Putin Shoots Tiger; Later, eats sandwich.

We all know that Russia has been f**king up in the last few months. This ridiculous business with Georgia during the Olympics (pretty convenient timing if you ask me), the angry comments made towards the NATO countries while discussing the cease fire and paranoia about anti-missile defenses in ex-soviet States has the whole country giving off a ‘mad scientist/GI JOE villain’ vibe.

All of that aside, there is one thing that cannot be denied. Russian Prime Minister Vladdy Putin is one bad mother. He likes to fly in fighter jets, he’s a judo black belt, loves to fish shirtless and now he’s into hunting Siberian Tigers. What’s that, you say? Those are endangered? No worries, Vlad is only hunting them to aid in the tranq/tag/release effort to protect these animals. He has, apparently, found the perfect way to attract women. Manly sensitivity.

Russia’s state-run television showed footage Monday of the tough-talking prime minister’s visit to the Far East, home of the rare Ussuri tiger. Russian media reports said Putin aided a program to track the tigers by shooting a 5-year-old female cat with a tranquilizer gun after it had freed itself from a restraint.

The televised footage showed Putin, deep in the woods, placing a collar with a tracking device around the knocked-out tiger’s neck and patting its cheek like a pet. “She’ll remember us,” he said.

“The Ussuri tiger is a unique animal — it’s the biggest cat on the planet,” Putin said later, according to the daily Izvestia. (Associated Press)

He doesn’t even sound hyped. He’s all ‘ya, I tranqed the world’s biggest cat, what of it?’ I’m pretty sure if I even saw a tiger I’d scream and then puke, in that order. Putin is scoping them and then rattling off ‘Did you knows,’ about them.

Now if he could just stop treating the government like his own little section of organized crime, he might be the greatest Russian leader since Catherine!