Honestly now, How many "frog killers" do we have in our midst?

[patrice]

Although I personally find this piece of possible * bio deeply horrifying, I've been asking myself how common it is, not that that makes it okay or anything, just to the American people, an ordinary character trait.

What do you think?

[mr_hat]

1. I mow itty bitty hoppers on occasion, but not intentionally.

[Caution]

2. not I

I have never intentionally killed anything other than bugs and spiders. Can't imagine why anyone would want to.

[buycitgo]

3. I never kill spiders

just swallow em live

[demnan]

4. I never killed one

disecting one in high school was enough to make me want to throw up. I try not to kill anything I don't eat or unless it tries to eat me (mosquitos) with the exception of cockroaches, because they're so damned ugly. But I wouldn't torture one, I try to kill them quick.

[EstimatedProphet]

5. When I was 7 or 8

I had a BB gun. I used to love shooting it at random into the trees, and listening to the birds rustle.
Then one day, a bird fell out of the tree. I was heartbroken. I never did it again.

[patrice]

8. My first husband had a story like that about a rabbit.

He shot it on purpose, and it died. Changed him forever.

I wonder why blowing up frogs doesn't change a person.

[progressivebydesign]

11. Are you Opie Taylor?

An old episode of the Andy Griffith Show.. goes exactly like that!

[EstimatedProphet]

23. Does it? Weird!

No, this is the truth. I did do just that.
Now, let me add that I also hunt (or used to, I'm not hot on the idea of sitting in the woods freezing at 2:30 in the morning anymore), but that is for an entirely different purpose. Hunting is to get something useful, typically food. What I did as a child was simply animal harassment, and it serves no purpose other than to puff up the ego of the harrasser.
So, why indeed would someone old enough to know better blow up frogs?

[rkc3]

6. My friends and I used to shoot frogs with a bow and arrow as kids.

I still don't think there was anything wrong with it. They happened to be small targets and required speed and accuracy to hit them.

Another difference between our frog-killing and *'s is that we didn't get high and masturbate after killing them.

[in_cog_ni_to]

7. What's the bio story on the frogs, please? n/t

[rkc3]

10. Yes, some add'l info would be nice.

[patrice]

15. Give me a minute, I'll go find it.

I can't remember whether it was an Air America excerpt from a book or Capitol Hill Blue.

Back in a bit.

[Minstrel Boy]

17. "We were terrible to animals" recalls Bush pal in NY Times

"We were terrible to animals," recalled Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out. "Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them," Throckmorton said. "Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up."
http://losangeles.craigslist.org/pol/37426753.html

[patrice]

20. That's a little firmer than what I found

http://www.alternet.org/election04/19425/

[in_cog_ni_to]

24. OMG! That is SICK! Jeffrey Dahmer Syndrome.

Dahmer use to kill cats just for the fun of it. Blowing up frogs with firecrackers is demented! Sick, just sick.

When my dad use to go fishing, he would catch frogs so he could eat some frog legs :puke:, but that is different than blowing them up to satisfy some sick demented need. Damn.

I am anti-kill ANY animal. Unless that animal has a gun pointed at me or my family...it lives. I don't have a problem with people who hunt for food...as long as they eat what they kill.

[progressivebydesign]

9. Not me.. in fact..

I have been known to initiate the "spider relocation program" in my house, much to the chagrin of the other family members. I cannot bear to kill anything.. I actually APOLOGIZE if step on something.

The other day, a car that was two cars ahead of me hit a raccoon. He took off... the racoon struggled in the busy street to walk.. and ended up scooting, falling, limping, off into the brush. The people ahead of me jumped out of their car with thick blankets to try and get the animal off the road before someone finished it off... but he made it safely to the other side. I was actually crying, watching this little animal trying desperately to get to safety.

Never.. I would never harm another living thing. I don't eat red meat, and many times I have to force myself to eat poultry.. because I'm not conciencious enough to keep from starving to death if I eat no meat at all.

Blowing up animals, well that just takes a special type of person. /sarcasm off.

[buycitgo]

14. same here

I couldn't even finish the raccoon story

turn off the animal shows when a predator is about to pounce, or they start talking about how their habitat is shrinking so fast that they'll be gone before breakfast

that said have you seen the animal playlist on this site, which starts off with the bush nosepick, set to James Brown

there's a clip of cats in there that had me CRYING for laughter

http://www.ifilm.com/viralvideo?ifilmid=960813

[patrice]

25. Glad to know I'm not the only one who catches

spiders and wasps and such in a jar and puts them outside.

[eleny]

26. I relocate spiders, too!

A juice glass and a postcard usually corrals them. Then, they get tossed outside onto the grass with a "Welcome to the great outdoors!" It breaks my heart when I see them try to run back in. Some spideys must be more indoorsy than others.

