[Livetotravel]

You simply cannot make this shit up....
http://gowanuslounge.blogspot.com/2007/07/you.....ot-it-bad-park-slope.html

Mod note: Edited to provide a direct link to the blog post in question, so you don't have to go searching around the site to find it.

[armchair_warrior]

spoil kids. care taker funny word for lazy ass parents.
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[dakotas way]

sounds like a future tweens leader in the making. Imagine being able to break the neck of a poor pidgeon and not really have to be reprimanded or held accountable in any way. I'd have to guess that this lack of remorse or conscience could be a frightening view into the future of this sick child and incompentent adult with him.
And why wouldn't the cops get out of the car (unless of course there was a real emergency) to use this opportunity to scare the daylights out of the kid for his cruel and I'm certain, illeagal behavior? Isn't it against the law to kill things??
What's next...dogs, cats???

[caseopele]

That's disgusting. No 8 year old should hit any living being with a stick, that boy is old enough to know better. Either the kid is a psychopath or his parents aren't doing any actual parenting. I never hurt an animal when I was a kid, normal children don't do that. No one I know or have ever known has done anything like that as a kid. His parents need to wake up and try to fix the mess they've created. And the cops should have done something to make that kid realize his behavior was wrong even though his parents didn't. At this rate they'll be dealing with him in a few years anyway.
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A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free. -Nikos Kazantzakis

[armchair_warrior]

killing for fun is wrong. when i was 8 i killed birds for food. starving in a 3rd world country.
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[caseopele]

See that's the difference right there. It's one thing to have to kill animals for food, I'm a vegetarian and I realize that living where I live gives me that luxury. That kid did it for fun and that is seriously f*ucked up. armchair_warrior, I didn't mean that comment to encompass the whole world. It was only meant for kids living in countries where they don't have to kill for their dinner. Hope you didn't take it the wrong way.
_________________
A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free. -Nikos Kazantzakis

[raw]

Hide your cats and dogs.
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I blame such comments on beer.
© karlthedruid 2007

[armchair_warrior]

i agree with ya caseopele .
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save the world http://tinyurl.com/yf9srm4

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[Karl the Druid]

he was three

i don't think the concept of killing is fully realized at that age and...

oh what the hell, i bet the brat was stone-cold drunk
_________________
destination: roam

[caseopele]

Actually, the kid was 8 years old according to the Gowanus Lounge story.
_________________
A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free. -Nikos Kazantzakis

[Karl the Druid]

i meant the pigeon
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destination: roam

[Restless Native]

Wow, big suprise there, a kid with absentee yuppie parents being raised by a nanny growing up messed up in the head. There's a new one for you.

At the same time don't quite see what the point was of calling the cops.

[BrookSignal]

Sounds fishy to me. I don't think I could kill a pigeon with a stick if I tried.

[Karl the Druid]

[raw]

I saw two unattended boys younger than 11 throw large rocks at ducks in Prospect Park so hard I feared they'd knock a duck's heads off. I was disturbed. I told the boys to stop. I'm not sure if they started throwing the rocks again after I walked away. As young as the boys were, they seemed like sadists.
_________________
I blame such comments on beer.
© karlthedruid 2007

[caseopele]

When I lived on 5th Ave I was right across the street from P.S. 51. One day while walking my dogs I saw some 8-10 year olds throwing rocks at a squirrel. The squirrel was clinging to the wire mesh on one of the school's windows. I was sick that day and my head was a bit fuzzy so I wasn't able to think about what I was saying. I told them something like, "Hey! You do not throw f*cking rocks at squirrels! Not cool, guys." I don't know whether it was the big dogs, the blue hair and tattoos, or the fact that an adult swore at them. But they stopped and a few other kids chimed in telling them it wasn't cool. Keep in mind this was during the kids lunch break, I wasn't aware they were allowed to run wild completely unsupervised while at school.
_________________
A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free. -Nikos Kazantzakis

[triebensee]

That's horrible, but I saw something far worse once.

