More Smutty Than You: TSR's Hall of Shame

[SoggyFox]

If I ever get the trick of spinning, I'm going to make some dog and cat 'wool' - then I knit it into something - angora rabbits also work well as both pets and 'wool' critters.

And agreed - minks are vicious little carnivores, and they are domesticated - same with the domestic fox - you couldn't just let them out into the wild - they aren't suited to it, yet so many people go 'the fox is a wild animal and unsuitable for pets' bullshit.  The fennec has been used for both meat and as a pet animal for centuries.  And a fox makes a fine bet if you don't expect it to act like a dog.  Starting young is good too, but that's the same for all pets imo - that way the only bad habits they have are ones you let it get away with.

[bmyall]

We had animal rights people break into a fur farm here and they released hundreds of minks. Most became road kill within hours and the rest died within days. Oi! what a mess! to say nothing of the smell.

[Enne]

I remember PETA papering our campus with anti-turkey literature every time Thanksgiving rolled around.  I remember wondering if they had any idea of how many trees they'd killed, amount of chemicals in the dye (they were very brightly coloured, as well as shiny - is that a statement about college mentality, or theirs?), and how many tons of litter they'd just produced.

[ooglafina]

Giving somebody a thing made out of woven cat or dog fur sounds like a good thing to do to get back at them if they are allergic to said animal.

[bmyall]

I think most people are allergic to the saliva and/or the animals dandruff so it likely wouldn't affect them once it was cleaned.

[Darqstar]

I think most people are allergic to the saliva and/or the animals dandruff so it likely wouldn't affect them once it was cleaned.

You'd think, but fur coats make me sneeze and my eyes water.  Especially newer ones.  And by new, I mean "Less than fifty years old."

[Immortelle]

I'm all for animal rights myself.  The way I see it we're animals too, albeit more intelligent than the vast majority, not to mention being the dominant species.  But still anatomically, we have all the same things as them, and while we are superior intellectually many animals are superior to us in other ways (better senses etc).  They think and feel, just cannot communicate with us the way we can one another.  But the level of cruelty we subject our fellow creatures to can be incomprehensible considering nine times out of ten we don't do it for the sake of survival like they would. merely for our own comfit and sometimes pleasure.

I don't have a problem with eating meat.  When we kill an animal, the creature is often killed a lot quicker than what many other carnivores kill.  The fact remains is that we like dogs, are omnivorous and as such our dietary requirements need us to eat meat as well as vegetables.  Nor do I have a problem with eating animal products like milk and eggs.  I only eat free range eggs and chickens however, as it is cruel to keep a creature cooped up inside a tiny cage with no room to move and scratch about.  The quality of food is also of a much higher standard when they are free range.

Animal hide.  I do wear leather and suede, but will only wear faux fur.  I cannot justify the use of animals purely for the sake of fashion.  There  are many other ways that humans are capable of keeping warm, we don't need to .

I cannot justify using animals for cosmetic experimentation, as results are inconclusive and the methods by which they come by such results are sickening at best.  There are many high quality products on the market that have not needed to be tested on any animal to ensure it is safe for us.  We don't need to hurt animals to look beautiful.  Fortunately most countries are in agreement with this and such practices are outlawed in most countries now.

Some people seem to regard animals as a thing to be used like a chair or a computer like the one you are staring at.  Any sound or reaction it makes is purely mechanical, right.  No pain or anything like that.  I've even had one lady say its okay to not care about animals as they don't have a soul.  Heh, the ancient greeks said that about women and children, too.  It was their justification for not worrying about rights, not listening to them or regarding them as being part of the community.  They had the same rights as a horse or a dog.  But that has changed, because we know better now. 

[pickles]

Sorry to bring this back a few pages, but RE: marijuana in CA, with the proper license you are allowed to grow up to 99(!!!) plants. I am not sure why anyone would need more than one or two, but there you have it. The Coast Guard does regular flyovers in the heavier growing areas to find potential violators, and if the police ask to see your plants, you'd damn well better not have 100.   And I feel very sheltered now, as I don't even know what pot smells like, so I have no way of knowing if it's being used near me.

