"'Tis only a flesh wound!"

An item in Thursday morning's Washington Post caught my eye, and I haven't had a chance to write about it until now. So forgive my tardiness in posting, please.

Seems FOX News isn't the only media outlet focusing in on the alligators-in-Florida story. (Which, I must admit, is kind of a surprise to me -- if I've heard once, I've heard a hundred times from my friends in the media that 'the first three letters of "NEWS" are "N-E-W"' -- and if alligators in Florida are "new," I've got some land down there in the Keys I'd like to sell you.)

Anyway, back to the Washington Post. This excerpt comes from a story that ran on page C1 -- the Arts & Living Section:

"Yesterday ... an alligator walked through the doggy door of a woman's house in Bradenton and went for her golden retriever. The woman grabbed a shotgun and blazed away. The alligator escaped with a flesh wound. The neighbors heard shots and called police, who promptly cited the woman for hunting without a license."

Indoors -- and, therefore, presumably within relatively close range -- "blazing away" with a shotgun at an alligator small enough to enter her home through a doggy door, this woman couldn't kill the gator outright, and instead let it escape with a flesh wound? The police shouldn't have cited her for hunting without a license. They should have cited her for bad aim, and ordered her to the local firing range for practice.