CHENEY MAKES NEWS

Impossible to ignore Vice President Cheney's little shooting blunder...

A few things stand out - quail hunting; orange vests; and then this: "Cheney is an avid sportsman, frequently leaving the capital for hunting and fishing excursions."

I can't really equate hunting with sport. It does not fit. Sport for me entails running, playing volleyball, swimming... Pointing a 28-gauge shotgun at a quail and killing it just for the sake of the kill hardly fits my definition of what sport is.

I do understand that hunting in North America predates the United States; I also know that hunting is part of a long-stanfing cultural tradition among Native Americans. And there is also the federally protected hunting rights for those communities in places such as Alaska, where locals in the more remote areas obtain a high percentage of their daily protein intake through their hunting activities. That, obviously, makes sense.

Such is not the case with Vice President Cheney's hunting. It does not make any sense. I say that with a couple of things in mind, and the main two are the unnecessary suffering inflicted on the animals, and - in my view the worst aspect - the fact that hunters actually enjoy the killing. For the life of me, I cannot understand how someone would enjoy killing any creature, destroying anything, just for pleasure. It has to be wrong.

I know that hunters may reply that if that is the case, then meat-eating is also wrong. I disagree. While I may enjoy the taste of meat, I would never enjoy killing the animal itself - the killing happens to be the unfortunate prelude to the meal. Hunters, however, do exactly that: they enjoy the killing. And if they don't enjoy it, they are at least indifferent to it.

I hate spiders. More to the point, I am irrationally afraid of them (the eight legs and all). I would not say I am a true arachnophobic, but the bigger and uglier ones do stop me on my tracks and cause me to ponder (sometimes for lenghty periods of time) on how to tackle the issue. And when I don't find a compassionate soul who would be kind enough to make the spider in question disappear from my field of vision (meaning, I am the one responsible for my destiny and the spider's too), I take a deep breath and just do it - all the while reminding myself that I am a million times bigger than the poor/evil thing.

When I am done, there is no sense of accomplishment. No pride, no pleasure, definitely no indifference. Relief? Certainly, since I feel threatened so long as it is alive walking around my house...

But I must be missing out on something. There must be a truly enthralling aspect to hunting that I am oblivious to. Because while I am fighting the occasional spider, Cheney is roaming around South Texas ranches shooting quails and who knows what else. A friend, an acquaintance maybe? Oh I see - that was an accident. I guess accidents like these are prone to happen when people play with guns.