A cat mourns (Creative Commons photo by Jim Linwood)Hey, are you the fuckshow going around London parks beheading animals? Because somebody is, and it would be really cool if they could stop. As the police confirmed this week, they are on the hunt for a person (or persons) after a cat, dog, some young squirrels and a goose were found decapitated in Meanwhile Gardens, Westbourne Park.A spokesperson for the police’s Wildlife Crime Unit said yesterday: “On September 14 someone found a goose and a cat, both of which had their heads cut off in Meanwhile Gardens.” Come on, what’s a goose ever done to you? All they do is honk and produce pâté. “We have put posters up to see if anyone knows anything about it or has seen anything suspicious.”
Annons
Listen, I’m no fan of dogs – they are bristling clumps of muscle, forever yapping on the edge of hyperactivity, capable always of jumping to my exact crotch height from a standing start and biting me directly on the dick – but I really can’t get in the frame of mind where I would think, ‘Yes, I would behead that.’The most worrying thing about all this, unless you're Morrissey, is that well established line between "dickhead who tortures animals" and "actual, real-life serial killer" – some studies suggest that up to 99 percent of sexual homicide offenders started on animals first, as in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer or the Boston Strangler. And it’s not like serial killing is the only form of violence young animal abusers could graduate to – the American Humane Society found that, in 85 percent of homes where women or children suffer abuse, animals are also attacked. Basically, if you’re mean to animals, you are – pretty much as a rule – the exact kind of knobhead we could all do without.This isn’t the first time domestic animal beheadings have become a thing in the UK. Last month, a cat was found decapitated in Croydon and in August, another was shot with its throat cut in Hertfordshire. In April, three swans were found sans head in Milton Keynes. Back in November 2012, a farmer in Manchester kept waking up to find his sheep savaged and their back legs chopped off. Outside of the UK, in June of the same year, some calamitously bad Canadian dog-sitters were caught in a farcical cover-up scheme after two mutts in their care were savaged and ripped apart. In Spain, there is an annual greyhound bloodbath, when old hunting dogs deemed surplus to requirements are done away with.
