Predator

By American Indian tradition, he is the Trickster, the most cunning but also the most flawed and human of animal spirits. Noble and godlike in some ways, he is also perverse, vain, deceitful, larcenous, obsessed with sex, and a lover of pranks who repeatedly blunders into trouble and gets his comeuppance, but always bounces back.To ranchers in the West, he is nothing more than a despised varmint to be hunted down and killed.To generations of movie and television viewers who have watched the "Roadrunner" cartoons, he is Wile E. Coyote, the sneaky but hapless hunter blown up, squashed or zapped in midair, only to show up in the next frame, whole and ready to go again.

ANNAPOLIS - No one knows how many coyotes have come to Maryland in recent decades, but Lee McDaniel is afraid they're here to stay."There's a considerable group of them around" his Harford County farm, where he said coyotes have killed at least two sheep and chased a steer to exhaustion."

Charter panel did a fine job of dodging obstaclesThe citizens of Carroll County owe the members of the charter committee a large debt of gratitude. The committee overcame determined opposition from the county commissioners and many other obstacles to deliver a practical and equitable charter in only nine months.The panel recognized the major flaws in the first charter and eliminated them. To many people, the idea of not being able to cast a direct vote for the county executive reminded them of closed-door, political deal-making where the executive would be beholden to the council members who supported his or her nomination.

A conch fisherman died and his crew member was rescued Monday afternoon when their boat sank off the southeast coast of Ocean City, the Coast Guard said yesterday.Chief Lewis T. Fisher, officer in charge of the Coast Guard station in Ocean City, identified the dead man as John Mitchell, 27, of West Ocean City, Worcester County. Mitchell's body was being transported to the state medical examiner's office in Baltimore last night for an autopsy.The survivor, rescued by a passing fishing vessel, was identified by Fisher as Micah Fooks, 27, of Pittsville, Wicomico County.

"Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War," by Barbara Ehrenreich. 292 pages. Metropolitan Books. $25.For centuries, sages have regularly announced the demise of warfare. New weapons (blunderbuss, Gatling gun, nuclear warhead) are so deadly as to make battle unacceptably costly. Political and economic change (emergence of trade, information revolution, end of the Cold War) have eliminated the motive for conquest.Yet human beings still are driven to massacre one another. And combatants justify even the most senseless slaughter as a sacred cause, as if Homo sapiens with his oversized brain had no higher purpose than to maim and kill.

SALEM, Ore. - The early American Indians called it God's dog: The watchful eyes, just outside the range of the firelight. The reproachful look cast back over the shoulder as it crept away. The aching cry shot up at the stars.In humankind's contest with predators for dominion over the Earth, there have been stronger competitors, and larger, and more dangerous ones. But none has been more persistent than the coyote.The federal government is launching yet another campaign to control the coyote, this time using a new poison-laced sheep collar that provokes dread among environmentalists and doubts among some scientists that it will be any more successful than previous tactics.

Out of the lapping waves they crawl, onto the moonlit beaches. Bent on sex and survival, tens of thousands of horseshoe crabs return by tens of thousands to the shores of Delaware Bay every spring.Theirs is an ancient ritual, a slow-moving mating dance that has enabled the helmeted, spike-tailed creatures to endure for 350 million years, since the days of dinosaurs.More closely related to spiders than to the blue crab, the Atlantic horseshoe crab is a familiar sight -- and well-known to vacationing families -- on beaches from Maine to Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.

Most trade deadlines come and go with few deals of significance. But this year. . . . Wow. Lots of intrigue, lots of action.The Prey: Mets pitcher Bret Saberhagen.The Winning Predator: The Colorado Rockies.Why: Rockies owner Jerry McMorris agreed with the assessment of his baseball people that Colorado needed one more solid pitcher to hold off the Dodgers in the NL West. The Rockies ignored the medical report (small rotator cuff tear) and the big money concerns ($4.3 million) that scared off other teams.

With their streamlined bodies, keen sensory abilities and resilient immune systems, sharks are built to last: over 400 million years, at last count.Leave it to Man, the world's scariest predator, to spoil their fun.Vilified as evil killers good only for soup fixings, crab bait and deep sea "monster fishing," it appears that certain large and small shark species are vanishing from coastal waters worldwide.The 1975 thriller "Jaws" was not the cause, but "the ultimate focus of this 'death fish from hell' phenomenon," says Samuel H. Gruber, a shark expert at the University of Miami.

