Blueprint For Disaster

BLUEPRINT FOR DISASTER

(I read an article in our local newspaper about a deer hunt for the handicapped, scheduled for the Rock Cut State Park in Northern Illinois. Unbelievable! This sparked my imagination and the following fiction resulted.)

STATE PARK MANAGEMENT OFFICE
PROBLEM SOLVING SESSION

Guys, it’s fall and we face it again. The deer crop is bursting at the seams. Deer-car accidents are at an all time high. As you know, two fatalities last night on the Interstate. Two more deer hit on the county trunks. The park is a damned breeding farm for deer.

I’ve come up with four solutions. One, trap and transfer. Two, chase ‘em out of the park. Three, do nothing. Four, do our own culling like we have for the past few years.

Sir, forget trap and transfer. That would triple the budget and no one would be happy to have 150 deer released on their land.

There’s no way to chase ‘em out permanently. If we ran a hundred dogs through, or two hundred Park Rangers, they would drift back in at sun down.

Do nothing is the easiest. But they’ll chew up every bush and sapling in the park. Wreck the habitat for years to come, then die by the hundreds from starvation and disease. It might be the natural way, but I want no hand in that.

That leaves culling by park personnel.

The newspapers won’t call it culling. They’ll call it a slaughter. Christ, every Bambi lover in the area will be calling their assemblyman in Springfield. And the politicians will all get in the act so they can be on TV.

But we give the meat to charitable organizations and food pantries.

In the news reports that’s an after thought. The real news is pictures of the carcasses. Bad PR, that’s all we’ll get.

BAD RIVER SPORTSMEN’S CLUB
MONTHLY MEETING

I’d rather go out and blast a few myself.

Let’s get one thing straight. They’re not going to let any of us do any shooting in the state park. So forget that.

I think it’s a great plan. Helps the handicapped to participate. Helps the state park with their over population problem. Gets us some positive publicity and community awareness.

I make a motion that we form an ad hoc committee to pursue this plan and to implement the necessary procedures.

MRS. MARSDEN’S FIRST GRADE
PROJECT PLANNING MEETING

It’ll be the first school pageant where Santa’s sleigh is pulled by thirty-two reindeer.

That’s 100% participation. That’s what were after.

Can we handle making thirty-two sets of antlers?

The kids can bring in old newspapers and we mothers with the help of thirty-two youngsters will soak and cast. We’ll have the kids finger paint them brown. They’ll love it.

Thirty-two red noses. Everyone will want to be Rudolph.

STATE PARK MANAGEMENT OFFICE
STAFF MEETING

OK, guys, we’ve got it. Approval from everyone from the Governor down. State Park Commission, DNR, all lined up to help. The date will be Saturday, December 6th. All systems are go.

MAD RIVER SPORTSMAN’S CLUB
MONTHLY MEETING

Green light, guys. December 6th. Everyone is getting involved, Park Rangers, DNR, even a few from the Sheriffs Department. We’ll divide the shooters up by handicap and assign the necessary personnel to work with each group. Those guys are going to have the time of their lives.

MRS. MARSDEN’S FIRST GRADE
PROJECT PLANNING MEETING

It’s all set. This Saturday. The school bus will pick us up at 8:00 and drop us off at Volkman’s Meadow in the state park. We’ll have a bonfire and toast marshmallows, and thirty-two little reindeer can run to their hearts content.

*****

On the evening of December 5th, a steady rain fell. Long before daylight a stream of cars and vans and pickups poured into the park. As the rain subsided small groups were dispatched to prearranged areas.

“What do you mean, five visually impaired. You said one, maybe two. There are only three of us to supervise.”

“So you’re overworked. These guys are excited. They deserve a fun day. They deserve a deer. By the way, be careful.”

Flash light in hand, Fred Olner led a procession of four wheel chairs to the top of the hill.

“Right over there, about 50 feet off the road. That’s where we’ll set up.”

Craig Dawson, shotgun cradled across his lap, rolled determinedly forward. His wheelchair mired in the mud, and as his right wheel sunk downward, he leaned at a precarious angle. In desperation he jammed his gun barrel into the mud, maintaining his balance until he was pulled back to the asphalt. He was unaware of the six inches of mud plugging his gun.

Will Johnson and a park ranger lined up their four charges along the side of the road facing a thick forest dappled by moonlight.

Through out the park in groups of threes and fours they awaited the coming dawn.

“These guys are spastic. They’ll never hit anything.”
“Yeah, it would take a miracle. But if they did get one, think how great they’d feel.”

The sun rose and light filtered through the shadows. The first to see a deer was one of Will’s wheelchairs. The boy raised his gun to his shoulder, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The resulting recoil propelled the wheelchair backwards down the steep hill toward the lake with Will in fast pursuit.

At that first explosion there where three quick shots from the spastic section and then guns begin popping throughout the park. Screams of joy and terror and pain echoed through the trees.

*****

It was noon before the last of the ambulances left, siren screaming. The ground was strewn with broken wheelchairs. Bloody bandages and tourniquets littered the bushes. A Browning over-under with a mud choked split barrel lay in the parking lot. Newsmen were preparing their headlines, most using the word, slaughter.

The days scorecard told the story.

DEER

11 shot

1 hit by wheelchair at base of hill

HANDICAPPED HUNTERS

1 near drowned in lake

1 injured by shrapnel from exploding barrel

1 mutilated finger caught in bolt action

1 mauled by deer.

MAD RIVER SPORTSMEN

2 suffered gunshot wounds

1 collapsed with physical exhaustion chasing wheelchair

1 attempted suicide

PARK RANGERS

1 shot

1 hypothermia from lake rescue

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURSES

1 paralysis of right hand from filling out forms

MRS. MARSTON’S FIRST GRADE

0

Luckily the bus had broken down two blocks from the school.

The driver was treated and released after listening to 300 verses of “This Old Man”.

Story ID:	948
Written by:	Dick Dunlap (bio, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Story
Location:	Rockford Illinois USA
Year:	2005