I saw someone actually feeding pigeons!
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www.hellgateharmonie.com

[caseopele]

Yeah, that was me. I'll take a pigeon over a future sociopath any day.
_________________
A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free. -Nikos Kazantzakis

[Karl the Druid]

i saw a homeless woman in central park eating a pigeon

ruined my day
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destination: roam

[brooklynpotter]

i believe jeffrey dahmer began his "career" by killing small animals.
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what would you tell me, if i could hear you speaking?--t.r.

[Greene-Eyed Monster]

Fast forward 20 years: "He was so quiet - you know, kept to himself. We always thought it was so nice that he still lived with his mother and helped out around the house."

[veets]

[Jamzer]

Anything that comes out of the Park Slope Parent's mailing list has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Anyway it is a very big leap from wacking a pigeon with a stick and becoming a mass murderer.

[bklyngirl]

[Karl the Druid]

[Livetotravel]

Maybe the homeless person was a former Brit - pigeon pie is a frequently served dish in London...

Ingredients:
6 small pigeons, dressed, washed, pat dry
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons onion, chopped
8 cloves
1 carrot, sliced
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
2 tablespoons celery, chopped
2 tablespoons flour
2 Pastry shells, uncooked

Directions:
Tie legs and wings of the pigeons together with string and close to the body. Sprinkle with the salt and pepper. Melt 2 Tbsp butter in pan and saute pigeons, searing them on both sides.

Cover them with water. Add onion, carrot, parsley, cloves, and celery. Cover and simmer until tender. **About 3 hours**

Remove the pigeons and debone the meat. Mix flour to a smooth paste with remaining butter. Add this mixture to the broth of the pigeons. Bring to a boil.

Line a well greased pie pan with 1 shell. Add the meat and then the thickened broth. Cover it with the other pastry shell. Bake at 450* until nice and brown.

This recipe for Pigeon Pie serves/makes 6

[Flailey]

IF KILLING A BIRD WITH A STICK IS WRONG THEN I DON'T WANT TO BE RIGHT!!

EL FLAILEY
KILLER OF BIRDS
ALSO DISMEMBERER, SEASONER, AND GRILLER OF BIRDS

[cat]

I was in Prospect Park over this weekend looking out for two 'dumped' ducks that are not supposed to be living in the 'wild.' What I witnessed of kids and the lack of any sense of knowing how to live among wildlife ... but more importantly, the parents lacking any sense of the idea of TALKING to to their children about how to LIVE and TREAT wildlife ... was shocking. i am still in shock over it. I saw kids riding their bikes recklessly into where the pigeons and canada geese and ducks were by the water. I saw kids throwing chunks of rolls in order to hit the ducks. I saw little kids run after a bunch of ducks across the lawn and one kept falling(the duck, not the kid). *I* was the one who had to point out to them that they should not be doing this. WHAT is wrong with the parents? It's a park. Yeah, I get that maybe they want them to be able to 'run free' but ... what a great opportunity to teach the children .... hey that bird is a baby and we need to keep some distance... hey those pigeons and ducks are just trying to survive. let's not run into them... hey that one doesn't seem to be doing so well, let's leave it alone. hey, maybe we should feed them bird seed or popcorn versus junk food... etc. etc.

so to see this story about the eight year old killing the pigeon, which I don't have the heart to read right now, sort of doesn't surprise me.

I don't know if it's parents being permissive or thinking that kids can do anything to wildlife but it's really messed up and horrifying. Spend about five hours over a few days by the lake at Prospect Park and you'll see it, full force.

You'd never see kids running after a scared dog and getting away with it. Throwing rocks at dogs... why is it okay to do this to squirrels or ducks or pigeons...?

[raw]

[sprite]

While I agree that the kid's caretaker should have set him straight about the proper way to treat animals, I think it's a *huge* leap to assume that every kid who hurts or even kills an animal is a sociopath. Cruelty to animals used to be common - people paid to see dogfights, cockfights, and bearbaiting. They weren't murderers or mentally ill - they were normal people, and they found that fun. I think that kind of cruelty is appalling, and I'm glad our society doesn't condone it anymore, but let's not assume that because a boy hasn't really learned that yet, he's sure to be the next Jeffrey Dahmer.
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What is essential is invisible to the eye. —Antoine de Saint Exupéry

[WTGirl]

[happyfeet01]

what a sick twisted kid

[Karl the Druid]

[dakotas way]

I'm sorry SPRITE. Did you say it was OK to have fun back in the day with torturing animals because it was an accepted practice???