I like animals. They are tasty (well many of them are) and many are awesome to have around the house (gosh I wish we could have a kitteh here, we found rats/mice in our garage a little while ago, and I know my old kitty would have loved to find them for me).

[SoggyFox]

I agree on the free ranged - I prefer the animal to get to live before death, not be mistreated.  Yes we eat meat, but no reason to be cruel about it.  But, I partially disagree on the fur issue - some fur animals are also meat animals [rabbits for example, or lamb], so why waste their death.

But, if someone doesn't want to eat a fellow animal, that's cool - some do it for religious/spiritual reasons, some do it for health reasons, but whatever reasons, I'll respect - I draw the line at the people who force their dogs and cats to eat nothing but veggies - I liken it to making a vegetarian animal, like a guinea pig, eat nothing but meat.

Basically, I'm very laid back about most things, but passionate about others.

[Immortelle]

My parents dog had to have a vegetarian diet after he had liver problems and could no longer digest meat .Dogs are in fact omnivorous, which means they need some vegies too for them to have a balanced diet.  Most animals have a secondary family of food that they need.  Take birds.  Budgerigars are essentially granivores - that is they eat grains.  But they also need green leafy vegetables and fruit.  Wattle Birds are nectavores, meaning they are honeyeaters. But they also eat fruit, insects and small lizards  In al cases one is the primary diet, meaning the thing they have to eat a lot of to survive, and the other secondary to ensure that they are healthy and free of any conditions.

[rum nate]

On thing I would say on free range, I don't know about where you are (If you are not in the US that is) but here in the US, free range simply means the bird was give the opportunity to leave the coop. That one, does not mean it ever left, and two, all it could end up being is 3 steps out, and then forced back in. That is the US government's definition of free range, which is hardly free range. I'm not saying everything labeled as free range it like that, but that is the only requirements for them to be able to put on the package that it is free range.

[SoggyFox]

I try and get from amish farms - I actually trust them.  And the operative word is omnivores - while sometimes medical conditions might mean a change [ see above on humans who do it for medical reason], but making a dog eat nothing but veggies because you thinks its evil to eat meat, well, that's just unnatural for the dog.  [I believe guinea pigs and several other primarily vegetarian mammals also eat bugs, but they need to eat veggies primarily, not an all meat diet, that would kill them.]

Different animals evolved differently.  And nature is violent.  Trying to turn it into moonbeams and rainbows is just plain dumb.  No need to be needlessly cruel - a snake, for example, is a very humane hunter, but to just pretend death isn't a part of things is naive.  That's why I dislike the fluffy bunny sort of pagan, they actually irritate me.

[Darqstar]

We have a free range farm nearby.  I've bought eggs there before, as they do sell to "walk bys."  They are defenately free range chickens, because I've seen them wandering around the place many times.  When I'd go walking, I often saw this cat they had, when he was younger, playing this game of leaping over the rooster.  The rooster always looked like, "Oh joy, this damned cat is jumping over my head." 

I once had a goat from that farm get loose and almost follow me home.  I told my husband and he didn't believe me until I showed him the article in the paper about the goat.  Apparently, after trying to follow me home, he walked down the street to the graveyard, where he started eating flowers off of graves and bothering people coming to visit relatives no longer on this mortal coil.  He was a pretty nice goat though, for a goat. 

But, this farm was free range before it was ever "in."  In fact, when they talk about the family farm, I figure this is what they mean.  They have a few cows, a few pigs, a bunch of chickens.  They grow some crops, mostly feed crops but a few vegetables and fruits.  (cash crops, I'm sure)  No animals are tied up.   They are either in barns, or wandering about in pens, or roaming loose like the chickens.  I hope one of the kids ends up taking over when the parents get too old to farm.

[Scurvy Cat]

PETA bimbos were out yesterday in green bikinis in front of KFC protesting chicken. 

Hope they froze.

[ooglafina]

I always wonder why those people don't spend their energy better by protesting against violence and genocide. They need to focus on feeding starving children in Brazil or India and not on whether or not a chicken has a happy life.