Redneck Press with Fried Chicken and Coffee

OK, so this isn't the first thing I think of after fin­ish­ing this story, but name a minor­ity or other eth­nic group (do red­necks qual­ify? another ques­tion, pro­jably) where a substitution–make your own– for the appro­pri­ate word  in that head­line might yield a non-offensive sentence?

The weird­est nook of Miami-Dade County is its unin­cor­po­rated north­west cor­ner — a rural tract where gua­jiros pum­mel each other at cow­boy bars, black-market horse meat is in high demand, and burned cars and other refuse lit­ter the streets as if in some Mad Max hellscape.

Here's yet another strange atroc­ity: Hunters there are using an endan­gered bird as tar­get practice.

It hap­pens every win­ter, says Pepe, our man on the street who asked that his last name not be used. Rev­el­ers stream into North­west Dade to drink at the sprawl­ing ran­chos and drive ATVs through the brush — and fire on every feath­ered thing unfor­tu­nate enough to cross their path. "They'll shoot any bird they see, for tar­get prac­tice," Pepe says. "Some­times they use auto­matic assault weapons. They don't even pick up the carcasses."

Among the bullet-riddled birds Pepe has found: sev­eral endan­gered wood storks. The gan­gly white water bird is try­ing to make a Rocky-like come­back from severely dec­i­mated num­bers: In the '70s, only 2,500 remained. After hunt­ing was restricted, an esti­mated 10,000 wood storks exist today — a rel­a­tive boom that has Florida devel­op­ers lob­by­ing to down­grade the bird's sta­tus from "endan­gered" to "threat­ened" in order to ease habi­tat restrictions.

Save the wood stork here.