I guess going to the Colusseum during the Roman Empire was a gas unless you were a slave or christian. Or how about taking the family out for a picnic and hanging in the town square? Now that's quality time.

And it is absolutely true that the majority of sociopaths, serial killer and killers of the everyday kind tended to torture and kill animals in their youth.
I have jumped in many times to correct people and their kids about how to treat animals. Doesn't matter where or when, I will always let them and whoever they're with know that their behavior is unacceptable.
I once was at a horse show where a rider (not one of my students) began hitting his horse in the face with his riding crop because it stopped at a jump. I grabbed that SOB kid by his leg, pulled him off the horse and marched him and his horse up to his mother to advise what he had done. She was pretty clueless so I then took the kid to the horse show steward, filed a complaint and he was watched for several show to make sure he didn't ever do that again.
Unacceptable at any time or place.

[Karl the Druid]

i still think the blogged story is fable, observe the way its written carefully and think of the detail that it would have if you witnessed such an account, this one smacks of telephone game

but as with most fables, it serves to exemplify real life. some kids in general can be mean and misguided. in this day and age they also seem to be very medicated (very)

i do find most urban folk and their kin generally know wild life from books, tv, maybe the zoo. they might only know how to interact with animals as an object (a child's first instinct)

i grew up rural, hunting, fishing, trapping and tending live stock/foul. when you raise or hunt an animal for food you have much more respect as to what you are eating and what it actually is, you have much more respect for life and take only what you need, you also learn not to waste

in this now disposable society, some must be carefully taught
_________________
destination: roam

[BoogieKnight]

My 2cents.......I think some folks on this board, considering how little evidence and background we have on the pigeon-stick incident, are way overreacting. Nascent serial killer, really? Sure sign of the complete degradation of the Western world, really?

Killing the pigeon was wrong, and the kid should be spoken to about it. If the kid’s watcher saw the pigeon-killing and did or said nothing, they should be spoken to as well.

That said, kids are kind of stupid and kind of mean. I myself and I'm sure tons of us out there have when young and stupid and mean chased/chucked rocks at/just generally harrased all sorts of animals,younger siblings and weird kids at play/school grounds. And for no better reason than you were dared to/being shitty/or just plain .

In no way is that sort of cruelty a sign of a burgeoning monster.

So unless we know for a fact that pigeon kid has also been sexually-physically abused/received numerous serious head injuries/starts fires and whatever other serial killing signifiers I left off, some of y'all should take a deep breath and relax.

[sprite]

[dakotas way]

Sorry, Sprite, if I misuderstood your post.
And yes, many adults need to be educated as well. Which is beyond my understanding, but sadly true.

[sprite]

No offense taken, dw.

[GradonIV]

Speaking of animal cruelty, did anyone see the story about the pit bull that was tied to a tree and set on fire on Long Island? Police are looking for leads. Incredibly sad.

http://www.wnbc.com/news/13692700/detail.html

[raw]

[Restless Native]

[caseopele]

[cat]

[Jamzer]

It's not every day a debate erupts on message boards over moral relativism! I love it!

Is it an absolute truth that killing a pigeon is bad? I don't buy it (although - for the record - I think pigeons are rats with wings, but that an 8 year old kid should absolutely not be killing them for fun).

There are cultures that make sport out of torturing animals for enjoyment and it has been going on for all of time. Are you going to tell the Spaniards that they should abolish bull fighting? Who is going down to Texas to tell them to stop with the rodeos? And, yes, there are hierarchies of living things. We treat dogs and cats better than rats. And cans of tuna fish are marketed as "Dolphin Safe." Why do we care if dolphins die while we are eating something else that was alive? Why do we care more about the dolphin than the tuna?