A few words from the Original Nittany Lion™

Meow, fuckers. That’s me-fucking-ow. I’m sure glad I can’t see my own reflection here in the glass. Talk about a ridiculous taxidermy job!

But I am the original Nittany Lion, and don’t you forget it. That’s Mount Nittany rising behind me in this cheesy fucking diorama. And here I am, believe it or not, crouching in the exact spot where Beaver Stadium will someday be built. Has been built. Whatever. I’ve been dead for like a hundred and twenty-five years, O.K.? My mind ain’t what it used to be.

Plus, I mean, this is bullshit. A lion at Beaver Stadium. Does that make sense to you? Me neither. Plus, I never set foot in the area. My ass got shot in, like, Pike County or some shit. 1880-something. You can feel up the buttons on the handy touch-screen interpretive thingy there to the left of the display case, if you’re real curious.

Hey, get your mouth away from the glass, kid! You’re scaring me!

Beavers? Yeah, we lions used to have ’em for breakfast. Not much to my taste – kind of oily, you know? Except for the tails. Those were choice! But here’s the thing: back when y’all still had mountain lions – or painters, as you inbred cow-bangers liked to call us – the beavers weren’t nearly the nuisance they are now. Not that there were any less of them – hell, there were more! It’s just that they kept to the water when they knew that there were lions and wolves in the neighborhood, just waiting to get all predacious on their ass. And more beavers packed in closer to the water – think about it, if that’s not too much to ask. More dammed creeks means more marshes and eventually more wet meadows, right?

Can you see where I’m going with this? No? What the hell do they teach you kids nowadays? I was like the plant cop, y’all! And all the birds and dragonflies and whatnot – I was their superhero protector, know what I’m saying? And it was that way everywhere, every habitat you can think of. Way up on the rocks, on just about every one of these ridges, you got – or had – a critter y’all call the Allegheny wood rat. Not too common anymore. Can’t find ’em on Nittany Mountain, the Seven Mountains – hell, they’re just about gone from this neck of the woods. Why? Too many mid-sized predators – especially those fucking raccoons. They go everywhere now, carrying their lousy roundworm with them. Act like they own the place. Ha!

And deer? Y’all are talking like it’s just a matter of over-population. As if the way y’all have fucked up Pennsylfuckingvania – more roads than any other state, houses and shopping malls out the wazoo – as if that has nothing to do with it. It has everything to do with it. That, and the fact that you wiped out all of us lions and wolves.

It’s just like with the beavers. It ain’t like we killed that many. But we kept ’em scared. They lay low all year round, not just during the couple months of the year when you send your pumpkin-colored Nimrods out to fire at anything that flashes a white ass. When deer are lying low, guess what? They’re not eating much. And guess what else? When they do go to eat, they do it very, very cautiously – no hanging out in forest openings and on riverbanks and whatnot. You think it’s a coincidence that your native streamside and forest plants are disappearing? Think again.

Yeah, so here I am at this fucking cow college on steroids, the Original Nittany Lion, stuck in a display case at the library. The real-deal mascot, he’s carved out of stone. Looks all heroic and shit, not a sad sack like me. Hell, that thing got so popular they completely forgot I existed. I spent half the last century on loan to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, stuck in a basement storeroom with the moths and the spiders. The only complete specimen of an Eastern Cougar, out of the hundreds of thousands that were killed for bounty, and I didn’t get any respect whatsoever.

But we’re comin’ back. Yeah, I know, there’s a lot of dumb-ass white folks who think there’s a cougar behind every tree – just like Elvis Lives and the space aliens abducted Aunt Minnie. But some of these mountain lion sightings in places like Maine and Missouri – they got it on video. Not to mention those inbred fuckers down in Florida. Plus, they found roadkilled cougar kittens in Kentucky three years ago, folks. They did a DNA analysis: one parent was from North America, one from South America. So the new Eastern Cougar will not be genetically pure, but who the hell cares? Long as we get the job done. Like that cat down there in suburban Chester County, Pennsylvania. A release or an escape, who knows? But the fact is, he survived in the not-so-wild for years till they finally drug him in.

See, we don’t need the Big Woods, we just need a prey base and a few good places to digest a meal in relative peace. The females like wilderness to raise their families in, but we’ll take what we can get. Including little Jimmy – yum! But I don’t think you need to worry too much about that. When’s the last time you saw a kid outdoors? Except for those fat fuckers on their ATVs.

I got two words for ATV riders: fast food. If you got housecats, you know what I’m talking about: there’s nothing a cat enjoys more than a nice, moving target!

But someday soon the oil runs low and it’s no more free lunch time, no more shipping food halfway around the fucking world, no more chemical fertilizer and all that. All you fuckers will come here to study farming – you know, like growing food? But there won’t be no more hunters ’cause the little fat kids never learned how, so you’ll be up to your ass in white-tailed deer and then you will thank Whomever for any free-roaming lions you can find. You’ll be so fucking grateful to us, you’ll probably even send out a virgin now and then just to keep us happy. That stone statue at the Nittany Lion shrine? They’ll start finding, like, blood on it and shit. Hell yeah.

Put that in your pot pipe and smoke it. Then you can sing about loving Mother Earth all you want, go hug your fertilizer-enhanced trees and play hacky-sack on Penn State’s world-famous, genetically engineered, poison-laden turf grass. Happy Earth Day, fuckers.