Combat Zone

Explorer Hunts Freshman

James Joyce: author of Ulysses and Sir Thornbladderly look-alike.

Sir Reginald Thornbladderly, III, a world-famous hunter and facial-hair enthusiast, was arrested for the shooting of 17 freshmen leaving a party last Friday. Sir Thornbladderly, a near-sighted, mustachioed man with an odd resemblance to author James Joyce, claims that the shooting was a simple case of mistaken identity.

“I meant no harm to any fellow human,” Thornbladderly said. “But I sincerely thought those ‘fresh men’, as you call them, were a pack of drunken, savage baboons.”

Upon seeing the 17 freshmen walk down Union Ave., Thornbladderly shot the students with a high-powered musket he had slung over his shoulder. That was how Eric Perez, an 18-year old freshman and one of Thornbladderly’s victims, described the attack.

“It was crazy, man,” Perez explained, “me and my roommate, and some other guys from our floor, and some guys my roommate knows, and some other people we met, had just left this party ‘cuz there was no more beer. Actually, we ran out with the keg. Anyways, we heard about this other party somewhere else, and there was this girl there that had texted me who I think wants me…” Perez rambled on for 2 more minutes about other parties he had been to and how awesome it is to be at college before he was asked to focus on the shooting.

“We were just walking down the street,” Perez continued, “pulling signposts out of the ground and stuff. And in front of the football stadium, the guy who wrote Ulysses and dressed like Crocodile Hunter sees us and yells ‘my god, baboons!’ He was carrying this old-ass rifle and shot me with it in the leg!”

Sir Thornbladderly had to reload his musket after each shot, a process that takes 2 minutes each time, and continued to shoot the 16 remaining freshmen. When asked why they did not run away, or overpower the elderly Sir Thornbladdery, most of the freshmen gave this reason: “We wanted to see if he would let us shoot the gun. Also, we all wanted to be in the news…It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

None of the musket balls even pierced the skin. Consequently, all 17 students have made complete recoveries. However, they still insist that they cannot walk to classes.

The victims of the shooting are willing to forgive Sir Thornbladderly, stating that all they want is an apology and “a chance to shoot [Sir Thornbladderly’s] gun.”

This is not the first time a senile explorer has mistaken students for wild animals. It happens almost every year, actually. Take last year, when Kingston Huffleplaff, VI mistook a wandering horde of freshmen for “A pack of oversized lemmings, looking for a cliff to jump off.” Huffleplaff trapped all the students and sold their pelts.

Sir Thornbladderly, who has hunted the most rare and dangerous of game on all 7 continents, is awaiting trial but insists he is innocent.

“You have groups of 20 rabid, hairy beings,” Sir Thornbladderly began, “all red in the face and howling into the dark dark night…I could swear I’ve run into those types of apes before in the River Congo.” He Added, “Man must have a primeval darkness that I thought existed only in nightmares.”