This is Lionel, a sea lion so named and adopted by some local area school children (but not at my school).
Lionel was "put down" for the serious crime of eating some salmon... which is his job in our world... that commercial and sport firsherfolk believe belongs to them. As if having to outrun Orcas isn't enough of an ordeal for a sea lion.
He committed his crime right here where I live just below the dam. You see when the sportfisherfolk and the commercial fisherfolk fished out his area of the ocean... Lionel and his relatives got hungry enough to search the Columbia River this far up... which had never happened before a few years ago...for food and found a bounty of it at the fish ladders to the dam.
Of course he could not have done that if the dam was not there... and the fish ladders would not have been needed if the dam was not there. People put the fish ladder and dam there, not Lionel, but he was smart enough to figure out that this was the mother lode of salmon munchies.
Here is his story and another one as well...
Yes, I know... DH hunts Bambi and he'd blow Thumper off the trail too.
Juxtaposition?
No one is going to eat Lionel. They just wanted him not to be able to eat what they consider their fish, not his.
Besides... think of all those little school children who adopted him, tried to save him and then learned they couldn't change a thing.
Crap!
I'm glad I wasn't there at that school the day they killed Lionel and started passing out the tissues.
Do tell... what do you think about it?
Have a wonderful Hump Day! Yay!
