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.

2 Responses to You Tube proves hazardous to turtle’s health

  1. karah says:

    Confession: My first year at college, I found a giant roach in my un air conditioned room in Mayes Dorm. I chased it out into the hallway, but no bug spray or anything. So I doused it with Lysol and set it on fire. There’s my animal cruelty confession.

    Sometimes I don’t get up IMMEDIATELY to let Mister out, but when I hesitate too long, he bites me. So I pretty much get up immediately. I wonder if he worries about his tendencies towards cruelty to humans.

  2. Pulao says:

    The only time Kris killed a cockroach (he usually abstains from doing so not becuase of any ethics, but because he’s scared to death of them), he had to because our cat Hank is too shelthered to know what to do with one. Hank watched the cockroach for a bit, batted it around until it was injured, and eventually his natural instincts got overcome with his finely cultivated laziness. Kris had to put the poor roach out its misery.

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