I, uh, accidentally confessed to a student that I wrote ACOWAS today …
I was using an excerpt from ACOWAR to teach about sentence fragments (DON’T @ ME, IT’S TRUE) and she recognized the text. And one thing led to another … I’m sitting here now like, “the whole damn POINT of a pen name was so my students wouldn’t know who I was by my fic and HERE WE ARE” lmao
Advertisement
I have a strong stomach when it comes to certain nauseating content in films thanks to growing up a game warden’s daughter. We just watched this really strange film for my class and there was a lot of imagery of meatpacking, meat being eaten, flesh, etc., and these things didn’t get to me at all. Frankly, the shaky camera bothered my head more than anything else!
It gets even better, because he was doing all of this on a pitch black night. This dude swam towards a lure, slapped at it with his glove, and when it got caught; he let himself float and tugged on the line so the fisherman thought he had hooked a 100+ pound salmon. Once he was finally up to the shore, he turned a flashlight on in the guy’s face and walked out of the water, saying “good morning, gentlemen. State fish and game warden, you’re under arrest.“
At this point, the guy who had reeled him in had literally fallen over in shock, and the other people with him were scared shitless. The warden whipped some citations out of a plastic bag in his wetsuit, made the trespassers sign them, asked if they had any questions, and then gathered all of their fishing gear. And he just. Walked back into the river. And quietly swam away, without another word.
This man is a legend.
warden coming out of his river to shame fishermankind
Okay I know I just reblogged this but it really got me thinking about my dad so I wanted to share some Game Warden stories with you.
He kept his taxidermy owls in my brother’s room as a kid but had to take them out, My brother couldn’t sleep and was getting nightmares because they were staring at him.
He kept his work snowmobile at home (yes it was a thing) and sometimes he would secretly take us for rides on it even though he wasn’t supposed to. I can still remember the smell of the inside of that helmet.
He also kept his robot deer in the shed so it was not at all unusual for us to walk into the shed and see a headless deer body with the head part sitting on a shelf somewhere nearby.
On the job this deer would be in a field to lure poachers. Once a dude hopped out of his car on the side of the road to try and shoo it away. My dad was laying in a ditch on the other side of the road. “Sir, step away from the deer.” “WHAT? Why???” “Watch me make its head move.” *robot deer activates* “Aw, that’s MESSED UP!”
I was the Coolest Kid at the Thanksgiving feast at school because my dad would come in his uniform with his display pelts and let us feel fox fur and deer skin and teach us about animal footprints.
The time he found a decapitated alligator on the side of the road and brought it home on the back of his work truck. We were in Upstate New York. Theory is that dumb college students brought the body back from spring break and dumped it when it started to smell. The removal of the head, funny enough, occurred after it was dumped.
We periodically rehabilitated baby rabbits, turtles, and other critters, but not very often, because the rule was “If you care, leave them there.”
He once busted a snake smuggler. His partner was terrified of snakes so you’d better believe my dad made the best of that situation.
(related: he was trained in snake handling and said the only one that scared him was the cobra because “you could tell it was thinking about how it was gonna kill you.”)
Sometimes he would sit and wait when he found fishers operating without a license. They’d climb up the hill and find my dad waiting with their citations.
He once busted a dude growing marijuana because the guy was literally driving in an ATV down the road (illegal, which is why my dad noticed) with the plants literally sitting on the back of the ATV. My dad thinks he was using a little too much of his own product.
He once rescued a grandfather and his two grandkids out of Lake Ontario on a day with like, eight foot waves. Made the news and everything.
Basically my dad had a really cool job and this is only some of the awesome stuff he did.
BONUS (not game warden-related, but still my dad): He worked at a theme park and zoo as a teen and helped raise a lion cub named Tigger.
BONUS #2: Also at the theme park, he faced down an angry Barbados ram and escaped by whacking it across the horns with a shovel to stun it long enough to get away.
Yeah my dad and wildlife have an interesting relationship.
guys it’s been over a year and I can’t get over how terrible Indiana cuisine is. The last thing I expected to miss when I left Western New York was a goddamn food but alas! No pizza like Italian-immigrant pizza (none here). No wings like ACTUAL Buffalo wings (none here). No fish fry like fish fries made near lakes with a significant number of Catholics in the population (not here).
Sarah Viehmann 