emperor dead: not many mourners.

COMMENT

So. The Emperor of Exmoor is dead, shot doubtless by some chinless idiot who now thinks he's a really big man because he gunned down Britain's biggest wild animal, probably from a safe distance with a high-powered rifle with telescopic sight. Well, sir, you're not a big man, you're a disgraceful example of the very worst kind of human being.

I know wild animals need to be culled sometimes- 300,000 deer are "kulled" every year apparently, so presumably they're not endangered; indeed, we saw 3 fallow deer in the woods while getting lost in Symond's Yat over the weekend. But culling should be about removing the weak and elderly members of a group, not the most exquisite example in the whole country. Killing this magnificent beast is a slap in the face for anyone who has the slightest respect for life forms other than that highly disordered and poorly evolved species, homo sapiens.

Oscar Wilde once described fox hunting as the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. Hunting down a magnificent creature like the Emperor of Exmoor is the crass in pursuit of the sublime. Please God the culprit can be identified and outed for the truly pathetic individual he is.