Freedom's Just Another Word

The dogs went for a run tonight after dark.  They could have gone earlier, the turkeys were not out of their yard today.  I went out about 8:00 pm and whistled.  You could hear them galloping down the road as hard as they could go.  I had two wieners (they call them sausages here. Sausage is called kolbasa.) chopped up for their reward bribe.  I bought the cheapest ones I could find.  Package of 10 for about $0.75.  The brand is STUDENTSKI.  Fitting.  Tanya says they need a PENSIONAIRE brand too.

We have an unheated attic storeroom over our garage. Once in a long while during the night a sparrow or two will find their way under the eaves into the room and, of course, become trapped. Come morning they beat against the glass on the door from my office as it is the only light they see. This morning there were two birds again.  I opened the door and they immediately crashed into the windows in my office, one falling to the floor, the other fluttering in fear against the window.  I herded it into the bedroom and opened a window and screen for it but it had crashed into another window so hard it was just sitting also.  I picked it up and set it on the ledge by the open window, then went and got the other who was still just sitting on the floor.  I set it beside its friend and pulled the curtain across, leaving them to fly out when they chose.  When I came back in a few minutes they had regained strength and were gone out the window.

They were so scared and frantic, I felt so bad for them.  Life is hard enough for a sparrow but they were at least free to fly.  I don't like cages, or pens or chains or fences, though I recognize they are sometimes necessary.  I hate it when dogs are penned up, even my dogs with a big yard to run in.  There are too many big dogs here that spend their life on the end of a 4 meter chain.  For what I don't know, I guess the fear factor must act as a deterrent to people coming in to a yard.  I'd like to turn them all lose.

I hate prisons too, though they are also a necessary evil.  There should be fewer people in them if we spent more effort at the source of the problems, better safety nets and services to help people before they become criminals.  And fewer people if we had more intelligent laws.  We don't put kids in jail for smoking a cigarette, nor do we lock up the people who sold them the package.  We need fewer people in jail for the "non-crime" of possession and more Bernie Madoff's in jail for so-called white collar crime of fraud and related which cost society so much.