Bird-brained

Associated Press photo

Of course he says he's sorry. In case you haven't heard, a pro golfer from North Carolina killed a hawk with a tee shot recently. Now, this isn't like Randy Johnson's killing of a bird with a fastball in a freak in-game accident. No, Tripp Isenhour aimed at the bird and took shot after shot before finally felling the red-shouldered hawk. Why? Because the bird was making noise while Isenhour was shooting for a TV show. According to a report by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer Brian Baine, Isenhour took about 10 shots at the bird trying to get it to fly away. The first flurry of shots came when the bird was about 300 yards away, the report read. Later, when the bird was about 75 yards away, Isenhour reportedly said, "I'll get him now." A few shots later, he got him. The bird fell from the tree, dead. After killing the protected animal, Isenhour said:

"As soon as this happened, I was mortified and extremely upset and continue to be upse. I want to let everyone know there was neither any malice nor deliberate intent whatsoever to hit or harm the hawk. I was trying to simply scare it into flying away."

My favorite line was that he said he had no "malice nor deliberate intent" to hit the bird. Really? No intent when you fire shot after shot right at the hawk. What did you think was going to happen if you hit it? Would you do that if it were a person standing there? Idiot. This guy is a pro golfer. Taking a little white ball, whacking it and making it land right where he wants it to is his job! There's a TV show on the Golf Channel where wanna-be pro golfers have to go through certain challenges. One of them is hitting a golf ball through a pane of glass that's about, get this, 75 yards away. If those men, who are trying to become pro golfers, can do this task, there's no reason for one who is already a pro golfer to think he could not do roughly the same thing. But instead of a pane of glass, it's a bird. What Isenhour did carries a maximum penalty that includes 14 months in jail.

As a society, we just crucified Michael Vick for his dogfighting ring. Most of the outcry was because of the cruelty with which Vick acted toward those animals. Obviously, killing a hawk with a golf shot isn't the same thing as what Vick admitted to doing, and therefor the penalty shouldn't be the same. However, I believe that Isenhour should have to dearly pay for what he did. The highest possible fine would be about $1,500 — a drop in a bucket, so to say, for a professional athlete. So I say to stick his ass in jail. That'll give him some time to think about how big a moron he is. A spokesperson for the Humane Society said, "Such a petty, mean-spirited act against a wild bird is inexcusable and prosecutors are right to hold Isenhour accountable to the law."

I agree.

Information from Associated Press reports was used in this post.