Dog Fights

The News is overwhelmed today with Michael Vick, the Atlanta Falcons QB, and dog fighting. I've never been to a dog fight and wouldn't go if I had the opportunity. I've loved too many dogs in my lifetime. There is the exciting memories of elementary schoolyard dog fights and even the human skirmishes. Combat is always fun to watch. However, killing is not, except for fighting chickens.

I fooled around with fighting chickens when I was a kid, mostly banty roosters, and knew some chicken fighters. I went to a few chicken fights after I was grown but two of them were raided by law enforcement officers and a third was raided by God when a tornado broke it up. I hate to see New Mexico and Louisiana outlaw the sport, even if I don't plan on going to another one, legal or illegal.

Human nature is loaded with impulses and activities that need to be controlled. Animal rights activists, however, turned me off when I saw them protesting the harmful use of rattlesnakes. We don't need rattlesnakes. They should be extinct.

I hate to walk past a house with pit bulls growling and barking by a flimsy fence. I used to carry a stick when I went to the liquor store a block away from my house in Ft. Worth. Recent stories about dog attacks on people are very disturbing. People do funny things. I used to know a woman that carried her African lioness around with her in the car.

What concerns me most, since a free society is a dangerous society, is our incredible ability to control just about everything in the modern world. Busting up institutions is the way to set up new societies. I'm just not sure we need a new society.