For the flies and the fish

My sister has a blue heeler named Pita. When she first selected her from the partial litter of pups whose mother had brought them to the Colburn farm to stay over night, Barbara learned that the previous owners called her PITA because they jokingly thought of her as a Pain In The Ass.

What a mean thing to do to a young puppy! Surely her self esteem took an early blow. Surely, those owners should have been reported to the people who really care about animals---even the animals which can be a pain in the ass, especially when they're buzzing you for hours on end and doing endless practice take-offs and landings on your nose.

How about those folks at PETA anyway???

By reading our slimmed-down newspapers which have no room to cover news of real import, we know this morning that the PETA employees are doing their job, and apparently they're not suffering one bit from economic woes like folks in a lot of other professions who are stretched thin because of layoffs or unpaid furloughs.

If anything, they've stepped up their presence, and their numbers must be growing if they've had time to make big issues out of dead fish flying and irritating flies that ought to be dead.

After reading in today's paper about the fly-flicking instance where the President had the audacity to swat that invader which was getting in the way of his teleprompter while he was doing an interview, I think we need to adopt some new ways of looking at the problems in the world.

PETA is providing us some food for thought----certainly not any that came from a dead animal, mind you!

I never dreamed I had been such an abusive soul my entire life when I think back on those many times I stepped on a spider to make it rain or smacked a mosquito to get it to quit sucking my blood.

And, to think of the inhumane things that happen to those fish in Seattle BEFORE they end up in that market and become dead entertainers for the tourists as the market folks toss them through the air.

I wonder if PETA folks will do their job where it really ought to be done and get out on those fishing boats and lay down on the decks---naked en masse--so the fishermen will get the message and stop using hooks, and nets and all that confining stuff that catches fish while they're swimming along innocently in the ocean.

If they'd get to the real core of why those flying fish are dead in the first place, they may be able to prevent the whole show at the Seattle market, which has kept tourists entertained for years.

I'm rethinking this morning how I treat all living beings, and I'm gonna have to repent for some very recent infractions of the rules. Why just yesterday I took one of those cans (2 for $7) of deadly wasp/hornet spray and assaulted all the little nests that have started forming in the horse trailer.

My intention was to spare Miss Lily from having to get stung several dozen times during the trailer ride over to my sisters' place. Little did I consider that I was a murderer and that should this act become as public as the President's recent fly smacking incident, I might have had naked people show up and start lying in my driveway to prevent me from taking my horse for a ride.

What would these people do if they saw the cruel and unusual punishment of putting a big piece of metal in a horse's mouth to keep it under control or if they saw my sisters use their whip with a dog called Pita attached to it to get a horse to move on? Yes, Pita does grab on to the whip while they try to lunge horses, and she runs and jumps in a small circle inside the large circle the horse is taking.

Have the PETA people ever watched a farrier drive nails into a horse's hoof to attach a metal shoe? Talk about a cruel and unusual way to keep a horse from having sore feet while walking on sharp rocks.

Seems to me they're taking the easy way out on doing their job. I guess going after the President for smacking a fly or the Seattle market people for launching their dead fish does get headlines, but are such headline grabbers doing anything to prevent the real and sad animal abuse that occurs in this world?

I think not; instead, I think of their grandstanding much the same as Pita's orginal owners who named her: Pain In The Ass.