By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Octopus Ethics
PETA is on a roll. People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, having taken credit for closing the Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus, now wants Detroit Red Wings fans to stop throwing dead octopi onto the hockey arena ice.
Ridiculous? Yes and yes: both the tradition of hurling the slimy things after the Wings win playoff games and PETA.
Who can forget when NBC nixed airing these Ethical People’s proposed veggie sex commercial on its Superbowl broadcast, always a standard for taste and subtlety. Or when Ben & Jerry scotched their request to use human breast milk instead of cow’s milk in their ice cream.
“Octopuses (grammar Nazis’ preferred plural, hence I use the bastard one) are intelligent, sensitive animals who feel pain,” said PETA president Ingrid Newkirk, “and it’s no more acceptable to kill one for such a disrespectful, frivolous, and stupid purpose than it is to throw dead bear cubs onto the ice during a Bruins game.”
“Thanks for the great idea, Ingrid!” I can hear Boston Bruins fans saying.
Her statement concerns me on several levels. First, dissing disrespect and stupidity brings to mind a twist on the Barbra Streisand song line, “People who need people …” People who hate people seems to be some PETA members’ mindset. When you call people “stupid” and harboring “disrespect,” you describe yourself.
Plus what’s wrong with “frivolous”? At the end of another grim day weighed by world woes, death and suffering, why not shed that hair shirt and fling an octopus?
Historic preservationists don’t take traditions lightly. During the 1952 playoffs, Detroit fish market owners Jerry and Pete Cuisimo tossed the first eight-armed mollusk to symbolize the eight wins the Red Wings needed to capture the Stanley Cup. Since then the practice has persisted. In one 1995 game, fans threw 36 octopi, including one weighing 38 pounds.
Inspiration spread. In the 2006 playoffs, Edmonton Oilers fans tossed Alberta beefsteaks onto their home ice. When they tried that at away games, they got arrested. Nashville Predators followers throw catfish. A San Jose Sharks fan flung a 3-foot leopard shark.
Even good things can get out of hand — in this case, literally. Al Sobotka, the Zamboni driver who scoops up the Red Wings’ octopi, was ordered by the National Hockey League in 2008 not to twirl them over his head while hauling them off. Throwing alive and dead creatures, players fighting, whacking each other with sticks and so on? Fine. People choose to do these things and some are paid for it. But Al twirling the octopus went too far.
Having four cats, three birds, two dogs, two bunnies and a fish, I don’t mind animals. Or eating them — not my pets, but at least parts of chickens, fish, cows, etc. Life feeds on life. Some of these critters would do the same to me if they could. Good luck, PETA, telling carnivores not to eat meat. I’ve worn leather, eaten cheese, drinken milk and even worse things.
Guilt-ridden when I was young, I went vegetarian. Then I thought, “Dead animals don’t feel anything. What about plants? Do we know they don’t suffer when we kill and eat them?”
I read about yogis who subsisted on only air, but who knows what trauma this causes nitrogen and oxygen molecules, not to mention stray elements such as methane from PETA flatulence.
Newkirk’s will, published on the group’s website, claims she wants to donate her body to “alleviate animal suffering and “draw attention to needless animal exploitation.” Towards that end, she wants the “meat” of her body barbecued, her skin taken off and made into leather for shoes and purses, her legs cut off and used as umbrella stands, etc. Would that we all be so ethical.
“We strongly urge you,” she wrote Red Wings president and Little Caesars Pizza heir Christopher Ilitch, “to prohibit (fans) from flinging these intelligent animals — dead or alive — onto the ice and to check attendees for concealed octopuses as the door.”
Just what I need: getting frisked for octopi, fined $5,000, bounced from the building and banned from all future Wings games — not that I’ve been to one anyway — as she calls for.
Outlaw octopi, only outlaws will have octopi. We need permits — which means, bring on lawyers! That should take care of that.
