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AMAZING story by Paul Duggan this morning about horrorcore rap, goth, murder, and part-time preaching. In Farmville, Va.! (Hey Spin, 2009 called and it wants 1999 back! Get Mark Schone! Get Mike Rubin to do a sidebar! Get me if those guys are busy! It's time to get the band back together!)

After the jump: No way lynching this Census employee related to carefully stoked nutball rage; Caps, Nats win; Terry Wogan standing next to a cake of Terry Wogan.

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The Issue: Should we shoot the deer? The National Park Service (NPS) is trying to decide how to deal with the white-tailed deer population. They've been mating like rabbits and eating all the shrubs.

Proponent: Adrienne Colman, Superintendent of Rock Creek Park, says: "It's just one of the options. Montgomery County has been sharpshooting for some years now...It reduces the deer population fairly quickly."

As in Montgomery County, the Rock Creek crew would donate the meat to charity. Three words: free venison burgers.

Opponent: John Hadidian, director of the Urban Wildlife Program at the Humane Society of the United States is sticking up for the deer: "We don't think that the deer should be blamed for something that is natural to them. It doesn't seem that there is a compelling reason to kill these animals."

Alexa Fritts, spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, says: "overpopulation of deer can have a devastating effect on...songbirds."

Next step: The National Park Service is holding a public meeting at the Rock Creek Park Nature Center (5200 Glover Rd NW) on Wednesday, September 2 to debate the options.

David Malakoff, 46, who resigned from NPR's Science and Tech desk after being charged with possessing child pornography on an NPR-owned computer, will be sentenced in federal court tomorrow.

According to the Examiner, more than 100 people wrote to District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle vouching for his character, including high-profile Post reporter Brigid Schulte. She described him as an "extraordinary" and "tortured" soul who was raped early in his life and kept that trauma a secret. Malakoff, who---according to this bio---lives in Alexandria with his wife and three children, says the rape occurred under the Taft Bridge in Rock Creek Park. A childhood friend remembers the rape happening to a boy they were with.

Read More "Sentencing Tomorrow for Former NPR Tech Reporter Caught Downloading Child Porn" »

Rock Creek, in roughly the area shown in the following Google Maps grab, has jumped its banks and has flooded the multi-use trail. It's passable, but only on the grassy median. The Rock Creek Parkway is unaffected. The TimberForm exercise stations are all accessible. Wait times are minimal.

Josh Bowers, the local lawyer who pointed me to the pieces of the U.S. Capitol and the weird, shallow wells dug behind them, writes today that "it was only a matter of time until an occult group theory would surface."

Bowers has been posting this week's CP story to various Listservs and e-mail groups, hoping someone out there knows what those wells are and why they're there. (That's his son, Noah, sticking his head in one above.)

A reader sent him a link to Folklore of Wells, a 1918 study of water worship in East and West, written by R.P. Masani. Somewhere in its pages, the book indicates that a grouping of seven wells holds mystical meaning. It's not a tape-loop installation/audio salad in the middle of the park, but it's a theory.

Photograph by Darrow Montgomery

Maryland State Del. Bill Frick (D-Montgomery County) sent a letter Monday to the superintendent of Rock Creek Park as an appeal to close Beach Drive to car traffic for an extended period. Currently, the park road popular with cyclists, Rollerbladers, runners, etc., opens at 7 p.m. That's all well and good when it's winter, but with an early Daylight Savings upon us, Frick wanted to throw his weight, or at least his letterhead, behind keeping cars off for longer.

This is not an original idea. Frick came to it as a regular reader of everyone's favorite anti-car blog, Greater Greater Washington. The blog aggregated a rant from Mount Pleasant ANC Commissioner Jack McKay:

Read More "Maryland Delegate Reads Blogs, Tries to Influence Rock Creek Park" »

On Saturday afternoon, my dude and I descended down the Pinehurst Trail in Rock Creek Park to some excitement. An ambulance whizzed toward us on West Beach Drive. A woman in a fanny pack ran by us, apparently chasing down the red lights.

"He's on the other side of the bridge, near where those two people are standing," she told the driver, pointing at us. We also heard the word "ankle" and indications a gentleman on the other side of Rolling Meadows Bridge (north of Military Road and the golf course) had sprained or, perhaps, broken his.

Next to arrive were a couple of fire trucks. The thwap-thwap of a helicopter could be heard overhead. Not wanting to gawk and understanding that a sprained and/or broken ankle is not terribly exciting, my dude and I continued on our hike, which ran parallel to the road. A few minutes in, we then watched another emergency vehicle race south toward the incident, towing a rescue dinghy.

Read More "Classic Overuse of Emergency Responders in Rock Creek Park" »

Watch out, drug-sniffing dogs: You've got some competition.

According to an MSNBC.com article posted this morning, a turtle fitted with a GPS device meandered into a remote area of Rock Creek Park and led a National Park Service employee to a marijuana-growing operation.

A National Park Service employee was tracking a turtle with the gadget for research when the turtle wandered into a small marijuana field in a remote part of Rock Creek Park.

U.S. Park police were called and surveillance was set up to monitor the area. Police discovered a man taking care of about 10 marijuana plants in the field.

U.S. Park police and Montgomery County police arrested Isiah Johnson, 19, in Chevy Chase Wednesday.

Nice work, little turtle. I bet Mr. Johnson wasn't expecting to be caught like that.