Dear PETA

Seriously? You’re pissed about a single, solitary, squashed fly?

Seriously? Seriously?

You used to be about pursuing the ethical treatment of animals… you know, like preventing medical companies from doing really abhorrent things to lab animals. You even got on the bandwagon for preventing things like dog fights, cock fights, and trying to educate jackass, bully teenagers who think it’s fun to blow up/burn/torture housepets. The outreach there was magnificent! It was worthy, and righteous and it filled a deep and terrifying void that was crippling the strides of humanity toward a noble and enlightened future.

Really. You were really good at that.

But a fly?

Look. The president even first TOLD the fly to leave – the fly didn’t, and it got smashed as a result. Maybe the fly was suicidal? Manically depressed? Maybe the fly had done some kind of really amazing spy trick for our country and in doing so also ended up with some unthinkable collateral damage that it just couldn’t live with and then set up the perfect plan to get itself extinguished by the highest hand in the land?

No? It’s just a fly you say? Not even a cursed fly? Just a little house fly that deserves a full and fulfilling lifespan free of oppressively pre-emptive smashing?

Because it’s alive, you say. I see. That word does confuse you, doesn’t it? “alive”.

Well, my dears, tomatoes are alive as well… and as much as I loathe “slippery slope” arguments I’m going to have to accuse you of wildly un-informed Jainism OR ignorantly over funded banner-waving. You pick.

Because you see… a smashed fly gets to die rather quickly. A ripe, juicy tomato (something that plant had produced with the full expectation that it would become the next generation of tomato plants) will be plucked before it has a chance to become a new tomato plant. It will be sliced to bits, salted, and slowly torn asunder, chewed and digested, piece by piece. Its brethren might be tossed casually into a hot pan, boiled beyond recognition, and served with thyme and oregano over noodles.

Or look at that head of lettuce there in the garden. That lettuce is happily soaking up nutrients and moisture from the soil as it is heartily embraced by the warming rays of the sun. It knows nothing of its fate. Think of that poor lettuce! We slash it from the earth… discarding the roots entirely (which are still dutifully trying to pump moisture and nutrients to a body which is no longer there). We gather up the green, crisp leaves and rinse them of “impurities” under icy cold water. Then, while the leaf is still alive, producing oxygen and coursing little lettuce-y cells around in it’s little lettuce-y veins and fully and completely alive with no knowledge of what is to become of it… we slice it to ribbons and chew it with herbed oils until we swallow it and digest it to death in our pitch-black bellies. That lettuce leaf, and every cell within it, is still alive while it’s being digested.

Now if you ask me, THAT sounds like the epitome of cruelty. Sounds like a damned good plot for a teenage slasher film. Ya know?

Will you stop eating your fruits and veggies? Will you stop mowing your lawn? Will you allow the cockroaches and mice to take over your kitchen? Do you want the birds to stop eating earthworms? Do you want the anteaters to stop eating ants? Will you ask the spiders to run to the store for a can of soy-spam instead of catching their bugs in the garden?

Peta, where does it stop? Get back to your roots. They may not be glamorous anymore, or even newsworthy – but those roots of yours ARE worthy. Protect the things of this world that need your protection. Blow your trumpets for the battles you can win, and in the battles which are worth winning. Stop all this fly-swatting nonsense right goddam now before you lose yourselves entirely.