Coyote Ugly

by

Aside from sprawling out nude over an iron cattle grid perusing the Cliff’s Notes for Atlas Shrugged, I find no greater pleasure in life than a jog at dawn. My morning canter offers private moments of delight, away from the pressures of keeping Texans safe from unrest. James Rick Perry doesn’t like to mix work with play, but sometimes—jogging around with a .380 Ruger and an arsenal of hollow-point bullets in a gated area with enough security to occupy Paris—trouble finds you. And I resent the fact that I’m still being taken to task over this “Coyote Incident.” Let me take a moment to clear things up, once and for all.

As you probably know, smuggling syndicates are intricate operations, like Jenga™, or redistricting. And their infrastructures are Byzantine tangles of bad dudes led by the infamous coyotes, men who stay up at night thinking of new ways to smuggle Xanax, gardeners or chicharrónes into our fair land. Historically, coyotes have been a clever bunch, but today their operations are insanely devious and complex. Now I know folks are probably saying, “Oh, there goes Dick Perry, the poor naïve Lothario of Lavaca Street, always a scoot short of a two-step.”

The point is, do not think I am so dense as not to recognize the difference between coyotes and coyotes. One is relatively harmless, but the other is a menace to our freedoms and those of any skilled Texan willing to work for $1.25 an hour in the blistering heat. We used to be able to tell the difference (the sombrero, for one, was a dead giveaway), but now, coyotes have the ability to morph themselves so effectively as to blend in seamlessly with the canis latrans. (In addition to preparing me for a career in government, my Animal Science degree from A&M and Google taught me how to say fancy animal names in Latin. There is a reason why I am your leader.)

Ideally, we’d have a border wall to protect ourselves from wily coyotes, but we can’t find anybody who’ll work cheap enough to build it, so we, as Texans, need to tread (or jog, as the case may be) with heightened awareness. The fact that I have to defend popping a cap in that coyote boggles the mind. (Next thing you know, milksop liberals are going to question the execution of mentally handicapped shoplifters.)

The media would have you believe it was the innocuous, garden-variety coyote. Well, trust me, this was definitely a coyote in disguise. You can’t just glue on a few tawny pelts and expect to fool the Governor. People of Texas, I think you understand that I did what I had to do. Coyotes are a threat to homeland security. The threat is everywhere. But as long as I’m running around with a loaded pistol, our great state will be a safe haven for law-abiding citizens.

I’m James Rick, bitch. Don’t you forget that.