At the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe recently, we saw a rescued bald eagle. We saw bunnies and turkeys in cages. We missed the rodeo and the pig races.
Know what we didn’t see? There wasn’t an animal-rights demonstrator in sight – not that there should have been.
I was kind of wondering where they were, what with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ stance that creatures other than ourselves shouldn’t be used for entertainment.
No fishing either, not even catch-and-release. “Fish have feelings, too,” PETA says on its www.goveg.com Web site.
I’m thinking about PETA, the Animal Liberation Front and like-minded folks today because this week we’ll be hearing from them.
Maybe they weren’t at the fair because they were too busy reading “Steps to Take When the Circus Comes to Town” on another PETA site, www.circuses.com.
The circus comes to Everett this week. At 11 a.m. Wednesday, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum &Bailey circus will walk some of its animals – elephants, horses and zebras – from Everett Station to the Everett Events Center on Hewitt Avenue.
During the run of the circus Thursday through Sunday, animals will be kept in the space normally used for the ice rink.
“We’re aware that PETA is interested in picketing, and we’re prepared for that kind of activity,” city of Everett spokeswoman Kate Reardon said.
Lynnwood’s Progressive Animal Welfare Society plans to hand out coloring books featuring a lecturing clown, written by a former PETA employee.
Before you go throwing paint at my fur coat (oops, I have no fur coat), understand that I’m in the middle of the road where animal rights are concerned.
There are laws, including the federal Animal Welfare Act, and Washington’s Pasado law, which makes any intentional act of animal cruelty a Class C felony. I say enforce them.
A Ringling Bros. lion died in August on a train crossing the Mojave Desert. I say the circus and law enforcement officials there ought to investigate that.
I’m an owner of two pampered pets, plus a fish in a bowl. I spent three years in Pendleton, Ore., a rodeo and hunting town. I eat meat and wear leather shoes.
And I’m offended by the extremism of some animal-rights activists. No fishing? Get out.
A touring PETA display called “Holocaust on Your Plate,” now on view in Canada, shows pictures of factory farms and slaughterhouses side by side with photos of the Nazi death camps.
Think about that. Eat a steak and you’re equated with the extermination of 6 million Jews?
Closer to home, don’t forget that last summer the Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the release of more than 10,000 minks from a Sultan farm. The freed minks were hit by cars and killed by dogs, and they killed farmers’ geese, chicken, ducks and exotic birds.
In 1998, when local news reports were leading with the killing of sea lions, I wrote a column about public reaction to crimes against animals.
Jim Townsend, Snohomish County’s chief criminal deputy prosecutor at the time, told me then that a case of a woman accused of killing a kitten by putting it in a freezer “generated more phone calls and letters than any other recent case, including homicides involving babies.”
The death toll of American soldiers in Iraq has surpassed 1,000. Hundreds of children were killed or traumatized in the recent siege of a school in Russia. And what – what – will bring protesters to the streets of Everett this week?
Oh yes, the circus is coming to town.
PETA and others have every right to protest circus animal acts. But when their tactics include “Holocaust on Your Plate” or stunts like the mink release, they’re not the ones to be teaching kids or anybody else right from wrong.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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