Good morning.

Our month and year in Whitewater are ending with especially cold temperatures: the high today will be seven, with wind chill values of ten to twenty below.

So, it really does make sense to look before one leaps:

Deer dies at National Zoo after jumping into cheetah pen

WASHINGTON (AP) – Two cheetahs at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo have met with some unexpected prey. The result was predictable.

Zoo officials say a white-tailed deer was killed by the cheetahs after it apparently jumped into their enclosure on Friday. A spokeswoman calls it “a normal and expected reaction” by the carnivorous big cats.

The zoo says a zookeeper heard noises from the cheetah pen shortly before noon and found the deer carcass next the cheetah siblings, named Carmelita and Justin.

Doctors will examine the carcass to make sure the deer didn’t have any diseases.

No witnesses saw the deer entering the cheetah habitat – other than the cheetahs.

Deer are plentiful in Rock Creek Park, which borders the zoo. The National Park Service has used sharpshooters to control the deer population.

On this day in 1922, the USSR is formally established; it was dissolved sixty-nine years later. The truly authoritative Black Book of Communism: Crime, Terror, Repression enumerates the millions the Soviet state murdered, among many other victims of communism, during that time.

Also on that day, in Madison, local law enforcement battled demon rum moonshine:

1922 – Authorities Confiscate Illegal Alcohol
On this date authorities in Madison confiscated 1,200 gallons of “mash” and fifteen gallons of moonshine from the home of a suspected bootlegger. As the illegal liquor trade flourished in Madison’s Greenbush neighborhood during Prohibition, two rival gangs, one on Regent Street and the other located on Milton Street, fought to gain control until the “Rum War” erupted among these factions in 1923. [Source: Bishops to Bootleggers: A Biographical Guide to Resurrection Cemetery, p.189]