Any movie calling itself "Grand Canyon" ought to be pretty deep, or it's going to get itself laughed off the screen.Pardon the noise, but ha, ha, ha.Deep? You could fill it with water and stand in it for an hour and go home with dry socks. Written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan as a meditation on random violence and the breakdown of social convention, it lacks the vigor or the guts to be of any use to anyone.Kasdan zeroes in on a group of Los Angelinos who must confront urban disruption on a daily basis and come to terms with it. Mostly, the coming to terms involves endless stilted dialogue of the touchy-feely variety and tepidly ironic interactions, against the fabric of the disintegrating city.

Annapolis native Andy Dehart has always had a thing for sharks, in a good way. That makes him a perfect match with the Discovery Channel, which celebrates its 22nd annual Shark Week this week with seven days of afternoon and prime-time programming dedicated to everyone's favorite ocean predator. As Discovery's official "shark expert," the Severn School graduate has been spending a lot of time lately talking up the big fish. We caught up with Dehart, whose day job is director of biological programs for the National Aquarium in Washington, as he was headed for a TV appearance in New York.

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, another sci-fi monster death match, was not screened for critics.

What's the point? -- Visit this site to be taken on an adventure with Dean Brooks. The adventure log is his weekly diary of feelings, opinions and the things that really bake his noodle. Overall, the blog is a chance to escape to a world so bizarre that your really bad day becomes a great day. What to look for --Look for The School Predator, a story by Brooks that is posted by chapter, so it keeps you wondering what happens next. There are also articles, reviews, commentaries and kids' lit, all by Brooks.

WASHINGTON -- Despite protests from other countries, the United States is expanding a top-secret effort to kill terrorism suspects with drone-fired missiles as it pursues an increasingly decentralized al-Qaida, U.S. officials say. The CIA's failed attempt to assassinate al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Pakistan on Jan. 13 was the latest strike in the government's "targeted killing" program, a highly classified initiative that officials say has broadened...

Called a "sexual predator" who merited "no mercy" by an Anne Arundel County judge, a 61-year-old man was sentenced yesterday to the maximum 20-year term for a second-degree sex offense for molesting a friend's adolescent grandson in January 2004. Michael A. Damasiewicz, a mechanic who previously had been imprisoned for molesting an adolescent girl, told Circuit Judge Joseph P. Manck that "I just had no willpower" and blamed his actions on prescription drugs he took for several health problems and manic depression.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - When Mark Lunsford dressed to go to the Capitol yesterday morning, he put on dark pants, a white shirt and a dark necktie patterned with painful memories. It bore a dozen repeating pictures of his 9-year-old daughter, Jessica, smiling broadly. Since her death and the arrest of a convicted sex offender who has been charged with killing her, Jessica's father has worn the tie again and again to lobby lawmakers to tighten the state's pedophile laws. "That's my hug," he said of the tie, which he wore as he watched Gov. Jeb Bush sign a package of laws named for his daughter.

For more than a decade, filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson felt compelled to write and direct Alien vs. Predator. It took 20th Century Fox and the film's many producers almost as long to share his passion. After several false starts, a studio management shakeup, years of negotiations between feuding producers, a near derailment by a proposed fifth Alien movie and a last-minute assist from another studio's hit slasher film, Anderson finally got his wish, and his Alien vs. Predator movie debuted last week.

Federal agents in Maryland have arrested and are holding for deportation more than two dozen illegal immigrants and green-card holders who have criminal sex offense records, officials with the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced yesterday. The sweep, which occurred over the past 10 days, is part of the agency's Operation Predator, a nationwide effort to crack down on non-citizen sex offenders, child sex tourists, child pornographers and others.

Glenn, Jessup: Do you think the gentleman that caught the fish is pulling a hoax? I do. O'Brien: I don't think so. Keep in mind the fisherman was with a friend at the time, and that at least one other person apparently saw the snakehead lakeside on the ground before it was turned in. baltimoresun.com staff: Should we expect to see snakeheads pop up in another Maryland community in the near future? O'Brien: I hope not, but it's a possibility. While federal officials banned importing snakeheads in 2002, someone could still have one, purchased from either a fish market or a pet store.

A former Roland Park man accused of molesting children in Cambodia and the Philippines will appear today in federal court in Baltimore to face charges under a new U.S. law that allows Homeland Security agents to pursue child "sex tourists" overseas and return them for trial. Richard Arthur Schmidt, 61, a one-time teacher described in federal documents as a computer-savvy child stalker, was extradited from Southeast Asia yesterday and faces prosecution in Maryland under the U.S. Protect Act. If convicted, he would face a U.S. prison sentence for a Cambodian crime.