I feed any creature I come across, except people, as those of you who read this blog know. Tonight I was feeding the birds. I get many, many pigeons, and a lot of what I call rooks, but which people around here call grackles, and some sparrows, and a new kind that I haven't seen before; perhaps sojourners from colder climes. I will have to try to look them up and see if I can find out what they are.
Anyway, a young man I know, but don't much like, was observing this and said, "People call pigeons flying rats for a reason." I told him that since I didn't see anything wrong with rats I didn't think that was derogatory and that he shouldn't repeat what stupid people lacking in compassion and spirituality said.
Of course, he trotted out the old, "rats carry diseases" statement as if it were original or meaningful and I pointed out to him that people carry and transmit more diseases than rats do, and have some rather unattractive behaviors, like waging war and genocide and child abuse and murder, etc. etc. not to mention polluting and destroying, that I am unaware of rats committing; therefore I would vote for the rat and the pigeon as more valuable and less destructive than humans.
So many selfish and unenlightened and unintelligent people are so smug in their accidental and erroneous superiority in being born human and never bother to question the validity of their assumptions that I despair of the human race, most of whom have never had an original thought in their lives. If they did no damage to things more valuable than themselves I would not be bothered by them. Unfortunately they do continuous and massive damage and they keep reproducing and perpetuating the error of their existence.
You know, on the crime shows on TV that document searches for serial killers they frequently make the point that although the reason a particular one has for the crimes may be obscure and even incomprehensible to the rest of us there is a reason and a pattern to be discerned. (I think the reason serial killers kill is simple. They like to.) But assuming there is some motivating factor, then if I ever become a serial killer ridding the world of these kinds of people would be my motivating factor.
So when this person said that to me I looked at him and I thought, "I'm making a list."
