Poaching...Murder?

That's a question that I've been thinking about the last few days and DO NOT claim to answer here and now. I was just having a thought...

In 1994, Charger, a majestic bull elk that patrolled the streets of Yellowstone, was gunned down. His corpse was found a few days later---his antlers had been hacked off. Here's a picture of Charger:

A few weeks later a taxidermist in Utah thought a set of antlers someone had just brought in to him bore a resemblance to the eulogistic article about Charger he'd just read. After some animal DNA investigations (seriously), CHAD BEUS was charged with killing Charger. He was fined $30,075 and sentenced to six months in jail. Here's an article about the lab that helped snare the young Beus.

Would anybody be surprised if Chad Beus would be arrested again for poaching? That he would be banned from hunting in 24 states for nearly a dozen years? You don't need to be a cynic to make a guess about killers. It took until 2005 before he was caught again.

Having to hunt for sustenance for you and your family is one thing. Elephants for tusks, elk for antlers, sharks for their fins...and then, how easy is it to reconcile that with all the violence that we mete out onto each other?

Anyway, all this is some background for when I start using chadbeus as a pejorative term synonymous with scumbag, you'll know where it came from.

Auxiliary Portland Pictures

What follows are some pictures from around Portland I took while on our most recent trip. 

This first one is a neat sculpture of wood and metallic corner details:

Among the many bike stores and camera stores (at least three! that could be an entire post by itself), there were a handful of used record stores, which is always good to see:

This is Pioneer Square and the courthouse at the end of it. It had a bas relief word marking on it saying "Pioneer Courthouse", so I'm not sure whether or not it's still in use. We were going to visit the site during our trip, but missed it until the very end, as the metro to the airport picks up right next to it:

These are artsy sculptures that collect sunlight to power the metro stop fixtures that are right there. That's the Rose Garden---aka basketball arena---in the background, and this is one of the metro stops associated with the arena:

Big mural or advertisement, on the side of the riverside factory. "Long Live Oregonians", aka "white people". Seriously, any ethnic people in the mural/advertisement? Maybe one?

Here are some of the stained-glass windows at Voodoo Doughnuts:

Roses, roses everywhere, so lets all have a sniff:

Tricky, Tricky

I need to do this for my phone, oddly enough.

Nothing to see here...