animal rights... and lefts

Jay and I had company this weekend. Some friends of mine from back home came for a visit and as part of the tour I took them to the beach. We played frisbee for an hour or so, making complete fools out of ourselves in front of the entire beach. Part of the experience for my tourist visitors was battling with the flocks of seagulls for beach space.

There were some other guys playing catch with a football and one of them had the ingenious idea to clock a seagull with the pig skin as hard as he could. After nailing the bird and collecting the ball, they left in a hurry. Why? Because there was an angry mob of bunny-huggers approaching with fire in their eyes. They saw the incident and heard the seagull squawking in agony so they immediately grouped together and started marching towards the scene of the crime.

These Good Samaritans gathered around the injured bird, freaking the ever-loving hell out of it. Can you imagine getting clocked by something the size of a VW bug at 100 m.p.h. and then having about 7 objects the size of 10-story buildings surrounding you? I’d sure need a change of pants. Anywho, this lady in a bikini that was WAY to small for her kept trying to pet the damned bird and shove a cracker in it’s face. She didn’t seem to understand WHY the bird would try to bite her… go figure.

She finally picked the bird up. It was sufficiently paralyzed by fear to give up fighting for its life. Another guy in the mob (I like to call him Captain Mullet) got on his cell phone and called 911. I didn’t hear the whole conversation, but the parts that stick out in my memory go something like this.

"Hello, I need to get in touch with animal control. We have an injured animal here at the beach. What? Oh, it’s a seagull. Yeah, we think it has a broken wing and it’s going to die if we don’t do anything about it. Can you send a policeman down here? How about the animal control truck? Anything? I’m a tax-payer and I want to see this bird get some help. It’d really make me feel better if I could see this guy fly again."

In the mean time, the bird had struggled free from the grip of bikini lady and started hobbling towards the water. It was probably trying to drown itself to get out of misery. They hunted it down and surround it again… for it’s own good of course and bikini lady picks it up again. They all brainstorm about how to keep the thing still.

They decide to (get this) put it in a 10-gallon Styrofoam cooler half full of water! It’s not a frickin’ turtle!! The bird obviously struggles so they pour out half of the water. It still doesn’t like it so they empty the cooler and place the bird inside. It’s still struggling so to alleviate this, they PUT A DAMNED TOWEL OVER THE BIRD. Finally, two of them cart it off to their car to take it to the vet.

Captain Mullet was discussing with his cohorts the possibilities of hunting down the football players and killing them because they hurt one of MILLIONS of seagulls on this particular beach. Obviously three humans deserve to die for possibly mortally wounding one seagull.

What ever happened to the good old days when you take care of problems like this on your own? If your $10,000 horse breaks its leg, you SHOOT IT IN THE HEAD then sell it by the pound to Oscar Mayer. Call me old fashioned, but when I see a small animal (that, incidentally, most people consider pests) injured to the point of agonizing pain, I want to make it feel better. Short of spending hundreds of dollars to have the vet tell me it’s hopeless, the best solution is to simply put the thing out of misery.

Why aren’t these "humanitarians" offering to help the HUMANS they see on the streets with life threatening illnesses or famine? Save the birds, the homeless can rot in the gutter! I just hope those bunny-huggers spend $1,000 at a veterinarian’s office to find out that the bird actually had pneumonia and was going to die tomorrow anyways.

-mac