In reference to your one rule: “Don’t be a jerk”, how can you print such meaningless drivel concerning mutes without going to the source? The source I am referring to would be the ‘Holy Grail’ of mute investigators, Capt. Keith Wolverton, of the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office in Great Falls, Montana.
With so much at stake, Capt. Wolverton refused to put his name on any investigation until all, and I do mean ALL avenues were examined.
Natural causes do not impale the horn into solid clay; nor do they place the animal up under a bush as if to seek cover.
I do not know how many sites you have visited personally (I have been to twenty-six) but I have yet to leave one thinking ‘natural causes’.
Have a care before you declare…
James R. Leming
Issaquah, WA
We have seen an overuse and dilution of the phrase “Holy Grail of” in recent years. This really takes the cake. When there’s a Holy Grail of cattle mute investigations, Holy Grail finally has no meaning at all.
Stop it. Find some other poor defenseless phrase to drag around. I’m not even Catholic, but I am gacked when I have the mental picture of a Grail full of decaying cattle anuses and blowfly maggots. Drinking the blood of a holy man is bizarre enough! No maggots in the holy blood, okay? Sheesh.
Not precisely. A “mute” is anyone who can’t (or doesn’t) speak, whether it’s a character in an opera with nothing to say, someone with no vocal apparatus, or someone who has never learned to speak. Those who are born deaf have, historically, represented a large portion of those who are mute, but the two words do not mean the same thing, and one can be either without being the other.
Not a spelling error, just an unusually stupid piece of slang.
