Heaps of fish as a kid. I can’t remember how I felt about them at the time. But last year I took my son fishing. I baited the hook. I helped him reel it it in. When it got on on the wharf I squealed like a girly and ran away after screeching that a bloke a bit further up the wharf should assist. Oooops.
I’m a terrible wuss.
I would like to ask, coming from a non-squirrel country, why do you hate them? They are so cute!
I am the feared neighborhood bunny killer.
A couple years ago I was mowing my lawn (which wasn’t all that long) and ran over a baby bunny with the lawn mower. It was a drought year and, for some reason, that caused a lot of rabbits to make burroughs in areas they wouldn’t have otherwise (like my front lawn). It was a little push mower so it didn’t cut the bunny up, but his (her?) back end was rather squashed. He was trying to flee using only his front legs. It was quite sad.
Of course, a group of neighborhood children around age 10 witnessed all this. They were very upset: crying, wailing, hollering “call a vet.” I was at a loss about what to do. I wanted to put the poor thing out of its misery, but what do I know about killing bunnies?
I opened my front door to grab a pair of gloves before picking up the bunny (I didn’t know what I’d do once I got him–I just knew I didn’t want to pick him up with my bare hands). In doing so, the dogs got out.
There I was hollering at the dogs to stay in the yard, children were weeping, and I was trying to catch a half-paralyzed baby bunny. This half-paralyzed baby bunny was not an easy catch! I was crawling on my hands and knees trying to grab him and, even without a functional back end, he was faster than me!
Suddenly, one of my dogs bounded up in front of me, grabbed the bunny in his mouth, and violently shoke him, killing him quickly. The kids were very upset. Their moms came running out to see whatever was the matter.
I think the dog killing the bunny was probably the best thing for the poor little rabbit. I wouldn’t have known how to kill it quickly. I doubt a vet could have done anything other than put it down. So it would have suffered much longer if the dog hadn’t dispatched it so readily. The kids didn’t see it that way though. Their moms were comforting them and telling them the bunny wasn’t in pain anymore. I’m was standing there feeling like a heel saying “bad doggie” (though secretly I was thinking “good doggie”).
As the moms were shuffling the kids inside, one leaned over to me, winked, and said “you’re not getting any trick or treaters this year–you’re the scarey bunny killer lady now!”
I ran over a pet cat once by accident. I was absolutely hysterical and couldn’t go to work the next day.
Other than that, I go fishing and I don’t feel bad when I catch one (big enough to keep).
About 30 years ago my older brother “gave” me his pet gerbils to look after [he’d gotten two from the science lab at school - they were supposed to be both boys of both girls but turned out to be one of each and … ] they were housed in the shed at the bottom of the garden, and it was winter time, and I was terrified of the dark. So consequently I never went down to the shed and eventually the poor little bastards all died of starvation. 
My Dad happened to go into the shed for something and found them, my brother was given a right bollocking for it, and he tried to blame me (he was a teenager at the time and had just discovered the art of hanging around on street corners with his mates), my parents actually told him off for trying to blame me - which is the first, last and only time I haven’t been flailed alive by them for something.
Sometimes, at night, when I can’t get to sleep, they come back to haunt me :eek:
Apart from running over/hitting several dogs with my car as a youth (I was rather unlucky that way – also rather stupid), I had to kill a pigeon at work when I was part of the Driver support section at Fairchild AFB many years ago.
Our hangar (originally designed for housing B-36’s (really, really big airplanes), was used to house our aircraft tugs, snow removal equipment, and de-icing trucks. It had become infested with pigeons. We were not allowed to “molest” these birds, even though they were crapping about a cow’s worth of excreta each day. Base entomology was called in and they put in some poison perches. The birds perched on them, absorbed some toxin through their feet, and died fairly soon after.
One morning the boss and I arrived to find a lone pigeon doing the “dance of death” on our hangar floor. The boss told me to grab a broom and whack him to death, but I suggested an alternative. We had stocks of aerosol “starting fluid” that we would sometimes spray into the intakes of a diesel motor to help it get going when it was cold. I happened to know that the fluid in those cans was (nearly) pure ether. I got one of our cans and threw a cloth over the bird so a) it wouldn’t have the additional stress of seeing me loom over it and b) so the ether would collect on the cloth and be concentrated underneath with the bird.
I had heard that birds were very sensitive to inhaled toxins, but I was surprised at how fast the bird stopped flopping when I gave it a squirt of ether. It must’ve been less than a half second, if that long. I put on my gloves and gathered the bird corpse up, and had the boss give him an extra dose for good measure. I then gave him a proper “burial” in the dumpster.
It didn’t bother me much, since I was just putting him out of his misery. Actually, I was a bit proud that the idea had worked so well.
–SSgtBaloo
Sounds like I’ve killed a lot more critters than most people posting here. I live on a farm, way out in the woods. In the general course of animal production, hunting, fishing, and removal of pest-type wild animals I’ve killed animals ranging is size from a cow to the smallest mouse.
If I’m successful in dispatching the animal as quickly and humanely as possible, it doesn’t bother me at all.
Now THIS, posted above, would have bothered me in the extreme.
He fell down the chimney, we started up the fireplace.
Was pretty gory actually, it climbed up on the grate, which cut it’s paws up, then it scratched at the glass, leaving bloody claw marks." *
There was a better way to get that job done. I couldn’t have slept after doing that.
I fully agree. Killing something is one thing-way of the wild and all that.
