Sparrow Shot Dead To Save Dominoes
Here in the Netherlands, the murder of a sparrow is causing a bit of an uproar. On Friday, 18 November, a group of domino-maniacs, sponsored by the entertainment giant Endemol, will try to break their own record for toppling dominoes. They have taken domino-felling to an extreme level: a maze of over four million dominoes has been set up in an expo center in Leeuwarden. Five days before the big event, an innocent creature threatened to topple the record prematurely: a common house sparrow (huismus in Dutch). The sparrow was spotted by the domino-setters (an international group of over 100 which has spent the last month at the tedious task) as a very real threat. Attempting to capture the sparrow caused the bird to panic, and it ended up knocking over 23,000 dominoes in the melee. As humane capture methods proved unsuccessful, the sparrow was shot to death. Animal rights groups are threatening legal action, as the bird was a protected species. Public outcry (in the form of letters to the editors of two local newspapers) has been great. One writer wondered what would have happened if an unsupervised child happened into the expo center.
Originally posted as part of an article on our personal blog wolfstad.
