Ingrid Newkirk, head of PETA, continues to amaze with her twisted sense of priorities. When some terrorists loaded a donkey with explosives in the Mideast and blew it up a few years ago in an attempt to murder scores of people, Newkirk sent a letter of protest to Yassar Arafat—about the death of the donkey. And now, with all of the human devastation and death from Katrina, she writes in her blog about the horror of the deaths of animals.
“Millions: that is a reasonable estimate of the number of animals who have perished in this hurricane and its aftermath. Consider the feral cat colonies, the terrestrial and arboreal and slow-moving wildlife like squirrels and opossums. People in boats report seeing the bodies of raccoons, pigs, chickens and foxes in the water. And then there are the animals who, by the thousands, were deliberately or simply unthinkingly abandoned.”
Not one word of sorrow for the thousands of people who were floating in the water. No empathy expressed for those who lost family members and homes.
It is wonderful that some cats and dogs were saved, as she writes about. And it is horrible to know a beloved pet died in the flood. And yes, planning ahead to evacuate is a good idea, including taking pets when doing so does not risk human lives. But the first priority in these situations must always be people.
I don’t believe that Newkirk understands this at all. To her a rat is a dog is a boy. Heck, she is still defending PETA’s equating of the lynching of blacks with the killing of cattle for food.
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