The Aardvark’s Tongue

Judges in Oregon are asking the age old question “Why is a machine gun any different than a deer?” Good question actually when it comes to possession.

If you are unfamiliar with the story, here’s a refresher:

• In 2001 Jim Filipetti of Bend, Oregon found Snowball the white doe by the side of the road - she was weak and had deformed hooves that prevented her from walking. Jim scooped her up and with the help of a local vet nursed her back to health. Ultimately snowball became a family pet and lived inside the Filipetti home for the first year of her life.
• Police and wildlife officers confiscated Snowball (six years after Filipetti found the doe) on that grounds that the Filipetti’s did not have a permit to own a wild animal (September ‘07).
• Oregon residents complain about the seizure (September ‘07).
• Filipetti tries to get a federal exhibitor license to keep the deer (mid-September ‘07).
• State rules out returning Snowball to the wild (mid-September ‘07).
• Snowball’s offspring (the other deer seized in the original raid) to have a vasectomy - then to be released into the wild (late September ‘07).
• Legal wrangling over Snowball continues.
• Snowball goes into foster care at an elk farm and an Animal Rights Attorney enters the fray (mid-October ‘07).
• Judge orders Snowball be returned to family (late-October ‘07).
• State appeals order (late-October ‘07).
• State defies order (late-October ‘07).
• Family sues for defamation, asking for $ 124,000 (November ‘07).
• State spending on the case exceeds 80,000 (July ‘08).
• Oregon Court of Appeals panel explores the legal implications of the Snowball case (September ‘08).

Today, more than one year after this fiasco started, Snowball the deer’s fate is still up in the air, the Filipetti family is still without their family pet, and the Oregon taxpayer is well on his/her way to being fleeced out of at least a $ 100,000 or more in court costs.

You know…we still need a mounted deer’s head for the Deer-Hoof Gun-Rack: Stranger than Aardvark Fiction Item #6 (the previous post on this blog). Perhaps we could contact the State of Oregon.

Here’s a little item that isn’t totally unknown in these parts – the Deer-Hoof Gun-Rack. We stumbled across this one on the steps of the courthouse in Somerset, Pennsylvania, during an antiques fair. What makes this particular unit odd (and that extra bit creepy) is that it no longer has the deer’s trophy mount head (although the spot where the head used to be is still part of the mounting board).

According to the seller it was owned by a little old lady who lived just out of town. She kept a loaded thirty-ought-six on it so she could quickly kill any passing deer (of course she needed to if she ever hoped to replace the head).