Nation mourns bird killed in domino shooting

Reuters ^ | 11/18/05 | Reuters

[Kimmers]

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch animal lovers are mourning a sparrow shot dead after it fluttered into an exhibition hall and knocked over thousands of dominoes set up in preparation for a world record attempt.

The sparrow will be commemorated in a live Dutch television broadcast of the domino-toppling Friday after a wave of national outrage at the shooting.

"We know we are responsible for a lot of emotion in the country and we realize we couldn't go on without properly marking this," said Jeroen van Waardenberg, a spokesman for reality TV company Endemol, the firm behind "Big Brother."

An exterminator shot the sparrow Monday in the northern city of Leeuwarden after fears the bird could upset more of the 4 million dominoes which staff had spent weeks balancing on their edges for the record attempt.

Dutch animal rights groups are outraged, especially as sparrows are a protected species in the Netherlands.

[Rembrandt]

"Sparrows are a protected species?"

With all the hysteria about gun ownership and discharge in the U.S., sparrows, crows, etc. are also protected species in the U.S. The crow population here in Florida is clearly, seriously out of control.

[pickrell]

"..Europe is an incredibly silly place.."

Where is could Monte Python originate?

[WorkingClassFilth]

Amazing, just amazing. Just when you think leftwing sensibilities couldn't get any crazier or run a socialist nation any further into the ground, something like this comes along.

Let the Islamofascists have Europe. There's nobody left worth saving.

[taxesareforever]

This will go down as "BS Day" in Dutch history. (Bastard Sparrow)

[MinuteGal]

Q.....Why do the Dutch wear wooden shoes?

A.....To keep the woodpeckers off their heads.

Leni

[higgmeister]

"The Dutch Domino Sparrow Tribute Telethon"

Oh why couldn't it have been a European Starling?

[Coleus]

.

[Petronski]

What is the lifespan of a sparrow, anyway, two years?

Laden or unladen?

[2111USMC]

Europe is doomed.

[Petronski]

They could have avoided this disaster by taking a Starbucks muffin and crumbled it in the corner away from the dominoes.

But who can afford 200,000 Kroner for a Starbucks muffin just to distract a swallow?

[metmom]

I don't know. It's just too weird to be made up.

[metmom]

Crows in NY are pretty out of control, too. Every year they try to have a crow shoot in Auburn and all the bleeding heart animal rights people won't stand for it. Yet the birds are causing a lot of damage to the farmers. I was in Auburn one time and the way the crows were thick and flying around and cawing, it reminded me of the movie, "The Birds". It was really, really creepy.

[SmoothTalker]

The dutch don't bat an eye at prostitution and all kinds of sexual perversion. They don't even blink at the use of heavy drugs. And the death of a bird gets to them?

[wolficatZ]

"Where I live sparrows raise entire families of one Starbucks muffin and they extremely cute and fearless."

LOL! Great prose.

[WorkingClassFilth]

True enough, but I was wrong. There ARE some folks in Europe worth saving - some right here on FR. Honest to God, though, a nation that legalizes euthanasia and routinely aborts children has zero sensibilities collectively. This is proof. The Germans of WWII would eat these pathetic creatures like ice cream.

I have come to firmly believe that when a person, or people, accepts the legal right for infanticide or euthanasia some kind of moral gymnastics are needed to keep a balance in their mental health. Like a balanced tension, the goofy sentiment we see in this article is nothing more than displaced guilt suppressed in diseased minds over the moral guilt of real murder.

I not a shrink (thank God), but I've seen too many lefties and the constellation of weirdness that they consider moral thought to not believe that this is true. Ask any animal rights (or anti-hunting type for that matter) if they are for abortion rights, assisted suicide and the like. Nine times out of ten they will equally passionate about these issues too. Right is Wrong and good is evil.

[Grizzled Bear]

And now for something completely different...