Animal Thoughts

Longmont Teens Get Away With It...

The three boys involved in the herding of geese into a street, where they were run over with an SUV, were caught.  One of the youngsters was evidently old enough to have a drivers license, and, therefore, should be able to distinguish right from wrong.  What happened to the kids?
" Police on Monday ticketed two Longmont High School students on suspicion of four counts of felony aggravated animal abuse and a third student was referred to restorative justice in the deaths of four geese police believe the teenagers intentionally ran down with an SUV on Jan. 1.
According to police, witnesses say a white SUV stopped near 12th Avenue and Sumner Street, and a boy got out, herded geese out of a yard and into the roadway. Then the driver of the truck accelerated into the geese, killing three of them. A fourth died later.
Witnesses reported recognizing the SUV as one frequently parked at Longmont High School, which allowed police to identify the students.
Longmont Police Commander Jeff Satur said on Tuesday that the 17-year-old driver and the 16-year-old boy who herded the geese into the road were ticketed, while the third teen, also 16, who waited in the SUV was referred to the restorative justice program.
Catherine Olguin, spokeswoman for the Boulder District Attorney's Office, said the teens have been scheduled to appear in Boulder juvenile court Feb. 1 for formal filing of charges.
Officials have not released the teens' names because the charges filed are not classified high enough to require the public release of juvenile names."
The way I read this report, other than possibly paying a fine, and/or performing community service, the young men will not be punished.  Killing a defenseless animal for fun shows that a person has no soul.  I still feel they need to be charged with felony cruelty, even if they are 16 and 17 years old!  Don't just rap their knuckles and tell them they have been bad boys....

A Very Strange Dream

Like a nut, I left the book I was reading, and my alarm clock, at Sammie and Tuppurr's yesterday.  I'll pick them up this afternoon.  Since I didn't have my alarm clock, I was worried about waking up on time to get over and walk Rosie and Remy before it got too warm.  Luckily, I awakened at 6:30 due to a dream - and what a dream!  If you read this blog frequently, you know that I am a big fan of  NCIS; most notably David McCallum and Mark Harmon.  But the next person in line is Rocky Carroll, who plays NCIS Director Leon Vance.  The reason I went on an NCIS tangent is because I watched it last night.  This morning, for whatever reasons, I dreamed:  I was sitting on a toilet in a large and very ornate bathroom (I have no idea what I was doing on the pot).  There was a large collection of old and new stand-alone toilet paper holders standing in the bathtub and in the glassed-in shower area.  Director Vance was sitting at a large desk in front of a huge mirror about 5 feet away.  His back was toward me and he was doing some paperwork.  I made some kind of laughing comment about the TP holder collection, and he smiled at me, over his shoulder, and made some type of funny comeback.  He turned back to his desk, and the phone rang.   It was an old empress style telephone made of brass and ivory, and it was sitting next to the toilet (and me). He tossed over his shoulder, "Hey, can you grab that for me?", so I answered the phone with a very quiet "Hello?"  The person on the other end of the line said he needed to speak to the Director.  I began feverishly to grab at toilet paper, so I could move out of the way - after mopping up from whatever I was doing...  I suddenly realized that I was panting aloud, and had what looked to be a five-inch stack of accordioned TP in my hand.  Then I realized the Director was looking at me with raised eyebrows.  He finally asked, "What?"  I replied, in a strangled whisper, "You have a phone call."  He stood, said, "Well, I'll answer it in the other room," and walked through the door.  I looked back at all the TP in  my hand.  He closed the door....  and I woke up.  - Weird!

Other oddments:  A woman in Centreville, Maryland has been charged with 133 counts of cruelty and inhumane treatment of animals.  She had a 200-acre Arabian breeding farm (Polish bloodlines), and investigators found the horses dying from starvation and dehydration last April.  ....  Two full grown mountain lions wandered into an outer suburb of Los Angeles yesterday, and freaked out a home owner and his neighbors.  Authorities believe the cats came down from the San Gabriel Mountains for the hunting of easier game.  ....  Another person has been bitten by a coyote in Broomfield.  Idiot people feed them and then are upset when they attack because they aren't being fed as they are used to.  ....  The manager of the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge has requested funds to restore the parking places lost by the waters of Hurricane Irene.  She hopes to replot and have a full set of over 900 parking spaces by early summer.  (But don't expect to see folks working on it now - it's time for the winter and spring nor'easters, and they would just wash all the work away again.)