I will reassure the authorities in Shumen - watch your posts calmly. In my opinion, there is no panther. And if there is one and it attacks a person, calm down - you will drag yourself through the courts for years and in the end they will acquit you if you call the right person.
Many of you probably have your favorite quote from "Catch 22" by Joseph Heller, but one of mine is one by General Dreedle: "Let's continue this devilish briefing before the war is over. I have never seen such incompetence."
I don't know why I remembered him, but somehow it is connected to the reactions of the Shumen chief of something and the chief of something else regarding the panther. From them it follows that, of course, de jure "we are doing everything necessary", but de facto the Bulgarian state is helpless, they even warned that this with the impossibility of capturing it could last a long time.
Schrödinger's panther
Now, I love the Bulgarian state, of course, who doesn't love it, but this is a matter of crushing incompetence - hunters who killed wild boars spoke out, and even some who go on safari, some unnamed expert from South Africa was involved, except that they didn't call the spirit of Pencho Kubadinski to "consult" them. And this in the middle of a parallel philosophical problem - does a panther actually exist or not? It is not entirely clear from the vague videos, but if there is, the Bulgarian state is once again helpless to find it and answer how and where such an animal ended up in the wild.
And this is the real problem, beyond the memes and jokes, some of which are quite successful. Before I continue about the helpless state, let me say: as if in an idiotic continuation of Schrödinger, we do not know whether such a cat exists or not. It really is like the Austrian scientist's Shumen panther - we have both seen it in a vague video and not. But if it exists, we are already talking about two types of failure here - the state does not suspect who would raise something like this, cannot track it down and absolutely does not know how to react.
I will immediately give two examples: three leopards for some reason escape from the Hong Kong zoo and disappear outside the city. Within a week, two were captured, and the third was spotted by drone. The classic case of an escaped leopard is also from Mpumalanga, South Africa - it somehow slipped out of the "Nkomazi" reserve. The helicopter was raised, as well as drones with thermal cameras, which you can more or less ask what they are looking for in terms of shape. Not to mention that in the USA and not only, if an evacuation is announced, the said drones with thermal cameras understand in no time who is still sitting at home and force them out.
Will we find out if someone is raising an elephant?
That is, in every such case in the first world, a team of specialists is sent and high-tech methods are used that detect the animal in no time. In Shumen, it's not like that, even if a Tyrannosaurus Rex appears - they first "lock it up", just in case, and then they just hope that this panther gets out of their head. Or if we have to be honest - someone shoots it "in self-defense" and they stop giving us the media. But what knocks me down the most is the fact that none of the institutions has any explanation for how a black panther like Bagheera, Mowgli's friend, is free with them. In this sense, I suppose they would miss it if someone raised an African elephant.
To summarize: the black panther (which was once a puma) is not known where it came from, nor anything. And the local authorities somehow feebly reassure that sooner or later it will be shot. Not captured, mind you.
In this sense, General Dreedl is right - I have never seen such savage incompetence. The bosses of this or that in Shumen are currently trying to keep their posts, instead of ordering the military to lend them a few drones with thermal cameras.
Such blatant incompetence
And the panther itself made it so that some people suddenly realized that there is no such thing as a black puma (i.e. with melanism), and also realized that the incompetent Bulgarian state cannot cope with a relatively quickly solved problem. What if a chupacabra appears in the Pleven region? Or the panther appears in the Vidin region, although there is not much there to eat or who to eat? What are we doing - are we reassuring the hosts of the morning blocks again that everything is under control, or?
Now I will try to reassure the Shumen authorities - look after your posts there calmly, hopefully the government will not fire you. In my opinion, there is no such panther, let alone a black one.
And if there is one and it attacks a person, don't worry - you will drag yourself through the courts for several years and in the end they will acquit you if you call the right person in Sofia.
And the Bulgarian local administration will continue to be like General Dreedle - such blatant incompetence that one naturally takes the side of the panther. Let's bet: if it really exists, sooner or later it will be shot by the local hunting party, the state will put a red dot there.
Even if there is no panther, the incompetence will remain
And why can't it do that with warm drones? Why can't it do it like the South Africans, who keep such animals like their own eyes, because people from all over the world pay crazy money to see them?
The Bulgarian state in this case is so simple that it is probably waiting for it to get cold, and for the animal to just come down to Shumen in November to look for food. And this, alas, is no joke. And we are not looking for who brought it, we do not know, the geniuses in the services do not know and do not care.
For me, as a philosopher, it would be great if it turned out that there is no such black leopard. But the incompetence in the state will remain, even if some of our Escobars imported hippos.
And when we talk about the incompetent state, I would roar like a panther wounded in the heart.
Unfortunately, only me.
This comment expresses the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the State News Agency as a whole.