By Consensus, The Brain Trust Saves The Alamo

We fired up the grill on the ramparts of the Alamo — the deck — where the fortifications jutted over the bayou, which served as a moat on one side to repel the hordes of Muslim assassins and television commentators.

The water barrier allowed us to direct most of the arsenal toward the road in case a politician came canvassing for votes.

An Alamo council was under way on the cat situation, which had failed to fix the duck situation, which had devolved into a grave situation of catastrophic environmental consequences.

The Alamo brain trust — Senor Dick, Jose and several amigos — considered the matter. For inspiration, they put a case of brew on ice and sent for resupply as well.

The proliferation of ducks had been unsustainable. It had required a safari to the beach — a cat hunt.

We piled into an amigo's truck, the mandatory red. It is a known fact that where two Americans can fit, four Mexicans will fit better. We crammed a hunting party to the windows, which we lowered because the boys had turned ripe in an episode of global warming, formerly called August.

Destination: the beach, known for its infestation of feral felines, its sunburned and besotted Southerners and Yankee infiltrators, a shameful reminder of yet another unaddressed immigration problem.

The cat hunt began.

We lured them into traps and stashed a dozen in sturdy sacks the amigos had lifted off construction sites.

We freed them at the Alamo. Target: the ducks. The brain trust forbade the feeding of cats — the hungrier the better.

Alas, the cats proved no match for the ducks, who were meaner, larger and frighteningly hideous.

Now, we had two population explosions.

The boys took a vote. Under the influence of medication, suffering hallucinations of dehydration — that is, in the natural citizen condition — we got a consensus that the heat had caused it.

The Alamo environment came under severe stress.

Where once we had duck droppings on every foot, we had added the simmering stench of cats. We held barbecues with clothespins on our noses, upon which butterflies would land.

The felines persevered. When we approached our trash cans to discard burrito wrappers, cats ejected like bottle rockets.

Day and night, they peered out from nooks and crannies of the Alamo, waiting for a taco to drop.

The cats procreated in screeching night events of fur flying. The ducks reproduced in brutal daytime displays of feather pulling.

They seemed almost human.

An amigo returned from his mission, peddling the road on a child's bike, knees pumping to his chest, a resupply of brew heaped on the handlebars. He ran a slalom through the ducks. Cats darted in the bushes.

We took the chicken off the grill. The brain trust, into its third case of inspiration, urged another vote on the duck, cat and heat crises.

Wound up in passionate argument, aglow in the oratorical splendor of a glorious campaign, Dick went backward off the deck, arms flailing in futile flight.

Jose remarked that the man could swim, yet we heard no splash. When we looked over the edge, we saw the tide was out.

We dragged Dick from the muck and considered whether to vote — get a consensus — on the existence of gravity. In fleeting rationality, we realized consensus was politics, not science.

We remounted the deck and found our barbecue covered with cats.

The environment had got out of hand. Carried away by emotion, we voted again to fix it and laid plans for a new expedition.

We had spied just the solution during the cat safari. We saw them lurking about a construction site.

We figured to snare two dozen coyotes.

Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at plucas@pcnh.com. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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