As God is my witness...

I have met the enemy, and they are us.

dugitman: PETA once again choosing publicity battles that undermine any legitimate causes they may have.

/also, possums are nasty

Heh, like the HRC, NRA, or miraid of other beltway lobbies that only serve to siphon money from the people they claim to fight for.

At some point, these movements stopped being about lobbying and changing legislation, and making sure the revenue stream to the executives was priority #1.

So is it the transparent box, that's cruel or is it the unnatural lowering of the box?

Or did peta just not have anywhere to be that day?
Wonder why they never get invited anywhere...

If rednecks are doing something that something is probably something that shouldn't be done. Doesn't matter who is opposed or in favor of it.

And PETA wonders why nobody takes them seriously.

/oblig

It's better than Happy Valley's "Testicle Drop."

I disagree with the overall goal of PETA and a lot of what they do but it sounds pretty stressful for the animal and there's no reason you can't use something else or a stuffed possum. New Years is about farking, drinking and farking not the ball drop, anyway.

Dear PETA -
STFU, MYOB, DIAF or just get a life.

Peta does this every damn year. They keep doing it because the media refuses to ignore them.

Sounds like a hot time in a small town. Cross dressing AND a possum drop.

/Possums are nasty little creatures.

If PETA had been here while I was nursing a horse back to health after it contracted EPM (a parasitic disease, the parasite of which is only transmitted to equines via grass or hay contaminated with the feces or urine of an infected possum) they would raise the drop point to a couple hundred feet, have an obstacle course of spike-ridden branches on the way down and have it land in a pool filled with piranha. A pool shallow enough for the possum to think he could get out but deep enough for the piranha to do their thing - slowly and painfully for the possum. Not that I have anything against possum, mind you.

little bastid stealing the kittehs dinner

"The program for this year also includes a bull riding competition, a church choir and the traditional cross-dressing beauty competition"

/one of these things is not like the other ones...one of these things is not the same....

little bastid stealing the kittehs dinner

I have a silent-shooting .22 air rifle that solves my marsupial and rodent problem... kitties can wander to their delight.

/come at me peta

I've always been shocked at the number of non-rednecks who mistook possums for rats. Of course, I was also shocked, twice, that some non-rednecks had to be convinced that all ponies don't eventually grow into horses.

Le Geno Vert: I have a silent-shooting .22 air rifle that solves my marsupial and rodent problem

Been considering that. Th possum is scared of the kitty, tho.

Have gotten close enough to give him a grazing kick. Next time...he goes airborne.

I'd rather be in North Carolina where they drop an Opossum than in New York where they drop their balls.

Every time I read one of these dopey PETA stories, I shoot an animal. PETA is kinda adding and abetting this senseless slaughter.

Opossums are tough little bastards, I'll give them that. I've seen them with multiple .22 rounds in the head, still pissed and ready to shred some shins.

They are however, pests, and I wouldn't care if they were dropping them from an airplane to splat, any more than I would care about a mouse caught in a trap.

Tens of thousands of people starve to death daily, and PETA thinks it wise to spend millions on saving a handful of animals nobody gives a shiat about.

A sign of our times.

There are rednecks in PETA? "The Rednecks of PETA" sounds like a summarily rejected idea for a pinup calendar.

I said it yesterday, and I'll say it again today: Fully parallel structure is the cure for ambiguity.

YouPeopleAreCrazy: little bastid stealing the kittehs dinner
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If that's how you feed your cat, you probably won't have it for long.

Cat food outside is like a fast food burger joint for coyotes.

TyrantII: If that's how you feed your cat, you probably won't have it for long.

It's not actually *our* cat. A neighborhood stray that keeps coming around because we keep feeding it. Sleeps on the deck every night, but will not come inside.
One of these days, we're going to kidnap her to the vet to make sure she's been fixed/shots/fleas/etc.



Been coming around for most of a year.

YouPeopleAreCrazy: TyrantII: If that's how you feed your cat, you probably won't have it for long.

It's not actually *our* cat. A neighborhood stray that keeps coming around because we keep feeding it. Sleeps on the deck every night, but will not come inside.
One of these days, we're going to kidnap her to the vet to make sure she's been fixed/shots/fleas/etc.

[farm7.staticflickr.com image 640x480]

Been coming around for most of a year.

WOW - what a beautiful cat! I just "live" trapped one and got him fixed, de-wormed, everything. I love him to death and now he lives enclosed in my lanai & house. Litter trained without any effort.

/have 4 rescue cats
//no kids, so they are mine

gunslinger_RG: stereotypical whaaaaaaargarble

Um. I don't know where to begin. The town is tiny; that's about the only correct part of your post.

The town is mostly people in their 50s who work at the folk school, make dolls, run knitting circles, sing in church choir, and play music wherever there's a good, open spot to sit down. Sometimes they drink beer and wine and tell each other dirty jokes, which is just amazingly naughty fun at their age.

Maybe the young folks are serious rednecks, but I'll let you in on a secret: they'd rather get drunk and watch porn on satellite than bend over some random guy. Maybe less so if you were a raging asshole to one of their own, which I'm maybe betting you were, perhaps. Maybe.

MORE IMPORTANTLY:
hackhix: [i.imgur.com image 600x378]

Yeah, that's the box in question. And a possum. Looks like the sort of abject, unending torture that causes Possum Traumatic Stress Disorder, if the possum is a militant atheist or agnostic.

