Small Child Kills Large Bear; Davy Crockett Smiles From Heavenly Perch

If you've been listening to Stephen Colbert for the past, oh, two years, you'd know one inalienable truth about our sweet country: Bears are a menace. They are killing machines, bent on the destruction of the human race and -- even worse -- American values. What, then, are we to do to combat this scourge?

Rely on the five-year-olds, that's what:

A 5-year-old Arkansas County boy killed a black bear Sunday weighing more than 400 pounds. [...]

"He came in about 40 to 50 yards," Mike Merritt said of the black bear, "and when he got in the open, I whistled at him and he stopped and I said, 'Shoot Tre.'"
Tre confirmed his grandfather's account.

"I was up in the stand and I seen the bear," Tre Merritt said. "It came from the thicket and it was beside the road and I shot it."

Questions, and answers, about this story:

Q. So, why did you drop Davy Crockett in the headline?

A. Because this kid is the 10th great-grandson of Davy Crockett, who supposedly killed a bear when he was three.

Q. Why was a five-year-old wielding a rifle? That seems dangerous.

A. Good question! I was wondering that myself. (Great minds, etc.) Apparently the child was using a "youth rifle." A youth rifle capable of downing a 400-pound bear, but a "youth rifle" nonetheless. Not sure how what is unsafe for a gigantic bear could be possibly be seen as safe in the hands of a five-year-old child, but that's not the point here, is it?

Q. OK, so what's the point?

A. Something is seriously wrong with Arkansas.

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