The quality of mercy

A suspect has been detained in the case of the murder of Mama-san and six of her chicks, whose story was celebrated here before the crime took place.

I seriously considered the ultimate penalty against the offender, although I guess technically by the rules of evidence I would need further proof that it was this raccoon and not another one who did the crime.

At this point, I'm leaning towards telling it to "go (far away) and sin no more."

However, none of this would have happened if Arpad the Magnificent was still alive.

It's a sad fact that when the good guys go, the predators move in.

One more possum story for the road

El Cabrero has recently sworn to stop blogging about possums, at least until the Annual Thanksgiving Possum Recipe edition. In fact, one reader suggested I move on to another topic, such as racoons.

However, a friend just sent me another compelling possum story which I feel obligated to share here. I am nonetheless pleased to say that the story also contains a reference to a raccoon. I'm hoping this will keep everyone happy.

Here's the possum/raccoon story:

When in college I had close encounter of the opossum variety. I was living in a really rundown house in Austin Texas, where one of my housemates was always complaining that a possum was stealing her cat's food. One cold  - well, moderately cool (this is Austin we're talking about) - winter night I went to sleep in my loft only to be awoken by a thump and a furiously scratchy/scrambling sound. A possum had crawled under a rotted eave apparently seeking a warm place to nap, and had fallen through a weak place in the sheet-rock of my ceiling.

I turned on a light and put on my pants. Then with a bit of wary maneuvering I approached Pogo with an emptied trashcan.

"Hiss!" said the possum.

"Hey, give me a break," said I. "I've got classes in the morning."

After what seemed to me to be an entirely unreasonable amount of marsupial teeth-baring and threatening (which probably seemed completely justified to the other party) I managed to get my uninvited guest trapped and moved to a table in the living-room. The next morning we called animal control, but all had to leave (since we did actually have classes) before they came. We left the door open and a note on the overturned trashcan prominently sitting on our livingroom table.

I don 't know exactly what happened to the possum, but the catfood stopped disappearing.

That house was in the city, but it was still regularly visited by animals, many of the more-than-two-legged type. I remember once going outside to put compost on our compost pile, only to find myself in a stare-off with an entirely unrepentant raccoon, who was sitting on the pile with a cantaloup peel in it's very human looking paw.

I could have sworn I heard the bandit say "what? You threw it out."

There you have it.

SOME FACTS ABOUT THE SAFETY NET here.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

BAD SEED

In his book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, psychologist Philip Zimbardo comes up with a good working definition of evil:

Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others--or using one's authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf.

People have a strong tendency to believe that human actions are guided by why Zimbardo calls inner determinants (motivations). This can cause us to neglect the force of outer determinants. This leads in turn to a kind of moral dualism in which we see some people (like us) as inherently good and others as inherently evil.

Zimbardo suggests that

The idea that an unbridgeable chasm separates good people from bad people is a source of comfort for at least two reasons. First, it creates a binary logic, in which Evil is essentialized. Most of us perceive Evil as an entity, a quality that is inherent in some people and not in others. Bad seeds ultimately produce bad fruits as their destinies unfold. ...

There are problems with this simplistic view. The idea of a Good/Evil dichotomy

takes "good people" off the responsibility hook. They are freed from even considering their possible role in creating, sustaining, or conceding to the conditions that contribute to delinquency, crime, vandalism, teasing, bullying, rape, torture, terror and violence. "It's the way of the world, and there's not much that can be done to change it, certainly not by me."

He suggests instead that we should think of evil in incrementalist terms, i.e. as something we are all capable of, depending on the situation. This view is more conductive to helping people take steps to prevent its spread.

WILL THEY OR WON'T THEY? Here's another look at Iran, the Bush administration, Israel and likely scenarios.

ANIMALS AND RIGHTS. As mentioned last week, the Spanish parliament is considering granting some quasi-"human" rights to great apes.

IMPERMANENCE. The NY Times reports that Buddhism may be dying out in Japan. Too bad--the world could use more of it.

VERY CUTE RACCOON PICTURES here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED