Unintentional Cruelty

[Harrumph]

Oh, the horror!
I have had a leak in my water pipe right outside my bedroom window for the past two weeks and it leaves a small pool of water. I've asked the landlord several times to fix this leak and he hasn't done anything. All night long every dog in the neighborhood drinks from this pool and keeps my awake every night. The constant lapping and growling drives me nuts. So, last night I thought of an idea. I poured about a cup of a industrial strength cleaner, degreaser into the water, figuring the smell would keep the dogs from drinking the water. It worked! I slept so good last night. I woke up this morning, went to the kitchen to start the coffee and heard voices outside the house. I went to the front door and looked out and the whole front yard was covered with dead sparrows! There had to be over a hundred dead birds. My landlord and neighbors were all standing around scratching there heads unable to figure out what could have happened to the birds. I had to own up and tell them what I had done.
Today the landlord dug up the pipe and repaired the crack. Gawd, I feel awful. We raked up all the little corpses and dug a hole in the empty lot on the corner to bury them.
Has anything like this happened to other DUers...unintentional cruelty?

:cry:

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Wow! Very sad.

I can't imagine how I'd feel after that.

Condolences and sympathies to you.

Thankfully, nothing like that has happened to me.

[FleshCartoon]

2. I can't believe you did that!

If you did, are you quite certain you didn't intend to poison the dogs as well?

I don't mean to be so harsh, but I simply can't believe anyone would think to pour what is in effect, poison, out and not consider that it might do damage.

Maybe you were just sleep deprived?

[Harrumph]

4. Not only sleep deprived ....

but I'd been extremely depressed from lack of sleep. I knew the dogs wouldn't drink the water but I didn't even think about the birds. Also, I had put a large pan of water on the front porch to try to keep the dogs from drinking from the pipe. That didn't help, either.

[FleshCartoon]

12. Sorry if I sounded so harsh, but...

...I didn't know that dogs wouldn't drink from water that had chemicals in it. I think I've heard of people purposely poisoning dogs with things like freon (sp?) added to water puddles intentionally.

Geez. 100 dead birds. Hitchcock should be alive to make the sequel to Bird based on this.

[Harrumph]

13. I'm going to have nightmares....

'Night of the Living Dead Sparrows'. Sounds like something for George Romero. Maybe I should've put your rubber ducky in the water to scare the dogs away.

:smoke:

[FleshCartoon]

14. Rubber ducky, you're the one.

Well, then you probably wouldn't have had that pesky dead bird problem.

;)

[Harrumph]

15. So are you a Rick Dees fan....

or do you just like rubber duckies?
:smoke:

[FleshCartoon]

16. I don't know who Rick Dees is.

I was referring to the Sesame Street song sung by Ernie the muppet.

B-)

[Harrumph]

17. Well, Rick Dees was a LA dee jay....

and had one hit record....'Rubber Ducky'. Should have been called 'Rubber Sucky'.

:smoke:

[fudge stripe cookays]

18. Nope...it was "Disco Duck."

Rubber Ducky was Ernie from Sesame Street.

[Harrumph]

19. Yes, Disco Duck....

I'm having a mentalpause day.

I knew something was wrong but couldn't put my finger on it. The song sucked as bad as disco.
:smoke:

[BlueJazz]

3. I once sat on my new pet white rat and killed it...

...Geez...I still feel guilty as hell about that...
Don't blame yourself (ha! easy for me to say) you certainly did'nt
harm the birds on purpose. (Murderer!).. LOL!. :)

[Harrumph]

5. I know...

I feel really guilty and even more depressed than before. I wonder if they are hiring prison guards at Abu Ghraib....

:smoke:

[toddzilla]

6. we all do stupid things..

don't beat yourself up for it too bad.

[indigobusiness]

7. Cruelty is defined by intent.

Dumb? yes...Cruel? no.

[Harrumph]

9. So, I should change the topic to....

unintentional dumbness. Works for me!

:smoke:

[indigobusiness]

10. Nodody is intentionally stupid.

You felt bad, that says something. Try to learn from it, and move on.

[petronius]

8. Bummer...

Don't beat yourself up too badly - obviously it was an accident. I would say that the moral of the story is to never make assumptions about what animals will or will not eat or drink. You got it right about the dogs/cleanser, but I would bet there are a lot of things (like antifreeze?) that the dogs would have liked, and a lot of things that are harmful to animals that we wouldn't suspect...

At least you had the spine to own up and deal with the corpses yourself - a lot of people would have kept their mouths shut.

On second thought, where do you live? Birds die from other causes, like West Nile, it might have been a good idea to have one of the corpses checked out by animal control - maybe you didn't kill them...

[Harrumph]

11. No, I killed them...

I live in a small town in Mexico and quite frankly if I had killed a couple of dogs the neighbors would have been happy. These dogs run in packs, can be vicious and have killed several cats and small dogs in area. One night when a dog was in heat there were about 12 big dogs circling the bitch on my porch. I was really afraid to go outside to chase them away. They are very nasty!