Bribery

To get you up to speed: Nic has a friend in Texas who is a hunter. This friend invited Nic to go on a hunting trip. It's one of those trips where you pay to go and then they release the animal and you shoot it.

Gasp. Barf. Eww. Sad! How is that even fair? How is that even fun? Why would anyone want to do that? I mean, really?

So of course Nic agreed to go.

Booooo! Hiss!

And this is what the hunt was for:A ram. A grass-eating, wool-making, lovingly dim-witted ram. A ram. (Full disclosure: I Google image searched "cute ram" for this picture. I'm sure there are some ugly, not nice rams out there, but I'm also sure they deserve to live just as much as the cute and cuddly ones.)

I'll never really understand what would make Nic--or anyone--want to shoot an animal, especially a ram who doesn't even have a fighting chance. And Nic will never understand why I care so much that he doesn't shoot a ram. His argument is that the ram is going to get shot anyway; that those rams are raised for people to pay to hunt them. My argument? You just aren't supposed to shoot things. Duh.

What we both understand is that money buys car parts. Hence, the bribery. At first I offered to pay the $200 it would cost to go on the hunt. Apparently, that was low-ball offer. But his interest was piqued when I got to $500. Five hundred dollars to simply not do anything. I'd say that's a pretty good deal. And it turns out that he agrees. He gets $500 and I get the satisfaction of knowing that he's not going to kill an animal. In my mind, that's a win-win.

He actually wasn't going for it at first, so I had to take my efforts up a notch. Which is how Ramy McRam Face came to be:

My persuasion combined with Ramy's pleas means that Nic will be buying disc breaks for his Coronet and Ramy will live to see another day.

The end.