A crack in the shell

I often think myself inured to the bad things that people can do to one another. I'm beyond the place where I can become emotionally outraged by something as simple as the fact that someone is breaking into and stealing from cars just north of Topeka. I have a difficult time working myself up to caring about the fact that a dead body was found in a creek in a popular public park in town. I'm even having a hard time mustering up enthusiasm to decry Ann Coulter's recent scandalous behaviour - when she told the Conservative Political Action Coalition that John Edwards was "a faggot." I should be outraged about these things, but I suppose that I've become accustomed to the idea that other people in this world exist who can, with no overriding feeling of guilt or shame, do awful things to other people.

Nonetheless, two recent news stories wormed their way through my outer apathy and relit the flame of my outrage. The first concerns a New York City mugging. What could possibly be unusual about a mugging in New York City? Well, ordinarily, I might picture a man with a gun taking another fellow's wallet after shoving him into a dark alley between buildings. I don't normally picture a mugging the way that this one went down - and neither do most New Yorkers.

The mugger in this case didn't take a wallet off of a guy in an alley. Rather, he took a purse off of a woman. Not a whole lot of difference there, I suppose, until you learn that the woman was 101 years old. She emerged from her apartment (with her walker and on her way to church, no less) and the guy 'helped' her to cross the foyer of her building. Then he smashed her in the face with his fist several times and grabbed her purse. When the old lady reached out for her purse, he punched her again in the face and kicked her walker away.

Even New York, which seems to have developed a sort of tolerance for petty street crime, is taking this particular assault seriously. Some of the comments I read concerning this crime indicate that the fellow who committed the crime, and whose face appears on a security camera as he committed the assault, won't make it into a courtroom to face his justice. He'll find it on the streets.

The second story is arguably much worse from my point of view. I couldn't believe that I'd read the story correctly, so I had to read it again. I'm still somewhat in shock over the story, and so I'm going to have a hard time reining in my normally editorial style.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, a 17-year old girl named Crystal Brown had a therapy companion dog named Chevy. Around Valentine's Day, Chevy went missing, and the girl and her family printed up 'missing' posters and went door-to-door asking if anyone had seen Chevy. Nobody had.

Not soon after, Crystal Brown found a gift-wrapped box on her front steps with a note that said "Congratulations Crystal. This side up, batteries included." After tearing off the gift wrapping, she looked into a box containing some Valentine's Candy, some batteries, and Chevy's severed head.

That's right. Some sick bastard cut off a 4-year old dog's head, put it in a box, gift-wrapped it, and sent it back to the young girl from whom the dog had been taken. The Humane Society of the United States is offering a reward to anyone having information leading to an Animal Cruelty conviction. You can donate to that reward at the hsus.org website, and I urge you to do so. Non-human animals face discrimination, torture, and imprisonment every day without redress for their valid grievance against their tormentors. Help put at least one of the scum-sucking bastards behind bars.