Tiger Attack!

I rolled over in bed yesterday morning, replete with happy Christmas memories and heard the bizarre news that a man had been mauled and killed by a tiger on the loose in San Francisco. I stared at the TV, not quite certain I'd heard it right. But I had. A man HAD been killed by a tiger. In San Francisco. On Christmas Day. Why is it that the Truth is always stranger than anything you can imagine? I consult psychics quite regularly but if they were to tell me that a man would be consumed by a tiger on Christmas Day in San Francisco, I think I'd change psychics. This is just too weird. And why is it, that anything that actually happens is so much more loony than anything we can imagine?

I'd like to know why that young man had to die at the mouth of a tiger. What in the world was going on? In some of Sylvia Browne's books, where she tells of life on the Other Side, she says we are all pre-destined to know what day we will pass long before we come back to make this human life on this side. It is all carefully recorded and arranged long before we are born. She says you spend years arranging your human life and how it will spin out and who you will know and meet in this life while you're in spirit form on the Other Side. But what in the world... I mean, what would possess somebody from wanting to be mauled and eaten by a tiger as his means of exiting this world? It's not one of those Ten Most Popular Ways To Die, is it?

I'm envisioning a line of spirits on the Other Side, arranging the lives they will live when they are born. It must be sort of like the lines we used to have to stand in when we were registering for classes in college, before they had the online registrations they have now. Folks standing there with long lists of paper, trying to get the courses they need to complete their majors. Only these Spirit Folks are trying to arrange the right set of happenstances for living their lives to the fullest and fulfilling their destiny.

There's this line marked "Passing on the 25th of December, 2007" and a lady is standing behind a man. The lady looks over at the man's paper and asks, "So how are you planning on passing?"

He flourishes his paper in front of him importantly. "I'm going to get slashed by a tiger at the zoo."

"No way!" Open mouthed she gawps at him. "In this day and age? You can do that?"

"Yup!" he grins triumphantly. "Not many go that way, but I've got permission."

"Oh, so unfair!" she gripes. "I want to go that way too!"

"You can't," he flashed his papers in her face again. "We're passing on the same day. In the same state too. You're California, aren't you?"

"Yes, but... Gee... what a great way to go! I wish I'd thought of that! I didn't know in the Twenty First century you could choose that passing, especially in an industrialized country. Especially California!"

"Yeah, well, I've been working on this quite a while. It wasn't easy, believe me!"

"Well, shoot! Congratulations, Buddy. You've one-upped me! But see here.... I put down mauled by pit bulls on mine."

"Yeah, that's not bad. It sure beats passing in your sleep. Good luck to you!"

So that's the conversation I think they had in that line on the Other Side. For the rest of the news yesterday morning mentioned that a woman in Yermo in Southern California got mauled to death by pit bulls too. On Christmas Day. Hey, I'm not making this up. I'm only trying to imagine how it got to this in the first place.