Denmark is in turmoil.
Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt has called for new elections. You may remember Thorning-Schmidt as the woman who took the famous laughing selfie with President Barack Obama at Nelson Mandela’s funeral — as Michelle Obama sat stone-faced off to the side.
But the big issue isn’t politics.
It’s the baby rabbit murder.
The baby rabbit’s name was Allan.
And he was killed live on Danish radio in the name of animal rights.
According to news reports, the baby rabbit was beaten to death with a bicycle pump wielded by a radio host, Asger Juhl, and was then brought home and reportedly eaten by Juhl and his family.
Why? Juhl figured that people who eat meat should know the meat was once alive. He was upset over the hypocrisy of it all.
Call me a traditionalist, but there is nothing more outrageous than didactic rabbit killing by liberal animal rights activists out to prove a point.
“Better fact-check that one,” said my boss.
Of course.
The thrill killing of Allan the baby rabbit follows the homicide of Marius the giraffe, a healthy beast, at the Copenhagen Zoo. The keepers fed him to the lions in front of the children.
Juhl took Allan from a box. He stroked Allan, petted Allan. Then he killed Allan.
Comedian Ricky Gervais has announced through social media that he would like nothing better than to beat Juhl to death with a bicycle pump.
I don’t think he was joking.
There just might be nothing scarier than Ricky Gervais beating you to death with a bicycle pump. Gervais isn’t exactly a head-lopping warrior from “Game of Thrones.” He couldn’t do it with one or two thumps.
It might take two or three thousand whacks with the bicycle pump, with Gervais sweating and breathing heavy, before he finally killed you.
Clearly, people are upset.
As someone who did a little bit of radio myself, and as a guy who loves rabbit stifado — with stewed tomatoes and pearl onions, kind of like a Greek rabbit cacciatore — it smells like a hoax.
My radio producers, who for reasons of their own did not eat meat, wouldn’t have allowed it. Jeff and Mallory would have jumped me and saved Allan.
And my wife would never speak to me after such a stunt, and this is verified, since some readers know that I impulsively once killed a rabbit in our garden that was savaging my vegetables. She’s never let me forget it.
But the Danish host’s boss, station manager Jorgen Ramskov, insisted to Sky News that it was all true and they killed Allan the baby rabbit to prove a political point.
Ramskov said they researched the proper way to kill a rabbit, speaking to experts who kill them at zoos as food for predators.
It could have been the same zookeepers who chopped up Marius the giraffe in front of the school kids. Later, the same zoo killed four healthy lions because keepers said a new larger male lion would probably kill the two younger cubs anyway.
What the heck is it with the bloodthirsty Danes these days?
Sky News: Just to clarify you hit the rabbit on the back of the head with a bicycle pump, then you hit it again with a bicycle pump, then you hit it again with a bicycle pump. Is that how you kill a rabbit?
Baby Rabbit Killer’s Boss: Yes. According to this person from the Zoogarden (Denmark Zoo) this is the way you kill a rabbit.
Sky News: OK.
Rabbit Killer’s Defender and Boss: I am sure there are other ways to kill rabbits.
Sky News: Yes. But why didn’t you get someone who knew how to do it?
Rabbit Killer Apologist: Because Asger, the host of the program, was raised on a farm and has done this a lot of times.
Sky News: Why did he need advice from somebody else if he knew how to do it?
Profiteer of Baby Rabbit Assassination: Because it’s always a good thing to be sure.
Well, I’m not sure. Because during the Sky News interview, Ramskov appeared to embellish.
Sky News: You killed it in a radio studio.
Ramskov: Or you can do it on a riverside with a fish, or at a farm with a chicken. I’ve been doing that because I’ve lived on a farm and I kill chickens with a stick and an ax. That’s what you do. What’s important thing is that a lot of people don’t seem to care how these animals lived.
Just stop right there Mr. Liberal Danish Rabbit Killer Accomplice Guy. I think you’re a hoaxer. Because nobody kills chickens with sticks. Nobody.
Say you’re in your family’s village during summer vacation and your cousin Teena asks whether you’d like chicken for lunch.
And you say yes, thinking you’ll all go out to a restaurant, and she just reaches down, grabs a chicken by the neck, twists, then puts the head on a brick before cutting it off with a paring knife she has right there in her apron.
You don’t pet your food like some creep. You don’t hit it with a stick or a bicycle pump, like Ricky Gervais in his twisted Gervasian mind taking an entire weekend to kill a weirdo disc jockey.
You just eat it, maybe in a soup, with egg and lemon.
And then you say thank you.
Twitter @John_Kass
