[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
When the Challenger exploded some people thought that the Lybians were responsible for it, to which some NASA official is said to have responded, “There’s a gator filled swamp surrounding the complex, and when the complex was being built we had a number of condtruction workers attacked by them. I doubt anybody else would be able to make it through alive.” (Or words to that effect.) How things have changed.
[/QUOTE]
Nothing has changed. The gators and the swamp are still there. But so are the roads! (Although, as I noted above, the roads now contain significant barriers to terrorist activity.)
More, in fact.
We are always stopped at the entrance booth, after paying our admission fee, for a “security inspection”. Envision an ordinary 12 passenger window van with 6 or 8 little old ladies holding binoculars and knapsacks inside. Driven by 2 guys in “Jim Fowler suits” (the khaki shirts and pants that seem to be universal with us “wildlife guys”). On the back bumper is a great big cooler with drinks and lunches.
So we’re told to “pull over there for inspection” and my staffer and I get out. Along comes a Ranger pushing what looks like a broom, but is actually a mirror on small wheels, maneuvered by broomstick. He uses this to look under the vehicle where, I can only suppose, someone might have secreted a bomb. This of course begs the question of exactly what such a device might look like, and how it can be differentiated from all of the dirt and grease encrusted lumps and bumps that are a normal part of a van’s underside. I (wisely) hold my tongue.
After “inspecting” the entire underside, Mr. Ranger then peers into a window of the van. The old ladies peer back. He turns to me, gestures toward the interior, and asks “What’s in those bags?” Assuming he means the ladies’ knapsacks, I carefully answer “cameras and such”. I fully expect him to ask for a physical inspection, since there are quite a number of such articles and their total volume is sufficient, if translated into explosives, to eradicate most of that end of the Cape from existence. But he doesn’t ask, and I don’t volunteer.
He then returns to the rear of the van and again inspects the underside of the cooler with his wheelie-mirror. It apparently fascinates him. He asks me “What’s inside that?”, indicating said cooler. I answer, again carefully, “Lunches?”. “Oh, OK” he replies, “Well, you can go now”.
Aside-- my answers are careful because of a previous experience, pre- 9/11. At the entry gate, paying our fee, the Ranger had asked “What are you here for?”. Rather than pointing out the absurdity of asking such a question of a group of little old ladies in tennis shoes encumbered with thousands of dollars worth of binoculars and camera gear, entering one of the world’s most famous wildlife viewing areas, and too sarcastic by native bent to answer simply “Bird watching”, I tried to make a joke and said “We heard this was a great place to hunt for Bald Eagles”. That resulted in our being delayed for a half hour lecture on the protected status of our national symbol. So my answers to Ranger questions are now most carefully uttered, after close examination and inhibition of any irony or humor.
Back to the “security inspection”, which we have now passed. This despite the fact that the interior of the van was completely unexamined and could have contained anything up to and including Stinger missiles. The cooler, also unexamined, could have held at least two more, or an awful lot of explosives or firearms. And the underside of the van had been visually inspected to confirm the presence of unidentifiable random large lumps and bumps covered with a crafty application of road grime. So we drove on in.
Don’t you feel safer, knowing that your national security is in good (albeit humorless) hands? Gosh, I sure do!