...... if the possum is a militant atheist or agnostic.

If the Opossum is from Asheville, thats possible. Have any PETA people offered to be dropped instead?

Watching self important hipsters school mountain folks on how to live is always quality entertainment.....from a distance.........

"Fret not, my brother! I shall rescue you from this evil ritual!"

Excuse me, but New Orleans has been dropping a baby from the top of Jax Brewery in the French Quarter for decades. Where is the public outcry for this barbaric act? Just like Americans to care more for a nasty, disease ridden, vicious rodent than for a human baby.

So, when did PETA replace the ASPCA as the arbiter of humane treatment of animals?

I agree with everything the ASPCA stands for - no-kill shelters, pet adoptions, spaying and neutering, etc. - but PETA has really gone off the deep end.

When I first read the headline I thought they were just dropping some poor opossum off a cliff or something, which I have a problem with. But it seems they're just lowering him gently to the ground in a plastic box.

So what? If they use the same opossum every year I would think he'd be used to all the excitement by now and I'm sure he's well cared for the other 364 days a year., like the groundhog in Punxatawny.
(Or maybe they eat the opossum every year on New Year's Day. That's okay with me too as long as they kill him humanely.)

...

Somehow I doubt that this is really that terribly stressful for the possum. If it were.. he'd be sprawled flat out and have made himself as terribly stinky as possible.

Now, to dispel some possum paranoia. They're not rodents. They are part of nature's clean-up crew and serve a very important function along with vultures.. etc. They may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but they're laid back, don't carry rabies or much of any easily transmittable diseases, easily tame up, and can make for nice, albeit short-lived, pets.
I've had a couple. Dumber than dirt, but incredibly happy to be alive.

As for the person going all Internet Tough Guy hyperbole about EPM and possums. EPM is caused by a protozoa that the majority of horses end up exposed to in one way or another (a barn cat can carry it too) and only a minute percentage end up with the disease. Possums have the misfortune of being a vector species.. they pick it up from eating roadkill (often infected cats) and because STUPID people leave tasty food laying around everywhere.. they're drawn in to places where they may end up urinating and defecating because some dumb fark decided to dump edible stuff out.

I have a house in Blairsville right by there. Never attended the opossum drop, nor ever thought that obscure little hick town to ever draw attention from a large organization.

/First Mario, now Brasstown? Really?
//PETA is really scraping the bottom of the barrel these days.

laulaja: I concur with Awesome Username that the Jellicle pictured who lets you feed her is beautiful. Hope you can make good on your promise/threat; good luck!

Getting her used to the cat carrier, so it won't be quite so weird when we do.

Yes, she is a nice looking cat.

Launch Code: Every time I read one of these dopey PETA stories, I shoot an animal. PETA is kinda adding and abetting this senseless slaughter.

Actually, PETA's the one that gets hold of every domestic animal they can for the explicit purpose of killing them. Their official position is that domestication is "exploitation" and that they're better off dead than someone's pet or on a ranch/henhouse/whatever.

So it looks like you're actually on their side, there.

//Sort of like if the abolitionist's solution to the slavery issue had been genocide, but whatever, apparently enough people agree with them that they're better funded than orgs that actually care about animal welfare like the ASPCA and so on.

We have our own possum drop problems here. Our new house (well, it's new to us) backs on a large derelict 1/2 block long concrete block with wood and sheet metal roof. It's a horrible structure, and inhabited by a lot of random wildlife, like the raccoons, feral kitties and possums.

We see possums every once in a while, and we are quite aware they live in there.

One night about a month ago, we got home late from a nice night out, and sent the dogs out to the yard for their evening constitutional, and immediately our shepherd cross charged over the the fence and came back shaking the crap (and I mean the CRAP was flying) out of this poor old possum. We had the darnedest time trying to get him to actually DROP it. Finally he dropped the possum which was lying dead on the back walk. My wife got the shovel and I got the plastic bag and we put him in the trash bin on the front porch (what else do you do with a dead possum at 2 am?)

So, we get up the next morning, I am taking this bag of garbage out, open the trash can, and the possum is lying there BREATHING. Holy cow, these things must be indestructible!!! My neighbours came over to take a look at that, and one of them took the bin and slid him out in the park across the street, where he woke up and walked away, a bit annoyed to be awake.

That was the day I finally understood "playing possum".

Jim_Callahan: Launch Code: Every time I read one of these dopey PETA stories, I shoot an animal. PETA is kinda adding and abetting this senseless slaughter.

Actually, PETA's the one that gets hold of every domestic animal they can for the explicit purpose of killing them. Their official position is that domestication is "exploitation" and that they're better off dead than someone's pet or on a ranch/henhouse/whatever.

So it looks like you're actually on their side, there.

//Sort of like if the abolitionist's solution to the slavery issue had been genocide, but whatever, apparently enough people agree with them that they're better funded than orgs that actually care about animal welfare like the ASPCA and so on.

PETA does all sorts of shiat that the ASPCA would never demean themselves to do, so they get far more attention.

TyrantII: YouPeopleAreCrazy: little bastid stealing the kittehs dinner
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If that's how you feed your cat, you probably won't have it for long.

Cat food outside is like a fast food burger joint for coyotes.

When I lived in the country I would always get a laugh when people moved "out to the country" and let their house cats run loose. Now you see'em now you don't.