“Where there are deer, mountain lions [are] not far behind.”

A California Department of Fish and Game spokesperson explains why the animal was in an urban area.

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Deer are so numerous and so bold in UD‘s backyard — and front yard — that she’s begun throwing deck chairs in their direction. Only this seems to produce enough noise and violence to keep them in the back part of her woods. They are like grazing cows, quite domesticated, and indifferent to our presence.

Will there eventually be mountain lions in Garrett Park, UD‘s town?

One guy with a gun killed forty-four deer in one night on Vassar’s campus earlier this month. He was a sharpshooter hired by the school to reduce its rampaging herds.

In Big Buck Zone, hunters debate the merits of snipers.

Harvard’s pissed.

A Brooklyn woman who is a Harvard University senior has been barred from graduation next month due to her connection to the fatal shooting of a 21-year-old man in a university dorm last week.

Police have arrested Manhattan resident Jabrai Jordan Copney, 20, for the murder of Justin Cosby; police said Copney, whose girlfriend is a senior at Harvard, and two other men intended to rob Cosby of marijuana and money. Two (unidentified) female Harvard students are described as “the nexus between Cosby and Copney.”

A lawyer for the Harvard senior told the Boston Globe, “This is a highly educated, independent young woman who has literally been cared for since she was a teenager by Harvard – and now they have terminated her right to be on campus. There is no justification for it. She may have known the people involved, but you know, it’s not guilt by association in this country.”

The student was also kicked out of her dorm, Kirkland House, which is where the shooting took place; a previous report said that Copney’s girlfriend’s “gave Copney her dorm hall access card, which allowed him to float in and out of Harvard dorms.”

… can’t spell Harvard, Gawker’s got a useful update on the Harvard killing. Excerpts:

… The chief suspect, Jabrai Jordan Copney, who was arrested in New York yesterday, was visiting two unidentified female Harvard students who also knew Cosby — who was not a Harvard student. Copney allegedly made the trip to Cambridge with the intent of robbing Cosby of drugs and cash, and the Harvard girls were “the nexus” between the two men.

The facts that have emerged so far have given way to a swirl of rumors that Cosby was a major supplier to three of the schools Final Clubs, which are their so-called “secret” societies. [“Huh?” said Mr UD, a Harvard grad, when I asked him. “Never heard them called that.”] And since he was visiting the unidentified girl with a pound of pot there is speculation that she was one of his campus distributors.

… [T]he girls could have just been personal-use buyers, and Cosby could just have carried around way too much pot for his own good when he went out on calls. Either way, it looks like some nice Harvard girls started hanging out with some bad boys…

Why assume all Harvard girls are nice? What’s that mean, anyway? That they don’t buy and smoke and maybe sell dope?

UD reminds you about the nice Hofstra girl engaged, apparently, in the trade there.  Many of the news items about Adi Stern called her a man.  I guess everyone has trouble realizing that women commit crimes.

… trying to steal the victim’s drug money. The shooters were visiting Harvard friends. The victim had apparently just transacted some drug business in the dorm.

… Justin Cosby … was shot in the abdomen Monday in what [police] described as a “drug rip” attempt.

Cosby was found with about a pound of marijuana and about $1,000 when he collapsed outside the dormitory.

Police are looking for two other people said to have been involved in the shooting.

If all of this information is confirmed — especially the part about wild gunplay inside a Harvard dorm (Cosby was shot multiple times) — it’s really, really bad.

… that Justin Crosby was probably on campus to sell marijuana to students.

Which doesn’t explain why he was shot.

As of ten minutes ago, the Boston Globe didn’t know very much.

A man was shot this afternoon at the entrance of a Harvard University residence hall, and police were searching for several assailants. It was not immediately clear whether the victim, who was shot in the abdomen, was a student.

Sergeant James DeFrancisco of the Cambridge Police said that after authorities were alerted about 4:50 p.m. they found the victim on Dunster Street, outside Kirkland House, one of Harvard’s 12 undergraduate houses. DeFrancisco said the victim was taken to the hospital and was in stable condition.

… Residents of Kirkland House have been asked to remain there as police continue to speak with students and others. Otherwise, police have indicated that students and other members of the community are free to resume their normal activity.

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Update: The person shot seems not to have been a Harvard student. UD speculates that this was gang-related.

… UD‘s ten-part series on guns – Professor Meets Gun – in Inside Higher Education.

UD visited the NRA shooting range in Virginia for that series, and, gazing at the shooters, she thought about how easy it would be to kill yourself – or someone else – there. I mean, you go to a building, and someone hands you a gun, gives you a private booth from which to shoot to your heart’s content…

In the wake of a Columbus State University student’s recent gun range suicide, UD again wondered about the popularity of this setting for self-destruction.

The same gun range the CSU student used hosted another suicide just last month.

And says here suicide in gun ranges is not unusual. The article describes a California range that’s had seven suicides in twenty or so years.