Humans. You gotta love 'em. By now every two-legged on the planet has gotten wet behind the ears taking the ice bucket challenge.
It's no doubt a great cause, getting ice water poured on you to fight amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's Disease. Everybody's doing it. Tiger Woods, Bill Gates, head basketball Hog Mike Anderson, the entire Rogers Mountaineers football coaching staff. If your name has a vowel in it, I'll wager you've taken the ice bucket challenge.
This latest craze has curious tom cats asking: How does stuff like this get started? Who was the first to say, "Hey, pour this 5 gallons of ice water over my noggin' and I'll give you a dollar." You can actually find out at the website, www.mda.org.
Everybody has jumped on the ice-bucket bandwagon. There is one inhabitant of this planet who isn't ready to leap. You see the handsome picture of the tom cat right here on this page? It'll be sleeting in the Sahara before I, Boat Dock, take the ice bucket challenge. It would mean a bad fur day for sure. I'd come out looking like Yoda.
Penguins will fly before your faithful tom cat takes the ice bucket challenge. Sometimes things go wrong. There are videos all over the place that show the pourers dropping the bucket and it thumps the pour-ee on the head.
I read where some firefighters were pouring buckets on college students from a ladder truck. The ladder got too close to a power line and the firefighters got shocked.
All I can figure is these challenge-takers are trying to fulfill a lifelong dream. That is, to be a head football coach. Used to be the coach was the only guy getting doused with a 5-gallon bucket of Gatorade. That is, if the team won. I say this is more fitting for the losing coach, but what do I know?
Remember those old McDonald's signs that said how many billions served? It's the same deal with the ice buckets, only the sign might say, "billions and billions" poured.
My keen eyes have noticed that a lot of the ice-bucket bathers are wearing swim suits or shorts. That's why my hat's off to Michael Poore, the Bentonville school superintendent who showed up wearing his usual coat and tie, but barefoot. He's the best-dressed of any human I've seen get ice cubes down his neck.
I'm all for you two-leggeds getting soaked to the bone with ice water, if that's what you want to do. I'm the first to cheer for any of you furless wonders turning blue for a good cause.
So if there's ever an ice bucket challenge for, say, spaying and neutering pets, I, Boat Dock, will do my part. I'll send the cat butler. He can sit in a chair with the best of them, and he needs a bath.
Outdoors on 09/04/2014