Btw, you're a real goner when you let one stay in the house and name him "Webster"!

[davekriss]

12. Never Happened Here

Me <--- never a frog killer!

Although I had a friend that used to catch gar fish by hand, insert a firecracker in their long mouths, and send them on their way -- only to explode a few seconds later. Good ol' Pete ended up in military school after driving his father's expensive Caddilac into a canal. A few years later he returned to regular school and tried to extort lunch money from me (military school obviously helped!). Needless to say, we parted ways. (Wonder if he's on *'s staff? He'd fit in!)

[sangh0]

13. I did that one summer

In addition to blowing them up with firecrackers, I used to "hunt" all sorts of things with bb guns and pellet guns.

[parasim]

16. My next-door neighbor used to do that

When I was a kid growing up, my next-door neighbor used to do the thing with frogs and firecrackers. I was appalled by the action and told him so, but he was a lot bigger than me and a bit older.

It actually prompted me to form a little club called the C.R.A.B. Club, which stood for "Care of Reptiles, Animals and Birds". Hey, I was like 10 or 12 at the time!

It was pretty silly and there were three of us in the club. Basically what we did was go around town picking up dead birds, chipmunks, etc and giving them proper burials in the garden in my backyard. We also rescued a couple of goldfinches that my neighbor knocked out of their nest and nursed them back to health.

Gee... I wonder why my dad never wanted me to go hunting with him. :shrug:

I was going to become a veterinarian, taking after two of my uncles, but ended up becoming a designer instead.

[Mr. McD]

18. Did a lot of frog gigging as a teen

Ate a lot of frog legs back then.

[Syncronaut Seven]

22. Killing for food

is the natural order. Killing for pleasure is sick, and a pretty good pre-indicator of spousal/child beating tendencies.

[Minstrel Boy]

19. "we have much to be concerned about"

Myriam Miedzian in "Growing Up Is Hard To Do" (The Baltimore Sun, 12 September 2000):

So when he was a kid, George W. enjoyed putting firecrackers into frogs, throwing them in the air, and then watching them blow up. Should this be cause for alarm? How relevant is a man's childhood behavior to what he is like as an adult? And in this case, to what he would be like as president of the United States?

Cruelty to animals is a common precursor to later criminal violence. But in rural West Texas, where George W. grew up, it was not uncommon for some boys to indulge in such cruelty.

His blowing up frogs or shooting them with BB guns with friends does not have the same significance it would have if, for example, a city boy blew up the family cat. In fact, George's childhood friend, Terry Throckmorton, openly and laughingly admits, "We were terrible to animals."

...

Is boy George's lack of empathy and cruelty not just childhood insensitivity, but rather a personality trait still present in the man? If so, we have much to be concerned about.
http://www.blackcommentator.com/28/28_guest_commentary_1.html

[SemiCharmedQuark]

21. Nope

I wonder if it's a "guy" thing. I'm an ovilactarian anyway. I can't stand to think about an animal dying to feed me. If I were a stronger person, I'd go vegan.

[Demonaut]

27. I shot a bunch with a BB gun as a kid, thought it no different than

catching fish on a hook, but I've never killed a bird or or a mammal for sport or pleasure in fact I've raised a squirrel that fell from is nest and have regularly taken injured wildlife and lost pets to animal rescues.

[A_Possum]

28. Another Midland story

I worked a couple of years in Midland as a geologist. Keep in mind, I'm from a family that's ranched in Midland and run cattle in another place in Texas for generations, and I never heard of anything deliberately cruel done to animals, though traditional ranching itself has some very harsh moments--but so does natural life in general. However, those moments are not made deliberately worse by normal working ranchhands or owners. Predator control can be very cruel, but even that was handled in a matter-of-fact way, not as something "fun."

There was another guy in the office who had been raised in west Texas, I forget where. Very good-looking guy. Being a female, I was inclined to be charmed by him. Now and then he'd stop by my office and chat, and one day we were talking about growing up. In a perfectly normal tone, he told me about how he and his buddy used to chase jackrabbits into a wire fence, grab them by the ears, and throw them under the back wheels of their pickup, while revving the wheels to spin them in the deep sand and tear the rabbits apart. Then he started laughing.

I still remember that moment, tho it must have been 20 years ago now. A chill still runs down my spine. It was as if I looked past his face and suddenly saw something that was inhuman. Not inhumane, but inhuman. He honestly thought it was funny.

I didn't say anything. I don't remember what I did. I don't think I ever even said hello to him again. It made me feel sick to even look at him after that.

That's how I see Bush. (Not that I think he's good-looking, but as a person with a surface that hides another reality underneath.)

[pocket]

29. I shot a bird once with a bb gun

but felt bad afterwards and never did it again.