This week's moral: If you are an animal, stay away from me.

I watched a pigeon die in the parking garage at Union Station on Sunday, after running around trying to find a Union Station employee that might care even a tiny bit and help me. Needless to say, that was a totally fruitless and frustrating endeavor... at least I gave five separate people a good laugh. Someone finally handed me a phone book (after she finished laughing -- I never realized a living thing dying slowly and in great pain was so hilarious! or maybe it was just the idea of someone trying to help it that was so hilarious? someone should explain that to me someday) and I called the humane society and then animal control. I didn't really think they'd be able to do much except put it out of its misery a little faster; they told me to go back and wait with it until they showed up, and, 40 minutes later, it died. I know that animal control has more pressing things to do than care about a pigeon in a sweltering parking garage that can't be saved -- maybe pigeons in general -- but it would have been nice if they'd showed up. It was pretty horrible. And it was compounded by the Jane Goodall book I'd purloined from Alissa to read on the train, which basically details how evil people are ruining this planet, killing off all its animals and destroying everything natural because we're greedy, impatient, calloused, willfully ignorant idiots. Which, as far as I can tell and as far as the personell of Union Station are concerned, is completely true. (OK, so that's not exactly what she said, but I'm extrapolating here. And she does imply it. And I hadn't gotten to the reason for hope part of "Reason for Hope" yet, which, frankly, isn't as convincing as all the reasons for not-hope.)

Now my fish at work, after surviving his eventful trip down a drain and back up again, has gone to the big fishbowl in the sky. Meatball, everyone's favorite fish at home, has some kind of gigantic fish tumor on his back. Sigh. I'm doing OK with people, I think, but if you have fins or wings, keep your distance.

I decided more Jane Goodall might cure me, so I just bought two more of her books on Amazon. Jane Goodall rules. "Reason for Hope" was decent, but every time she started talking about God I was wishing we could just know more about the chimpanzees. Maybe the new books will help my animal karma...