Reuters:

A mountain lion attacked, killed and partially ate a New Mexico man, authorities said on Tuesday.

A search party found the body of Robert Nawojski, 55, in a wooded area near his mobile home in Pinos Altos, New Mexico, late last week, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish said.

Investigators concluded that Nawojski had been attacked and killed by a mountain lion, or cougar, at a spot close to his home, where he lived alone and was known to bathe and shave outdoors.

Spokesman Dan Williams said the lion subsequently dragged the man’s body a short distance into nearby woodland and ate and buried parts of it.

Nawojski was reported missing by his brother last week. A search party found a mountain lion lurking near his home, and reported it to the Department of Game and Fish, who shot and wounded the animal.

KRQE:

In one corner an aggressive panhandler. In the other a disabled, wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran who turned out not to be the underdog.

When the two met up five days ago in northeast Albuquerque the attacker became the attacked.

Gary Gould said the attempted mugging had him fighting for his life reminding him of what it was like fighting for his life in Vietnam.

“I can’t walk; I’m paralyzed,” he told KRQE News 13 today. “I got blown up in Vietnam.

“I’ve been in a chair for 38 years.”

Gould, 58, is safe at home now miles away from the Billiard Palace where he took a break from playing pool last Thursday. He said he went out back to smoke a cigarette when a man approached him asking for money.

“He put his hand out like this,” Gould said. “I said, ‘I don’t have any money. Get out of my face, man.’”

Melvin Romero should have listened he didn’t. Instead he then demanded money and repeatedly stabbed Gould with a pair of scissors, according to a criminal complaint.

Gould has some marks and bruises now, but Romero’s the one who ended up hurt the most.

“When he stabbed me, I grabbed him, and I wrestled him to the ground,” Gould said. “Every time he kept trying to get back up, I had to knock him back down.

“They transported him, and I heard he lost a pint of blood.”

Romero wasn’t booked into jail until Monday four days after the attack because that’s how long it took him to recover in the hospital.

Jean Alexandre Joseph Falguière,
Le Vainqueur au Combat de Coqs
(Victor of the Cockfight), 1864
Musée d’Orsay

The sport of the cock fight is said to have been introduced into Ancient Greece by Themistocles. The latter, while advancing with his army against the invading Persians, observed two cocks fighting, and, stopping his troops, inspired them by calling their attention to the valor and obstinacy of the feathered warriors. In honor of the subsequent Greek victory, cockfights were thenceforth held annually at Athens, at first in a patriotic and religious spirit, but afterwards purely for the love of the sport.

In England, cockfighting rivaled horse racing in popularity. The prohibition of the sport by Cromwell during the Protectorate was traditionally viewed as a high water mark of Puritan tyranny.

Cockfighting has an extensive literature and sporting tradition, and its own technical language and ethos. Cockfighting was historically one of the few sporting activities where the different classes of society mingled. The ground on which matches between gamecocks were conducted was traditionally referred to as “the sod.” An old saying holds that: “On the turf and on the sod, all men are equal.” Implying that only there does such equality exist, of course.

Cockfighting was extremely popular in early America. The founding fathers, including Washington and Jefferson, were devoted to the sport. Andrew Jackson bred gamecocks. Even Abraham Lincoln refereed matches. But the spirit of Puritan intolerance has always struggled for the suppression of all of modes of the expression of humanity’s fighting instincts and natural love of sport.

Cockfighting was banned in Massachusetts in 1836, and the bluenosed bigots gradually got their way in every US state, with the exception of Louisiana and New Mexico where the sport remained protected as a highly prized cultural property of local non-English-speaking communities.

The sport now has been sacrificed in New Mexico, however, to the calculating political ambition of the current governor, Bill Richardson, who decided he needed to get in-line with the Puritan left on an “animal rights” issue, and who feared being identified in a campaign for national office as governor of a state so primitive and retarditaire as to tolerate the existence of a fighting sport. Richardson broke campaign promises to constituents that he would protect the sport as long as he remained governor.

Let’s hope that Richardson’s scheming treachery is not rewarded.

Jean-Léon Gérome, Jeunes Grecs Faisant Battre de Coqs (Young Greeks Conducting a Cockfight), 1846, Louvre

Petition to Legalize Cockfighting in the US