In Memory of Hundreds of Fish Killed In Horrific Traffic Accident
Los Angeles
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| Fish picture by: Tomascastelazo (PETA sign superimposed by the hack who wrote the article) |
I know a few people who really love fish, but they have no problem cutting them open and storing their flayed flesh in their freezers. Maybe those people just really love the taste of fish. There’s a fine balance between loving an animal and eating it. Is it not the highest honor to end up in another creature’s belly? Is it not in the least bit satisfying knowing your muscles are being churned in a pit of acid and then transformed into energy?
Humans don’t end up in stomachs! you might protest. Or, not usually, they don’t. But is not the societal system in which we try to live a sort of stomach? Slowly grinding away at your vitality, and slowly absorbing your energy?
Anyway, we’ve gotten off track already. The real story here is about a woman named Dina Kourda, who loves fish so much, she wants to honor the horrific deaths of hundreds of them in a gnarly traffic accident. As it’s been written:
On behalf of a leading animal rights group, an Irvine woman is asking the city to erect a memorial at the street corner where 1,600 pounds of live fish died this month when a container truck was involved in a three-vehicle crash.
A few people were seriously injured, and hundreds of fish died. Some flopped recklessly on the pavement. A few might have been squished beneath the tires of cars creeping past the accident. The fish were saltwater bass. And, they were loved, or they were at least on their way to being loved.
The truck was hauling the fish to an Asian supermarket. Ranch 99 Market. Where their slippery tails would have been grabbed by eager hands to bash their heads over a wooden crate. Or not. How do Asian supermarkets work these days? Perhaps these fish would have had their heads chopped off, instead.
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| Peter van der Sluijs, a fisherman |
So they get a sign because, in one respect, these fish died early deaths. If you dare say, Well, those fish were going to die, anyway, I (along with Dina Kourda) ask you, Are not we humans, too, going to die? To construct a better example, imagine a van full of death row inmates (who were wrongly) sentenced to die by electric chair that same week, but a wily jail warden loses control of the van and every prisoner bleeds out on the highway and dies.
Would you not advocate for a sign? Some sort of memorial to be erected in their honor? Would it be sufficient to simply say, Well, those humans were going to die, anyway.
They “suffocated slowly on the roadway,” Kourda said. So she is earnestly asking the constipated city of Irvine to erect a sign that would read:
IN MEMORY OF HUNDREDS OF FISH WHO SUFFERED AND DIED AT THIS SPOT
IN MEMORY OF THOUSANDS (UN ESTIMATES) / ZERO (US ESTIMATES) FISH WHO WERE PULVERIZED BY HELLFIRE MISSILES AT THIS SPOT AND MANY OTHERS
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I’ve been to 99 and watched guys in rubber aprons chop the heads off, real sudden-like: whack! Haven’t experienced (yet) the drones but a quotient of fear must inevitably be involved when you realize that they’re cruising overhead ready to give you the old one-two punch. So in view of the fear factor, which the fish at 99 presumably don’t experience, I’d say that a sudden blow with a sharp blade is a more humane way of killing than drones packing air-to-ground missiles.