Friday, September 19, 2008

Fundo Fascists Love Nature Too

I love how the Fundo fuckface crowd call themselves "sportsman". I had an old high school classmate recount to me, the adventure of a canned, "wildboar" hunt. After a walk through the woods, with plenty of camaraderie and anticipation, they reached a clearing, cunningly fenced behind the camouflage of natural vegetation. At one end, gamekeepers released caged boars, at the other, the sportsmen began blasting away. I heard recently that this guy had bypass surgery. I hope it hurt.

The ocean off of SoCal used to be one of the wonders of the World. Huge shoals of sardines, that stretched as far as the eye could see. Blue fin tuna, that were a thousand pounds and more. Groupers almost as big. Huge migrations of cetaceans came through and lingered long for the rich feeding. Dense Kelp forests that were the basis of whole ecosystems. It's all gone now. The entire channel is more or less a huge dump for sewage, urban run off and industrial waste. No kelp. Little diversity of life. What fish you catch, often have congenital defects. Fuckin' lovely.

It's not enough for the manly sportsman, though. When their hooks get snagged or the line tangles, they just cut it loose. It's not unusual to see a sea lion or sea gull dead from horrible maiming injuries due to hooks and line.

The behavior that really shows sportsman for what they are, is their treatment of animals at the top of various food chains. They see these animals as competition for the prey animals that they themselves seek and show them no mercy. They shoot dolphins, seals and sharks, whenever they can and just leave them to die.

When I was a boy, there were no pelicans in So Cal. All the DDT in the channel made their eggshells thin and unhatchable. They banned DDT and the pelicans made a slow recovery. They are amazing birds, awkward on land, adroit in the water and gracefully aerobatic. They are often friendly and shameless beggars. Fisherman hate them because they scoop up small fish out of the surf zone. They will shoot them, stab them, whatever they can. This week, some fisherman has been luring pelicans up to his boat close ashore, probably with small fish. He has been snapping their wings backward. They drag themselves up on the beach, to die.

What a bunch of manly sportsmen.

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