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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Not really cruel, per se...but I do like pulling small pranks on deer.
See, where I come from the white tail deer are as common as flies and almost as numerous, and are practically as tame as housepets. I have a photo from last summer that my girlfriend shot of me sitting on the deck at my parents' house, fending off a deer that was trying very hard to get her nose into my glass of scotch. I also have another photo of a doe who was so intent on getting the graham cracker I was holding that she reached up and licked my nose.
So what pranks can you pull on a deer? Quite a few, as it happens.
Riding my bike home from work as a teenager I often encountered deer in the road and had to evade them. But a couple of times as I rode past at a high rate I put my hand out and smacked 'em on the butt, with predictable results. Fortunately I was going fast enough that the panicky flying hooves didn't connect with my bike's wheels...
A friend and I were sitting by the lake one evening, and she had an ancient Alka-Seltzer that she had found in her grandmother's bathroom. We took one of the tablets and were breaking off bits and tossing them into the lake to watch them fizz (we were bored) when I heard a noise behind me. I turned to see a doe nosing toward me, looking for a handout, so I tossed her half of the Alka Seltzer which she greedily lapped up- and then as it started fizzing on its way down her eyes got huge, her tail went up and she began trotting around erratically. (It didn't do any harm to her- like cows, deer are ruminants and belch all the time anyway.) The last I saw of her was a very confused looking beast trying to figure out why her throat felt funny...
Deer, like other animals, do communicate somewhat. They do so by body language and some small sounds. So if a deer snorts at you and stamps a hoof, it's getting annoyed over something. When I get a deer doing this to me, I stomp my foot and blow a raspberry back at her, which usually results in the deer getting increasingly stroppy until I laugh at it and it runs off in a huff...
There have been others, but those were the most fun.
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The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 7 Dec 2007, 16:43,
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