Down and Out in Huntington Beach

Huntington Beach police have a major break in the duck-stabbing incident first reported yesterday. "Lucky," so named by workers at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center, was first seen with a knife stuck in her back last Thursday, and captured Sunday. Although no arrests have been made, police say a 14-year-old boy is the prime suspect.

Upon reading this story I immediately knew the culprit was an adolescent male. Let's be honest here, the crime fits the profile, doesn't it? Who else but a 14-year-old boy would do something so profoundly stupid? There really is no lowlier creature than the 14-year-old boy, scientifically categorized as the Masterbatorius freshmanus.

Consider for a moment the plight of the 14-year-old boy: no money, no job, no car, no prospects, and has only a handful of friends, at best, of equal or lesser stature with which to commiserate. His stratospheric level of sexual frustration is eclipsed only by his adolescent unattractiveness. His social status is nil. Even the other freshman girls don't want him as they are after his older, more physically robust, employed, and mobile senior competitors. The 14-year-old boy is at the absolute bottom of the American social hierarchy with years to wait before being able to climb it.

I feel bad for the duck, I do, but looking beyond the obvious and frankly disturbing warning-signs of future homicidal behavior, I've got to think that the poor guy was at the end of his freshman rope, hopeless and rejected, broke and nerdy, pimpled and greasy – when he got quacked at – and just decided to stab that god damn duck.

Or maybe he was just hungry. Either way, the kid is at a crossroads. He will either realize that his status will soon improve if he just sticks it out and get's some help, or he will buy a gun and become the Orange County Elmer Fudd – unless of course it's wabbitt season.