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When you see something rare — Lady Gaga; the blue-footed booby — it’s customary not to shoot it. Unless you’re the dickish hunter who shot the first endangered gray wolf to appear in Kentucky in 150 years:

The first documented free-ranging wolf in Kentucky’s modern history was shot and killed by an unsuspecting hunter, state wildlife officials have announced.

The hunter, 31-year-old James Troyer, killed the wolf back in March, but the Department of Agriculture only recently confirmed it was indeed a federally endangered gray wolf, not a German Shepherd like officials originally thought.

“I was like — wow — that thing was big!” [Troyer] recalled. “It looked like a wolf, but who is going to believe I shot a wolf?”

Gee, I don’t know. How odd that something that looked like a wolf turned out to be a wolf. </Daria voice>

Adds Treehugger helpfully:

Normally, hunters targeting grey wolves would face prosecution for killing an endangered species, but authorities have decided that Troyer had mistakenly thought it was a coyote — an animal which can be hunted under state law. How the wolf came to reenter Kentucky remains a mystery; the nearest known population of the species is in northern Michigan, about 600 miles away.

Who’s to say wolves can’t teleport? Although after this incident, they probably won’t for a while.