Well, well, well. How the tables have turned. When I set out to stalk my prey early this morning, who could have predicted that events would unravel as they have? Only the fickle hand of fate knew what was in store, and so now it seems the hunter has become arrested for not having the proper license needed to legally own and operate a firearm in this state.
The irony is simply too delicious.
Let us just savor it, shall we? One moment, the woodsman is tracking his out-of-season quarry onto private property, his trusty unlicensed 12-gauge Remington shotgun in hand, and the next, he’s in the back of a squad car making up contradictory, ill-conceived stories about his application not having been processed. Had I not with my own two eyes seen myself in handcuffs tripping over a tree root during a clumsy attempt to escape into the woods, I, too, would be unable to believe it.
Oh, the hunter may be very cunning with his switchblade knives and his illegal fireworks, but as we have learned today, occasionally the deputy sheriff who has received several noise complaints and who has seen Roman candles being set off in the forest alerting him to the exact whereabouts of the hunter is even more cunning. Yes, the worm has truly turned.
It begs reflection upon the tenuousness of our place in this world, doesn’t it? One never knows when one will go from discharging his weapon within 100 yards of a residential area to having a police officer search his unregistered pickup truck and discover some bottles of prescription painkillers not belonging to the hunter. Does one?
And to think, my dear, sweet deputy sheriff, it was once you distributing the very gun licenses I required, and now it is I who has failed to renew mine. When you woke up this morning, did you have some inkling—some dim premonition, perhaps—that your little badge and your “laws” would lose all meaning before the day was out? Or were you 100 percent correct in your assumption that you could easily subdue and exert your state-madated authority over me?
In some ways, I actually pity you.
But we’re actually not so different, you and I. We are both very much—how shall I put this?—waiting at the police station for the hunter’s brother-in-law to post bail and drive him home. Though I suppose, in retrospect, it only makes sense that great adversaries such as we make up two sides of the same coin.
Ah, my worthy opponent, you may have won the battle, but have you really won the war of finding out that my blood alcohol level is far, far above the legal limit? Perhaps. But then again, perhaps not. And the question still remains: Do you have the steely resolve to call my probation officer and inform him of our little battle of wills?
But I suppose that is a query best left for another—oh, you already have? What a delightful new wrinkle. No matter, though. For the time being, let us both agree that the shoe is now firmly on the other foot.
Checkmate, my friend. Check and mate.
