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Once, at the county fair, I saw a Florida Panther
exhibited in a straw-floored crate. She was
the color of a chocolate lab but lying there
on her flank, serenely at rest, a sight too
beautiful to behold, an unearned gift given
by the gods as when Diana the Huntress shoots
arrows at young boys who espy her naked charges
bathing in the bulrushes: you are not worthy
to behold such as this. More lovely even than
the snow leopard or white tiger, the panther
breathing slowly in and out, displaying the