"What you got in mind, Senator?"
"Just this:" the Senator said solemnly. "A person is ... any harmless creature...."
Feet shuffled. Someone coughed.
"What about a man who commits a violent act, then?" Judge Gates demanded. "What's he, eh?"
"That's obvious, gentlemen," the senator said flatly. "He's vermin."
On the courthouse steps Cecil Stump stood, hands in hip pockets, talking to a reporter from the big-town paper in Mattoon, surrounded by a crowd of late-comers who had missed the excitement inside. He described the accuracy of his five shots, the sound they had made hitting the big blue snake, and the ludicrous spectacle the latter had presented in its death agony. He winked at a foxy man in overalls picking his nose at the edge of the crowd.
"Guess it'll be a while 'fore any more damned reptiles move in here like they owned the place," he concluded.
The courthouse doors banged wide; excited citizens poured forth, veering aside from Cecil Stump. The crowd around him thinned, broke up as its members collared those emerging with the hot news. The reporter picked a target.
"Perhaps you'd care to give me a few details of the action taken by the ... ah ... Special Committee, sir?"