnaw!" I am telling everyone again that it's time to wage war against environmental extremists.

It's time to call congressmen and senators, city councilors and county commissioners, state legislators, mayors, city managers, dog catchers and even radio talk-show hosts to demand that common sense and a respect for human existence be put into the country's environmental policies. It's time that normal Americans start shouting down the environmental Nazis and demand that constitutional justice, not totalitarian emotionalism, rule the land.

A few weeks ago, a camper in Arizona shot and killed a wolf that had recently been released into the wilds as part of a government wolf reintroduction project. Initial reports said the guy shot the wolf after it had attacked the family's dog. Details were incomplete because the government refused to release them pending further investigation.

But the lack of details didn't stop a screwball by the name of Bobbie Holaday, of the Phoenix-based Preserve Arizona's Wolves group, from demanding that the government stomp on the camper with the maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

"We've got to make an example of this guy. There's no excuse. It's totally illegal," Holaday said.

Maybe Holaday is too stupid to understand where she lives. So I'll tell her. You live in the United States of America, not the Soviet Union, not Nazi Germany, not Red China, not Cuba, not Cambodia under Pol Pot, not in any of the scores of countries that are run by petty, vicious tyrants.

In those countries, they punish people based, not on fact, but on the rantings of hateful dictators who demand that everyone act and think exactly like they do. America's judicial system is based on fact and presumption of innocence, not ideology that punishes contrary opinions. Take your rantings elsewhere, Holaday. The camper will be subject to American justice, not to damn-the-facts, despot-style lynching.

All of you normal humans out there, those with even a little common sense, call your elected officials and demand changes in the laws and environmental policies. Demand that legislators be realistic when they write the laws and that they take human survival into account. Tales like the "Three Pigs" and "Little Red Riding Hood" exist for a reason. Through the ages, they have been society's way of warning kids about life's dangers.

Walk into the woods alone, and you'll get eaten by a hungry wolf or kidnapped by a wart-faced witch. Put up cheap housing, and it'll fall down. These tales have guided me. After hearing about Humpty Dumpty, I decided not to become an egg.

Wolves and other predators have been hunted to near extinction not because they're passive, gentle creatures, but because they attack people. They threaten us and our food.

Putting wolves back where humans live and work will lead to wolf-human confrontations. Humans get nervous when confronted by sharp-toothed carnivores and have a tendency to shoot them. The wolf that was killed had been released earlier this year just a short distance from a frequently used campground. It was stupid to release the wolf so close to human activity.

Change the laws. No one should be imprisoned for defending his family and pet from a wolf. No one should be hounded by the government because a hysterical environmentalist without all the facts of a case says so. Start challenging people like Holaday. Otherwise the environmental extremists will turn the entire West into a theme park.

You can bet that the theme will include jack boots and those little black mustaches.

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