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Edited on Thu Feb-21-08 04:24 PM by mainegreen
Joe had never been a particularly observant fellow, and figured that the fence around Capituatua Peak was merely to keep drunken fratboys from hosting raves below the salmon coloured cliffs of the southeast face, assuming the the large warning signs simply stated a mild rebuff to not enter or else some stuffed shirt might try and sue him! Truth was, these signs warned against a more dreadful outcome: Capituatua Peak was in fact a game reserve, and not just any game reserve, but a reserve set up by the late Mrs. Crunshaw McCitty, renowned not only for her delicious parsley and parsnip soufflé but also for her love of large cats with diseases incurable. Mrs Crunshaw McCitty had been blessed and cursed by a husband who, while providing her with a quality of lifestyle the envy of anyone in town, had spent most of his years overseas on business, forcing her to find other ways to spend her ample time. Find it she did, when one dry summer she read about how rabid Mountain Lions, crazed by the heat, were drifting into town to find both sustenance as well as air conditioning at the local cinema. Bob, the local dog catcher, had rounded up about twenty of these poor creatures, and was going to put them down on Sunday. With instant understanding of her new purpose, she utilized her wealth to purchase Capituatua Peak from the town, which was still reeling from the recently exposed embezzlement of most of last years budget by the mayor to fuel his drunken and prostitute laden binges in Tijuana, and set up a reserve, fenced off, where these poor creatures and others like them could be safe. Upon here death the reserve came into her full wealth, as she left no children being left barren by a flu that had swept the town in her youth, and the reserve was able to import thousands of rabid Mountain Lions, Cougars, Lions, Tigons and even the odd large house cat that chose to chase the wrong bat. Joe was blissfully unaware of this, however, as his field guide to the mountains of the ChimChiminy Range was over seventy years out of date. He had nicked it from the public library, and it was perhaps an act of cosmic re-balancing, when Joe, at the base of the mountain, inspecting his gear, was set upon by three hundred and forty seven particularly rabid denizens of the park, who proceeded to tear him to shreds, laying his innards out on the salmon rock, satiating themselves on it, digging repeatedly into it.
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