Enjoying the heck out of it is something else.
I forget.
I haven’t been here in a while.
Is it against the regs to refer to St_Ides as, IMHO, a waste of human space?
(Not, of course, that he’s not already well aware…)
:rolleyes:
A bird flew into my bike tire once. Felt quite bad although it wasn’t my fault. Left a live trap up in the attic for mice. First time I checked it, I had nothing. Forgot about it. Next time I went up there, there were many mice in various stages of decomposition. If I go to hell, it will be for that.
Now I just kill the mice as humanely as possible. (I have nothing against mice in particular as long as they stay outside. If they come inside, we have issues.) Most troubling issue is what to do with mice that the cat catches that are not yet dead. If you release them outside, they’ll just come back (and probably die, because cat scratches are usually fatal to mice) I’ve taken different approaches, none totally satisfactory.
Nothing bigger than mice, though I have harbored evil thoughts towards the groundhog that annually eats my sunflowers when they get about six inches high.
I’ve never purposefully killed anything but insects, and then mostly spiders. Ugh. I can’t feel any remorse for creatures that awful and creepy.
Yesterday I ran over a bird with the lawn mower, the first time I killed any higher animal. I felt awful about it. Sickly awful. I’m glad my girlfriend doesn’t mind the emasculatory sickness I underwent for about twenty minutes, while she disposed of it.
And all for a bird. I’m a pro-gun meat eater and I cry over a little birdie in the lawn. It takes all kinds, I guess.
I feel I should point out that I’m aware that spiders aren’t insects.
When i was a teenager, a lot of my friends lived on farms, and i used to go visit them during the school holidays. We sometimes went hunting, and the victims were generally rabbits, foxes, and kangaroos.
I didn’t feel too badly about it back then. Rabbits and foxes are not native to Australia, and they not only represent a nuisance to farmers, they also compete for food and habitat with native Australian animals. We generally only went after kangaroos when they were present in unusually large numbers and were posing a threat to the farmer’s livelihood by eating the crops.
Now, some years later, i’m a vegetarian and have no interest in hunting whatsoever. I still have no problem with the culling of non-native species, which the British shouldn’t have been so stupid as to import into Australia in the nineteenth century anyway. And i really don’t have too much trouble with the kangaroo culling that periodically takes place in Australia.
I also had no trouble last month setting a trap for the little bastard of a mouse that was rustling around in my kitchen.
I’ve killed several small animals and one deer in motor vehicle mishaps. I don’t have any particular feeling about this other than wishing both I and the animal had had better luck. Accidents do happen.
I fish. I love to fish. I feel really good about fishing. And eating the fish I catch. I make no apologies for this whatsoever. Anyone who eats fish (or meat) and objects to fishing or hunting is pretty much in the position of someone who claims to object to murder, and wouldn’t feel comfortable actually killing some inconvenient person, but has no qualms about hiring a hit man to get the job done.
I once killed a bunch of moles. Actually, I’m not sure how many moles I killed, but my intention was to kill a bunch of moles. This was one summer when moles were destroying the lawn of my parents’ house. I and one of my brothers went to help, and after trying several methods we seem to have either killed all the moles or driven them away.
Again, I have no particular feelings about this incident one way or the other. There are some areas (like lawns) where we compete with animals. This time we won. Sometimes the termites (or insert pest of your choice) win, and a house falls down.
All that said, I take no pleasure whatsoever in the actual killing of animals, whether we’re talking about annoying moles or fish. I love fishing, but the enjoyment, for me, comes not from the killing itself, but from the catching. And then the eating.
I was doing 60 on a back road at night on my way home from work (STUPID). A large raccoon started jogging across the road about 60 feet ahead of me. Even at a slower speed I couldn’t have slowed down on time to not hit it. I briefly tried the brakes, but they weren’t in good shape, and swerving would have turned me off the road in to a cornfield on one side of the road and a dry canal on the other. I flattened it with both right side tires of my 1979 Chevy Impala. I came by the next day on my way to work. It was in several pieces. I really got it. I also ran over a groundhog during driving instruction. I wasn’t too perturbed, and the instructor didn’t seem bothered, but I felt kind of stupid.
I have killed lots of fish. They make good food.
Actually, this is rather poor logic.
What about someone who eats meat/fish, and who believes that killing animals for food is fine, but who objects to killing animals simply in order to display their head or their fur?
The moral continuum of animal use and animal rights encompasses a pretty broad set of possibilities, and it’s rather silly to make simplistic statements about what people should and should not believe.
Oh, God, forgive me, but I am spitting up coffee reading about MaddyStrut the bunny killer. Well told.
I’ve killed every pheasant and green-head that had the manners to stay within my shot pattern. And then I ate them.
I’ve killed every fish that had the lack of sense to mistake my pitiful fly or lure for something edible. And then I ate them.
Accidently I’ve killed a dog and a cat while driving and felt bad, mostly because I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) eat them.
The largest thing I ever killed was a small bird. It was euthenasia. The bird had flown full speed into a window and was just barely alive afterwards. Me and a friend killed it by placing a plank on it’s head and stamping on it.
The OP needs to be introduced to some hunters. Myself, I’ve shot deer, turkey, rabbits, etc.
I’ve also shot nuisance animals such as dogs, cats, coyotes, and groundhogs.
How did I feel? Good. (How else should I feel?)
:eek:
America is fucking different from everywhere else that’s for sure.