This is a response to Anne Lamotte's latest column in Salon. 

Unlike Gov. Palin's stomping ground, in northeastern Louisiana the wild animal of choice to blast away at is any of the various breeds of water snakes found in the oxbows and sink holes up yonder. So the biggest day of the year is the Snake Rodeo. This is a weekend-long event in which anyone who sees a snake, or thinks they see a snake, or thinks that something they see is of the approximate dimensions of a snake, can blast away with their shotgun without fear of censure. In the weekend I spent in Lake Providence, LA during the Snake Rodeo, I was reassured, time and again, by the good, Pro-Life(TM) people I met that "it was really for the kids."

Giving kids shotguns and encouraging them to shoot at anything longer than it is wide would seem like excellent preparation for the new dawn of freedom awaiting us if (as seems increasingly unlikely) Gov. Palin succeeds Mr. Cheney in the Naval Observatory. But Anne's wolf metaphor works well too.