Be Nice to Those Flies?
WASHINGTON - The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants the flyswatter in chief to try taking a more humane attitude the next time he's bedeviled by a fly in the White House.
PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.
"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. "We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."
For the most part I support what PETA tries to do by advocating more humane ways of handling animals; however they've gone a bit too far now. Protect the fly?
The ONLY reason I might consider using one of these devices to trap a fly is because....I can't get him to land long enough for me to swat him dead! The same goes for those gnats, horse flies, bees and wasps.
Sorry if that offends anybody.
Doesn't offend me - if humans went around landing on food, stinging and biting and trailing germs all over, PETA would be swatting at them too - to heck with capturing and releasing- we don't do that with criminals..........
June 18, 2009 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
hahahhahah Maggie, You have me laughing this morning.
I hereby render unto you the Dayly Line of the Day Award for this here TPMCafe site, given to all of you from all of me.
hahahahahahah
June 19, 2009 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
NO WE DON'T.
I'd love to see these PETA people in the forest late at night while all the bugs are out....LOL
June 18, 2009 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I needed a good guffaw, and this one gave it to me. Mammy Yokum was perhaps the first to invent a human way to best an opponent. She played Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald's Indian Love Call over and over until her opponent conceded...I wonder if that would work with flies.
June 18, 2009 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I say more power to the fly killer. Why is it okay for a Lion to kill a gazelle on the Serengeti plain, but for you or me to swat a disease carrying fly that is endangering our health is cruelty to animals? This is what drives me nuts with PETA. Most people with an ounce of compassion don't want animals to be abused or harmed--but where does PETA draw the line? Our immune systems are ganging up on rogue bacteria every minute of the day--cruelty to animals? What about Ebola virus--it just wants to live, too. Doesn't it have the right to make my eyeballs bleed? Of course, if you take exception to a PETA stance, they'll slaughter you. I guess you're the only organism that deserves to be treated cruelly. I read that they sent him a fly trap. What is the PETA position on Bot-Fly larvae? Is it ok to remove them, or must they be permitted to live out their life-cycle. What about tapeworms?
June 19, 2009 9:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder what would happen if somebody went out and bought a thousand of these fly traps, then laid them out near a pig or cow farm, catching thousands of flies. They could then take those traps and drop them off at this PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich's house.
What a hoot that would be.
June 19, 2009 9:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's easier to simply grow them in containers. Or buy them. It's big business to supply flies to medical researchers. I know the spiders in the neighborhood would be thrilled!
June 19, 2009 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
As that great philosopher once said:
WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP!!!!
All they are doing is giving animal lovers a bad name. Makes us all look like dooofusses!
June 19, 2009 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunately you are correct DickDay.
I have found myself feeling more and more sadden with harm being done to animals. I use to fish a lot in my younger days, now I still do, but rarely cause it bugs me that I may be harming a fish....NUT CASE I AM
I don't mind it if you eat them....but I don't.
June 19, 2009 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Given that PETA euthanizes an estimated 85 percent of the animals it "rescues," I wish the media would quit giving them any credence whatsoever on the subject of animal cruelty.
June 19, 2009 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think PETA's goal is to be NON-ABUSIVE toward animals. If you MUST kill them, do it humanely.
My point is, that goal can only go so far...FLIES?
June 19, 2009 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think PETA's goal is to be NON-ABUSIVE toward animals. If you MUST kill them, do it humanely.
My point is, that goal can only go so far...FLIES?
June 19, 2009 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
They've euthanized countless adoptable animals rather than turning them over to no-kill shelters or otherwise making an effort to find homes for them. This is pretty well documented.
As a sane animal welfare supporter, I loathe PETA for the damage they've done to the credibility of those with more nuanced positions, and for their hypocrisy. And as a sane animal welfare supporter, I have no problems whatsoever with swatting the hell out of flies.
June 19, 2009 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink