By Christopher Zoukis
Few things in this world anger me more than grown men who attack or torture small animals and think it’s acceptable. Sadly, I’m often reminded of how much I hate this occurrence due to the apparently large population of animal abusers who reside at FCI Petersburg, the medium security prison in Petersburg, Virginia where I am incarcerated. Tonight was no exception.
This evening I spent a good two hours playing Ultimate Frisbee on the recreation yard. At 8 pm, when we finished playing for the night, I was on my way to the gate and had to pass the basketball courts. I witnessed a grown man, who had just finished playing basketball with his friends, throwing rocks at the sleeping pigeons up in the rafters of the overhanging roof. Yes, you heard that right, a grown man, with his friends cheering him on, attacking small animals with rocks. I was furious.
I was so angry I walked right out onto the basketball court and confronted the man. Obviously not a very good idea, but I couldn’t allow such reprehensible behavior to continue and I didn’t see any of my friends present to back me up. So, I, the one white guy confronted a group of perhaps eight basketball players. All of them looked at me as if I was the crazy one since I thought torturing small animals was outside of the range of acceptable conduct. Perhaps they thought me as crazy for confronting them alone. Words were spoken and we went our separate ways, but when I left my blood was boiling.