Members of the Moral Community

From the Associated Press:

CANBERRA, Australia — When a dark intruder smashed through his bedroom window and repeatedly bounced on his bed, Beat Ettlin was initially relieved to discover it was a kangaroo.

"My initial thought when I was half awake was: it's a lunatic ninja coming through the window," the 42-year-old told The Associated Press on Monday. "It seems about as likely as a kangaroo breaking in."

But his relief was short-lived. Moments later, he heard his 10-year-old son Leighton Beman scream from bed: "There's a 'roo in my room!"

"I thought: This can be really dangerous for the whole family now," Ettlin said.

The extraordinary ordeal for the family of four began at 2 a.m. Sunday in their house in the upmarket Canberra suburb of Garran.

Ettlin, a chef originally from the Swiss city of Stans, wrestled the thrashing and bleeding 90 pound marsupial out the front door.

The kangaroo vanished into a nearby forest from where it likely came. The family reported the intrusion to police and to wildlife authorities.

And the story continues (as written by me):

Police set up a perimeter around the forest and shouted for Mr. Kangaroo to come out with his hands up. It is likely that the animal misunderstood (due to dialect differences), because police had to wrestle him to the ground. All of the officers involved have been placed on administrative leave while the excessive use of force is investigated. The Canberra Police chief defended their actions explaining, “This is a very dangerous kangaroo who willfully attacked a family in their home. My men didn’t know the motivation behind the attack, but they had every reason to believe that Mr. Kangaroo was armed, unstable and very dangerous.”

Mr. Kangaroo’s public defender is skeptical of the police motivation. He said, “Mr. Kangaroo is a victim of circumstance. We have reason to believe that he was slipped a bad fungi while grazing at a popular meadow. He clearly thought the victim’s house was his own. Furthermore, it’s simply ridiculous for the police to argue there was any aggression in Mr. Kangaroo smashing through a bedroom window. In his culture, that’s a perfectly acceptable form of entry. None of this would have happened had we not stolen this land from the kangaroos in the first place. I am suggesting that my client countersue in a court officiated by kangaroos. These people had no right to build a house on land that belonged to another species.”

Experts are watching this case closely because it resembles the now infamous case of the man who defamed the culture of apes by insensitively claiming that, “Congress is nothing but a group of apes grunting at each other.” He was, of course, turned over to the apes by our legislature and brought up on charges in an ape court. That case has been going on for 23 years now, owing to the difficulty of determining whether the judge is the one reporters have titled "the scratcher" or the one reporters have dubbed "the screamer." Although the tide of that argument is turning, (One prominent reporter recently said, "There are good indications its the screamer. I mean, he beats his chest a lot, so we wonder if that's not a way of passing sentence) experts are not optimistic that there will be much of a precedent set.

Animal rights activists hope that the show of fairness by the government will result in a more tolerant society where breaking through people’s windows is understood to be the olive branch that it clearly is.

WHY I AM WRITING THIS:

1) Because I think I’m funny.

2) Yesterday I was idly flipping through Costco’s magazine, “The Costco Connection,” when I came upon this headline, “Should animals have the same rights as people?” It included this, very interesting line, “Animal rights advocates say that…animals should no longer be regarded as property, or used as food, clothing, research subjects, or entertainment, but should instead be viewed as legal persons and members of the moral community.” (emphasis added)

Seriously? I could not believe that this was an honest to goodness argument among intelligent people! Look, either we’re animals or we’re people. If we’re animals then everything we do is based on instinct and the law of the jungle. If we’re people then we’re capable of rational thought and planning. But, who knows? After all, we could generate all kinds of new jobs by giving kangaroos lawyers, social workers, and senators. It could just be a creative new way of gerrymandering. ("I'm sorry the census is taking a lot longer this year, Mr President. There is some evidence that the Republicans have padded the data on the number of mosquitoes living in certain red states.") Wait a minute…I may have just uncovered an evil plot! This blog might be on hiatus for a bit while I flee the country.