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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A History of Violence......Well, not quite....more like sporadic accidental cruelty and the odd moment of pure evil (reserved only for insects and molluscs mind you).
I'll get the evil out of the way first.
Slugs - I pour salt around them and leave them the choice of offing themselves.
Flies - boiled alive, batted with tennis rackets, pinned down....you name it. Occasionaly I've pushed them into Spider's webs and watched with glee as they were slowly cocooned.
Ants - boiled, burnt and cemented alive.
Now for some accidental cruelty:
Hamster #1 - Fluff. Fluff was a nice hamster, bought by my parents from an old dear who could no longer look after him, he was presented to me on my 12th birthday in his, well, birdcage. I take care of him, clean his cage out day in day out and let him out to roam once in a while. Except one day I didn't shut my door and he ended up in the mouth of the family cat. Thankfully I got to the cat before he was torn to pieces.
Later on in his short life he was in his hamster ball....again, I left my door open. The cat left him alone this time, but in his blissful state of happiness he totally failed to notice the 15 steps in front of him as he bounced his way down. He survived that, but not for too long. Whether it was age or fright that killed him, I do not know.
Hamster #2 - Truffles. Yeah, a pretty awful name I'll admit, but Truffles was one of those Golden Hamsters that turn viscious the moment they hit puberty, which is pretty much as soon as you get them home. He bit me so much that I actually had to use him as an excuse for not doing my homework once "Sir, my hamster bit my pen gripping fingers and I could not apply pressure to write".
Thing is, Truffles was a tough cookie - determined to live every second of it's allocated life on Earth...and more. 5 years later, by which I kept my fingers far away from him and cleaned his cage out once a month and had no social interaction with the little shit other than to feed him and replenish his water every few days.
You can probably guess that this lead to a situation like that guy that lay dead in his flat in Birmingham for 6 years. I just didn't think he was hungry as the water was going down (leaky bottle....) and he regularly stored food in his bedding. The smell wasn't that bad - a bit like chicken a week past it's use by date, according to my mum who found his corpse as I was too busy with exams to clean his cage out. He could have been dead for anything between one month and one day.....
(, Fri 7 Dec 2007, 16:02, 1 reply)
slugsI used to live in a house which had a slug problem in the extension (which was incidentally the kitchen). They used to invade over night, or when there was a bit of a wet-spell outside. Bless 'em.
I used to give each one a "three strikes" policy. Twice, they'd be thrown to the bottom end of the garden. Third, they'd get the "circle of salt" treatment as penance for misusing my good nature, lined up on the patio each trapped in a saline prison. Mysteriously, I'd normally almost always find the circle undisturbed and no bloated inside-out slug.
Even more strangely, the starlings in that area got very fat..
I feel no guilt as it was my way of keeping the morning chorus going.
(, Fri 7 Dec 2007, 16:17, closed)
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