Biting My Tongue

Over the years I have learned to bite my tongue around idiots and morons. The problem is that there is no shortage of idiots and morons. Eventually, if you keep trying to be polite and hold your tongue, you might as well become one of the morons.

I had a close relative I used to talk to now and again. He's pretty much what I consider the worst of the worst when it comes to people. Obsessed with money, with guns, with hunting, with racist politics. It was always a chore for me to be around him, and finally I had to stop.

The very last time I recall speaking to him he was complaining about how the National Park Service had reintroduced wolves to the Yellowstone ecosystem. "Nature finds a balance," he said. "They don't need wolves. Now the elk populations are going to plummet."

Indicative of this selfish prick, all he could think about was that some day it might be a little harder for him to blast an elk to death with one of his vast array of firearms than it might otherwise be in a world without wolves. As always, I held my tongue and let him hang himself with the rope he provided. "Nature finds a balance." Except of course, when the natural predator/prey relationship is regained in a way that he didn't like.

He was a stinking moron, and to keep someone's twisted interpretation of peace, I kept my mouth shut in reaction to his stupidity and evil.

One more reason I no longer bite my tongue in conversation.

Rocky Mountain Elk, Colorado.

One of the last of the red wolf/coyote hybrids in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I don't have any photos of a Yellowstone wolf because when I was there I never saw one. There aren't that many of them--about 300 distributed over 2.2 million acres. Hard to spot. Much harder to find than an elk, which number about 20,000.