“Three mountain lion kittens born last month in the Santa Monica Mountains were inbred, a wildlife expert said, marking a troubling sign for a population penned in by the urban sprawl of metropolitan Los Angeles.
Preliminary DNA tests indicate that the male and two females born in the Malibu Springs area were sired by an adult male and his daughter, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area announced Thursday…Two other kittens born in 2012 were produced by the same mother and father, he said.
Over the years, researchers have found seven mountain lions that were the products of inbreeding…About a dozen pumas roam the area, but it’s a tight squeeze when adult male pumas typically each have huge territories, Riley said.
“Their movements are totally circumscribed by the freeway,” he said, noting that one young male was struck and killed by a car in October. The animal crossed eight lanes of roadway but couldn’t jump a 10-foot-high retaining wall topped with chain-link fencing.”
And what would you have done, penned in by the sea to one side, and the freeways of man on the other, seeing your father’s lands and your father’s father’s lands eaten up, even as the corpse of a great beast is eaten by lesser creatures and given over to insects and to rot? There were no females to take to wife, no fresh-eyed stranger to choose your bed willingly; only scared and starving sisters, so the sisters became wives became mothers became everything.
There were stories — there are always stories, as long as there are fools to tell them and greater fools to hear them — of others who would come to save us, long of limb and clear of eye would would restore our lands to the fulness of glory and turn ash back into wood. But no one ever came. Never let it be said we cannot do for ourselves. We make our own help, and the grave shall be our judge. Others in softer lands than ours may look down on us, for taking to wife the kin that shared our womb. Let them keep their soft lands and their soft hearts and their soft throats, and stay on their side of the Wall. We will keep our own wives, and our own counsel too. We are few here, but we are princes; aye, princes of mud and of blue-winged flies and of shit and of death. We will live through this — marry our daughters and bury our sons — and teach our tongues not to acquaint themselves with our hearts, and become strangers to grief and pity both. We will marry, and we will live.
We will marry our daughters and we will let the world burn into Hell around us.
Tags: grr martin, inbreeding, mountain lions, science
Needs more mead/wine/beer.
(although actually huzzah, A+. I would read that magazine)
Especially sour wine.
And like liqueurs made of flowers or some shit
Don’t forget the fermented mare’s milk – NEVER forget the fermented mare’s milk.
First of a series?
Needs more jape.
0_0
When reached for comment, Lord Eddard Stark said, “I have devised the mountain lions’ most disturbing secret! Yet I have shared it not, not with man nor beast. Anon I shall wander the Santa Monica mountains all alone, the better to ponder upon this terrible secret that only I, me, alone know. I’ll totally return later to tell everyone and ruin the cougars’ hope for a prosperous house forever.”
“I just want to give the mountain lions a chance to flee because there’s no way they would ever think to savagely retaliate first! I mean, look at how cuddly they are!”
ETA: “I’m sure to continue roaming around the Santa Monica mountains with my daughters, who are carrying bags of frozen steaks, #YOLO!”
I… nope, nevermind, just BRAVA, Mallory, BRAVA!
I’m trying to imagine a good catchphrase for the pumas that could be repeated at least 5 times within this two paragraph piece, and am failing. Please help?
“For paws of gold are cold…”
“The freeway is coming.”
Seeing GRRM + kittens in one post, I was steeling myself for gruesome kitten death, but I’m glad you didn’t go there. BRB, going home to hug my cats.
And then the lions of House Malibu Springs were besieged by the bannerlions of House Oxnard, their rippling cloaks emblazoned with silver-threaded emblems of erupting phalli and their incisors sharpened to great extremes of sharpness. With each swipe of a greatclaw, a noble Maliban fell, one and then after it another, until all were slaughtered – all of them, each and every single one, even that cute wide-eyed cub with the brown spots that you grew so attached to in the previous chapter – and a great sea of lionsblood soaked the Santa Monican plain red, a deep and coagulating red, the red of veins opened and entrails spilled and she-lions’ unborn babies birthed into death.
It’s definitely a spot-on impression of GRRM’s writing style because my eyes glazed over halfway through and I had to start over, much like I did with books 2, 4, and 5. Why did I keep reading them, that’s the real question.
I would LOVE to read Mallory’s interpretation of the entire series, though. Can we get Misandrist Game of Thrones?
For Sansa?
Sansa and probably Dany’s dragons, honestly. And Lady Stoneheart. EXACT THY REVENGE UPON THE WHOLE OF WESTEROS.
House Sansa: We Kill Boners.
Oh man. My Misandrist Game of Thrones wishlist:
-Cersei takes over Westeros, is actually relatively competent and doesn’t get body shamed
-Arya’s desire to be a fighter is overtly encouraged
-Lady Stoneheart still wrecks shit
-Same for the Sand Snakes. Actually, hell, Dorne’s got everything going on.
-Mormont ladies get more book-time.
-Sansa/Margaery/Daenarys triumvirate overthrows Cersei, Sansa becomes the Queen of the North/Head Stark/Warden of the North in her father’s place, Margaery is Warden of the South, Daenarys keeps things rolling from King’sQueen’s Landing (which is a legit change, I mean come on, there were two Targaryen Queens instead of that one Targaryen King)
ETA: Brienne/Jamie is a thing, Jamie spends the rest of his days applauding the beauty and valor of his partner.
It would be a very Zen applause.
Boy, I bet Martin regrets having Jaime defenestrate Bran, because I refuse any attempts to redeem him after that. Oh! And enabling the rape of his sister-in-law!
“Brienne/Jamie is a thing, Jamie spends the rest of his days applauding the beauty and valor of his partner.”
I’m currently on the fourth book and this is everything I want but know I can’t have. Run off together, fighters! Be awesome together!
whyyyy
I enjoyed the books for the most part, but had to LOL at the following from A Feast for Crows
"His desire was as deep and boundless as the sea, but when the tide receded, the rocks of shame and guilt thrust up as sharp as ever. Sometimes the waves would cover them, but they remained beneath the waves, hard and black and slimy. What am I doing? he asked himself. I am a knight of the Kingsguard. He rolled off of her to sprawl staring at the ceiling."
Sansa and probably Dany's dragons, honestly. And Lady Stoneheart. EXACT THY REVENGE UPON THE WHOLE OF WESTEROS.
I love the books, but every sex scene is a new horror.
House Sansa: We Kill Boners.
I think he started writing it as a parody of a dick-swinging, wench bedding fantasy, and then got caught up in the story. It is basically brutal trope subversion after bitter trope subversion.
So it's an epic (in the old-fashioned sense) Poe's Law, then?