The McRib is back, for a limited time only

I ain't never been much for hunting.

I'm talking about deer hunting, not hunting for a pencil, or a lost sock, or the right words to say when the missus catches me in mid-bite of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and says, "You know you're not supposed to eat sweets so what are you doing with that?"

I want to explain to her how good they look on the commercials and how they warn that if this global warming thing is true, all the Reese's are going to melt. So it's up to us peanut butter/chocolate loving Americans to eat as many as we can before that tragic event unfolds.

I see footage of deer minding their own business, peacefully grazing out in the forest and I see how beautiful they look and I wonder how someone could possibly shoot something that glorious.

"Hah!" a local deerhunting enthusiast told me recently when I shared with him the aforementioned feelings. "You'll thank me the next time one of them (deer) doesn't run out in front of your motorcycle and kill you."

OK, maybe that's a good point.

But deer hunting never quite seemed like a fair fight to me. One goes out in the woods with a rifle that could shoot a cantaloupe-sized hole through the vault at Fort Knox, spreads deer scent all over the place (they tell me it smells like a female deer and attracts bucks) and then the hunter hides or climbs a tree and waits for the deer to show up.

That doesn't seem very sporting to me.

Deer hunters will say they HAVE to kill the deer to thin out the population because having too many deer is dangerous.

They say there won't be enough food for all of the deer and some of them will starve. The say we're actually doing them a favor by killing them and tying them to the hoods of our 4-wheel-drive vehicles and bringing them home and posing for pictures.

Has anybody ever asked the deer how they feel about that theory?

DEER HUSBAND: "Hey sweetheart, do you remember when we used to take little Cleophus Fawn down to that nice little apple tree area near the brook and we'd spread out a blanket and have a nice picnic lunch and then spend the afternoon picking wild flowers and playing Pin the Tail On Elmer Fudd?"

DEER WIFE: "Oh yes. Those were just the best of times. When are we going to do that again?"

DEER HUSBAND: "Well, we won't be doing it anymore. They've cut down the apple trees, re-routed the brook and put a four-lane highway in there. There's cars and trucks zooming all over the place."

DEER WIFE: "Oh my! That's just awful. I wish there was some way we could thin out those annoying humans. There's just too many of them. They're starting to become a real annoyance. It's getting too dangerous to leave the laurel thicket. We'd actually be doing them a favor. Keep them from running over each other. We need to thin them out because there's not going to be enough gasoline for all their vehicles and they won't be able to get to work and can't make any money to buy food and some of them will starve to death."

Now a deer might run out in front of me tomorrow and cause me to wreck, but even so, until one sneaks up behind me and clubs me in the head and steals my wallet or pulls a knife on me, I really can't say I consider them a clear and present danger.

But maybe that's just me. I'm not saying don't go deer hunting, I'm just saying it's not for me. Just be careful out there.

And speaking of hunting, I'm glad to report that the McRib has returned.

But, as usual, it's for a limited time only.

Every year, about the time Autumn sets in, the McRib re-appears on the McDonald's menu.

And I love 'em. I love 'em.

I love 'em.

I'd eat 'em for breakfast, lunch and dinner if the missus would let me.

Why do you think the McRib only appears in the fall and for a limited time only?

And how come there are no bones in the McRib sandwich?

If there's no bones, shouldn't it be called something like the "McBoneless Pork-Tasting Sandwich"?

I can't help but wonder where the McRib comes from.

I'm guessing that somewhere in some remote area of the world that only Ronald McDonald knows about, the McRibs are McRoaming freely across the McPlains (actually, they probably don't do as much McRoaming as they do McFlopping because, well, they don't have any bones so they probably just bounce around kind of like little oblong Silly Putty critters).

And I'll bet Ronald and Mayor McCheese and the Hamburglar go there with their McRifles during the first couple of weeks in the fall and harvest a limited number of the mature McRibs.

And then they bring them back to their restaurants and fry 'em up, add some pickles, onions and barbecue sauce and — voila! — McLunch.

It's really quite a significant development in the expansion of the fast-food menu.

I mean, the McRib is unique, a one-of-a-kind.

The McRib is unmatched in modern-day sandwich development.

And during this time of year, it makes me so McHappy.

Klonie Jordan (editor@gaffneyledger.com) is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger.