Thurmond Tells His Side
27.03.09
BRANSTON, MO – (ed. note: Mr. Eldon Thurmond, held without bail and facing multiple criminal charges in the wake of a satellite impact here when investigators and personnel involved in the cat round up were injured by coming in contact with his high-voltage fence. He wrote to the paper):
Dear Editor: I am writing to you from (a) Branston city jail cell. I facing longer imprisonment if all the charges being brought against me sticks. For forty years, I was a upstanding member of our community, working being a electrician for General Dynamo with spotless work record and hardly no sick days.
I raised two kids, Donna who was homecoming queen runner-up in ’96, and Donnie, who is in Iraq, and been married to the same woman for a long time.
Last week, something very strange event happened that change my life. A satellite returned to earth and fell into my neighbor’s back yard, hitting her cat, a grey Persian that went by the name of Sniffles. I call it the HAND of God, the satellite.
You could not forget the look on that cat’s face was unforgettable when it looked up at me just before being struck, like a sixth sense or something. But what happen afterwords was a situation also beyond my control, too.
Your reporters arrived, along with other media and the local police, and State and federal authorities, followed by the military, NASA the NSA, the federal nerds, the university nerds, and the nerds from Bell labs who built the thing.
With all those people showing up all over the place, smart as they are, some of them were rocket scientists, and some of them were naturally going to transgress into my yard and trip over my fence.
They’ve even got me calling it a fence. It wasn’t a fence, like you’d think, fence. All it was was four strands of wire low enough for a cat not to get under, high enough not to jump over, and close enough together for him not to take a chance.
Then the cat round up began, which turned out one bizarre event, let me tell you, especially after it got dark. That’s when most of the injuries occurred and they shut down the power for the whole block when they couldn’t override my system.
I'm sorry all those people's food went bad. But here again, I wasn't the person who chose to shut down the power. If they had asked me first, I could have told them the power plant was at my place, in my basment.
Even after public utiltities shut down the power, my fence was still active, still hot, baby. For a sixteen-block square, from Mulberry to the highway and over to Lincoln Avenue, my house was the only one with lights on. Hey, I'm a electrician.
They tell me several dozen cats got fried, died, cardiac arrest probably, and thirty or so individual humans were incapacitated by severe electrical shock. I'm truly sorry about that.
I’ve been shocked many times over the years, so I can tell you, 50,000 volts will knock you on your backside. Nothing to laugh at. About the same as a taser. That amount of juice could curl your toes and make your circuitry go haywire and end you up with some kind of nervous tic.
All those people will eventually be okay, with therapy. The cats, the cats had it coming.
I would like to despell the accusations and charges leveraged against me, fueled partly by your own publication participation. I did not act in a malicious manner against any one person, nor make aggression against any person or cat, with my person.
What did I do is simply a man defend my own turf. Any harmful effect was direct in line result against the cat or person’s own negligence.
They say my negative reinforcement device had no warning, but yes it did it had a little red light that came on.
That’s what’s not’s malicious about it see? The cats would see the little red light and know to stay back, eventually, same as Pavlov's dogs. Don't have to shock them but once. One encounter is all it takes. What I wanted to know was can they pass it on? Mice do.
Then I could shut down my system and just run the little red light, thus, saving me and the city money and reducing our overall global carbon footprint and consumption.
I watched the whole sanario unfold, from the satellite striking on the cat, until they took me away. I was no more than a passive observer, and should not be held responsible for the actions of others.
My lawyer says they have to prove intent, and hell no, I didn't intend for all those people to get sizzled. I wasn't even thinking about NASA when I installed it. Cats neither, intent-wise. For the cats, it was just a scare tactic. I didn’t intend for that satellite to come zipping down, either. I’m telling you, it’s the Hand of God.
In closing, first you had the Hand of God. Next, all those people arrive on their own free will, and then someone decided on the cat round up, not me. People stumbling around in the dark and encountering a hot fence, again, Hand of God. I don’t see how you people can hold me accountable for Hand of God things.
Oh. Could you please tell your idiot city editor the damn cat's name was 'Sniffles', with an 'S', not 'Sniffle'.
Sincerely,
Mr. Eldon T. Thurmond
509 Mulberry St.
Branston, MO
email: elektrokatkiller150@gmail.com
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