You Tube proves hazardous to turtle’s health

From today’s Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune — Teenagers admit lighting turtle on fire — twice:

MOORHEAD, Minn. — An 18-year-old has pleaded guilty to animal cruelty for a videotaped incident in which he and two friends lit a turtle on fire and danced around it.

Joel Charles Ross . . . said they did it not once, but twice, and dressed up differently because they wanted to make their video “more funny and exciting.” . . . The video was posted online.

I don’t know if this is more disturbing than CaddyChicks or not. I think it is. Wait . . . hmmm . . . hard to decide.

I don’t know if the kids (read: mentally disturbed 18-year olds) were actually able to post their hi-larious cruelty to animals video on You Tube or maybe on . . . a blog (article just reads “online”, which was also their downfall as it was subsequently e-mailed to a police officer).

I’m sure that evil, turtle-killing youths have existed throughout human history. I think such acts in the past were not usually recorded and distributed.

This caused a spark of memory of other sociopathic children — lo and behold, an archive search turned this up this headline from June 12 (article now locked behind StarTribune.com’s paid archive):

Puppy allegedly killed by 3 boys, ages 6 and 8

Watch out, innocent creatures of the upper midwest, for adolescents with video cameras.