Cubby is dead.

When I first heard that country singer Troy Lee Gentry killed Cubby, I thought it was another case of a child star gone bad and that Cubby of the Mousketeers had messed around with the wrong woman or been shot in a drug deal gone south, or was knifed in a homosexual tryst with the burly, All-American Troy.

But no, Gentry didn't kill the diminutive child star. He killed a bear. A tame bear. A bear named Cubby, for Christ's sake. What the manly Troy did see, was buy this tame black bear named Cubby, chained him inside a pen, then killed him with a bow and arrow.

Quien es mas macho?

Then the brave and manly Troy told the Fish and Game folks that he killed the bear in the wild, even edited a little home video to show the tough and rugged Troy tracking Cubby through the wilds and taking down the fearsome beast with nothing more than a bow and arrow and a knife in his teeth.

Can't you just smell the testosterone?

If you want to see just how macho our man Troy is, take a look at his video here. What a poser.

So Cubby is dead. And I want to know, just what the fuck is wrong with these guys?

I grew up in hunting country. Firearms in school? You bet. At any time during deer season, half the guys had a 30.06 in their locker or a .30/30 in their car. Except on the first day of deer season because schools were closed. Every year. That's right, they closed school so kids could go deer hunting.

So I know hunting. I hunted in high school. I hunted in survival school. And while I haven't greased anything since that hooker in Nogales (the bitch was asking for it), I understand hunting.

What I don't get is killing. What kind of human flotsam gets a kick out of killing? And what our big man Troy did to Cubby and what our macho VP Cheney does to those cage-raised game birds is not hunting. It's killing, plain and simple. There's as much sport to what they do as if they shot a cow or a chicken.

I have a suggestion for both of these big brave macho guys. Grab an M-4 (it's a good rifle, not as fancy as Cheney's $12K shotgun, but it gets the job done), strap on some kevlar and go hunting insurgents in Iraq.

Oh, wait, those guys shoot back. Not like Cubby. Not like those quail.

And I'm sure that Troy, like Dick, has other priorities.

Phony cowboys and killers of innocent critters. If this is what passes for real men in today's America, this country is doomed.

Novel Update: Today I'll rewrite the confrontation, write the wrap-up, put a final polish on the piece this weekend, and it is outta here. After eighteen months of being creatively frozen, this is a very big deal. Thanks to all for the ongoing encouragment and inspiration. I mean that.