When Billy was 6 one fine Easter day,
He received a gift with which he could play.
It was a sweet little bunny with hair to the floor.
What could have happened when it was found dead by the door?
"Accidental," they said. "Billy's just a child.
He just played too rough. He got a little bit wild."
When Billy was 10 at a neighbor's house,
He poured some bleach on a friendly pet mouse.
"Boys will be boys," is what they said.
"Be careful," they added as they patted his head.
When Billy turned 12 they found some deep cuts
On the face and the neck of the sweet family mutt.
"No harm was done. The dog's not hurt bad.
He didn't mean to do it. He truly feels sad."
When Billy was 16, he took a gun to school.
He fired upon them while calling them fools.
When Billy was finished having his fun,
He smiled at his carnage and lay down his gun.
The town went on weeping all through the trial.
He showed no remorse. He showed not a smile.
"What happened," they asked, "to a boy so fine?"
How could it be he showed not a sign?"
"What about me?" said the ghost of the long dead mouse.
"And I the rabbit who was found dead in his house?"
And the elderly dog with scars that still showed
Softly whined and wondered, "HOW DIDN'T THEY KNOW?"
by Kristen Sharer, from "Vicki Sharer"
In a seven-month period from October 1997 to May 1998, four schools were torn apart by violence inflicted by students at the schools. The carnage resulted in a total of 12 dead and 44 wounded. In 1999, two young men in Littleton, CA, gunned down a teacher and 14 of their classmates. Widely separated geographically, all of these crimes had one thing in common: each of the young men involved had a prior history of abusing animals.
This would come as no surprise to Robert K. Resler, who developed profiles of serial killers for the FBI. "Murderers...very often start out by killing and torturing animals as kids," says Resler. Among the cases he studied was that of Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler." One of DeSalvo's "games" was to trap cats and dogs in orange crates and shoot arrows at them. As a change of pace, he would put a dog and a cat into a box with a partition between them. After starving the animals for several days, he would remove the partition and watch them kill each other. Theodore Robert Bundy was forced as a child to watch his grandfather abuse animals. He grew up to kill 33 women. "Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives." - Albert Schweitzer
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