Accidental animal crueltyI once invented a brilliant game - I'd sit at the top of the stairs and throw cat biscuits to the bottom. My cat would eat them, then I'd shake the box, and he would run up the stairs for more biscuits. Then - of course - I'd throw a biscuit back down to the bottom. I kept this going for about half an hour, amused at my little game, and all was fine until the cat vomited. I felt absolutely dreadful.
Have you accidentally been cruel to an animal?
This question has been revived from way, way, way back on the b3ta messageboard when it was all fields round here.
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rob, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 11:13)
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Frog dumplingsUrgh. I'd filed this one away, just remembered it.
We had a pond at home, nowt special, but full of frogs. Big fuckers too, the size of your fist. I spent ages watching them, loved that whole frogspawn (like a giant passion fruit non?), tadpole, tadpole without tail, tiny tiny froglet metamorphosis thing.
One winter, when I was about 10, there was a severe frost lasting several days. Fucking about with large chunks of ice is one of my 'ain't nature useful' faves, it's like environmentally friendly vandalism, lobing huge bits of ice up in the air, watching them shatter, skimming them, that kind of thing.
This particular year, the ice was just too thick to break, even with all my weight. Boring!
Off to the tool shed, came back with a pick axe, struggled to lift it and twatted the ice with it.. it showed signs of breaking. More confident this time, I lifted the axe again, and put the pointy ended fucker right through the fibre glass side of the pond, draining out most of the water from underneath, leaving only the ice, then a air layer.
Dismayed and rather guiltily, I scurried back to the house
It was then I learnt a biology lesson. Water is at its densest at 4°C. This means that the water at the bottom of a pond is the warmest, and this is where the frogs go to hibernate.
Without this insulation, the frogs will die.
When the pond unfreezes, lots of putrifying, bloated, horrifically disfigured, wobbly masses of barely recognisibly frog innards will start floating to the surface.
This happened over a period of a couple of weeks, at the rate of a couple of new conscience pricking corpses per day. Sorry frogs. I dun wrong.
(, Fri 7 Dec 2007, 11:32, Reply)
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