I would like to apologize to ducks. (Also to critics of the mixed metaphor.)
There is a county park not far from us that features a really lovely 3.3 mile walking path encircling a lake. A couple of years ago the park became so overpopulated with ducks (there was plenty of food for them, everyone fed the ducks) that it got rather disgusting. There was duck poop all over the place. A soupcon of swan poop, too. Parents were afraid to bring their young children to play there. The health department agreed there was reason for concern. The park was no longer an idyllic place for a picnic and a ball game. At all.
So a plan was made to cull the duck population.
There was an uproar by those who felt the ducks had a right to live, and that killing them, however humanely, would be a terrible thing to do. Ducks' rights was evidently the issue.
There was much debate. There were angry protests. There were irate letters to the editor, there were pamphlets distributed at the poopy park.
The Department of Health's opinion that as things were, children shouldn't be playing on the grass or paths of the park in any area frequented by ducks (everyplace near the water and bathrooms and picnic tables and barbecue grills) carried the day, though, and the culling proceeded.
The local authorities decided that to be socially sensitive, they would make a nice gesture: they would have the ducks killed in a way that would permit them to be dressed and donated to the poor. (These were healthy ducks.)
So now the authorities were in big trouble because how dare they condescend to the poor? Why should the poor have to eat those ducks if ducks are so disgusting?
So that gesture was also an outrage. I can't explain it. It seemed to me people were just trying to do a thoughtful thing with the ducks, roast duck being considered something of a delicacy, instead of just wasting them. There were irate protests, though. There were letters to the editor, there were pamphlets. I'm absolutely sure there would have been irate protests against the county authorities if they had not made the suggestion about donating the ducks to the poor, but instead "wasted perfectly good food when there are families in need in this county."
There is no point to that duck story except that your defense of ducks (and you're right, even with all the poop, there was no smell) reminded me of it, and it's another example of the omnipresence of politically correct thinking. Sometimes the various correct factions stumble over each other in their avidity to condemn the incorrect. |
