What the …?
November 6th 2008 21:00
Photo by TheEntropist. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
As the saying goes, this could only happen in America. According to Dr. Michael W. Fox, author of Cat Body, Cat Mind, a Minnesota hunter filed a harassment suit against someone for spoiling his pleasure on a bear hunting trip. What had happened was the man shot and killed a black bear. At the same time, a renowned bear biologist and his graduate student came across the bear’s dead body. The student had been studying this particular bear for over a year and had grown to love the animal. Seeing it killed caused her to cry.
The hunter ridiculed her and in retaliation, the field biologist verbally abused him. The hunter decided to sue him.
When I first read about this court case, the only thing I could think of was what the…? (And you know what the missing word is.) How could someone be so stupid and petty? How else did the hunter expect the student and field biologist to behave? Okay, maybe the field biologist shouldn’t have verbally abused him but the biologist’s act was a knee-jerk reaction to the hunter’s callous treatment of the bear and the student.
Another question is would this case stand up in court? Unbelievably, when I did a Google on this, I found a web site listing hunter harassment laws in place in several U.S. states:
hunter harassment laws
Something doesn’t sound right here. It’s absurd that hunters are protected from harassment. What about the animals? Don’t they also have rights? Or does the fact they cannot speak for themselves means they have waived all their rights? I’d like to know what the RSPCA thinks about this.
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