That Parrot is Asleep

The puerile but concise rant of the postee mentioned earlier--full of a venomous smugness--is in stark contrast to the man who showed up at the Massueville demonstration last Monday.  As luck would have it, this poor sap showed up amongst the demonstrators--some sporting fake bullet holes in their foreheads (I guess he didn't notice as he pulled in to park beside them)--with the intention of asking the abattoir to slaughter his young stallion for him.  As I shepherded him over to the group (he didn't notice the big signs they were holding up with "arretons l'abattage des chevaux" written on them either), he told me the abattoir would pay him $350 (figure 35 cents per pound).  So it was that when at least five of us pressed in on him, all talking at once and in two languages, he was taken aback, as if he'd opened the door to what he thought was a room and found himself on the edge of a cliff instead.  (Well, one can never safely predict one's destination with any certainty at the best of times.)  I'll give him credit though; he didn't turn and leave (run away! run away!):  he stayed as the group grew more vocal, imploring him not to do this heinous thing, inundating him with facts and proof and alternatives.  Now nonplussed, he argued back that no cruelty existed at the slaughterhouse.  That wasn't true, he knew for sure.  They shot the horse dead right in front of him last time because he'd told them he didn't want it to suffer.  I nearly wiped a tear from my eye. I suggested they might have done that because he was a witness, and judging from the paucity of windows in the building, they didn't really want witnesses to their daily goings-on.  Furthermore, I asked if he thought they had the time to process 80 or so horses a day in that kind fashion--would that be an efficient way to render a high volume of product?  When he looked back at me blankly, I thought maybe I'd driven the point home to him and that he was processing new information or maybe, old information in a new way.  But no.  The stallion had an undropped testicle and couldn't be used for breeding...no, it wasn't that...the operation was too expensive...no, actually, the vets said he was inoperable...anyway, he'd heard about those horse sanctuaries and they weren't on the up-and-up...they would mistreat, sell, abuse his stallion and he wouldn't have that.  He was fond of his horse. Horse-owning demonstrators explained to him that none of what he was saying or had been told or suspected was true.  It wasn't so amazing to me that he refused to take the money quickly rustled up by the group to buy the stallion from him.  What amazed me was that in the face of incontrovertible facts, he, in the end, did drive off, mumbling something that didn't sound overly complimentary.  That's where this man and the bute-loving postee meet, their incorrigibility exactly the same, only the styles differing.  It makes me think of the classic Python sketch about the, um, sleeping parrot.  Stupidity, after all, is the unwillingness to learn.  I bet even the dead parrot knew that.