Curmudgeon's Corner (5)--The Yoghurt of Human Kindness

      Believe it or not, Smokey Burner, the Broken Stove's resident curmudgeon, is pretty much a humanist. This is not the same as saying that Smokey has unqualified love for his fellow man or that he believes people are fundamentally good. On the contrary, Smokey thinks most people on this planet, left to themselves, unsupervised and unobserved, are crap. Or at least tend towards crappiness.
      Does this attitude make Smokey despair? It does not. Because every now and then, someone will heave himself up from all fours to stand more or less erect, and do something remarkable or good or even noble. Something human. Those are the moments, both in life and art, for which Smokey lives. You may think that this means Smokey lives below the spiritual poverty line, but Smokey will happily scrape by on coffee, cigarettes, and ramen noodles, as long as he gets the occasional hit from the crack pipe of human nobility.
      But sometimes Smokey doesn't know what to think. Take, for example, this recent story in which a human impulse for good struggles to disinter itself from under a pile of human crappiness. These excerpts come from the Associated Press:

PHOENIX (AP) — A frenzy of tiny-dog lovers has descended on an animal shelter that rescued hundreds of Chihuahuas from a filthy rural Arizona home, with some potential owners getting into shoving matches and others calling from around the globe.
      The nearly 800 small dogs, mostly Chihuahuas, and 36 parrots were found in a large mobile home northwest of Tucson last week....
      When news spread Thursday of the dog rescue, hundreds of people packed into the Humane Society of Southern Arizona in hopes of adopting the dogs, spokeswoman Jenny Rose said.
      Tempers flared, and a few people got into shoving matches, Rose said. The sheriff's department cleared everyone out, and the shelter closed for the day.
      The next day, Rose said, 500 people lined up to get the dogs....The shelter passed out numbers and had everyone come back in groups of 100 each day....
      Rose said calls came in from Germany, Australia and across the nation....

      Smokey wants to skip right over the question of the owners who created this horrendous situation--who turned out not to be puppy mill operators but an addled elderly couple with hoarding issues--and go directly to the "Good Samaritans" who poured out of the woodwork on hearing the story. You might think, "Hey Smokey, here's a few rocks for your pipe. These people stampeded to help these defenseless critters in their hour of need. Doesn't that make you feel good?"
      Well, no. As a matter of fact it does not. A few niggling questions occur to Smokey on this one, which prevent him from pumping his fist for mankind. To wit:

1. Smokey didn't actually contact anyone at the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, but he's relatively confident that the day before these poor Chihuahuas arrived at the shelter, there were already quite a few dogs and cats in residence waiting for adoption, many from situations just as intolerable. Why was there no line out the door on that day?
2. If, instead of cute (and perhaps valuable) little Chihuahuas, these dogs had been pit bulls, and if the pit bulls had never belonged to a famous football player, would the Humane Society still have been handing out numbers and receiving phone calls from Germany and Australia?
3. "Shoving matches"?!!! Smokey wonders what these Good Samaritans thought when they arrived at the shelter and saw the crowd. Was it a)"I'm so glad to see so many people here; now all these dogs are sure to find safe and happy homes," or b)"Hey, that asshole cutting in line is going to get that cute little white Chihuahua I was gonna put in Suzy's Easter basket."?

      Smokey knows that animal shelters are usually reluctant to place cute critters right before holidays like Easter because too many people give them as gifts to children, who soon tire of cuddling something that poops and pees and bites. And right back to the shelter they go (the animals, sadly, not the children)--if they're lucky. Of course in this case the Humane Society's backs are to the wall; they've got to place these animals. So all of you good folks who saved an Arizona Chihuahua, know this--that dog is now yours for the rest of its life. You must feed it, train it, exercise it, and love it, or may you find your own back to a wall, blindfolded and facing an angry line of rifle-toting Chihuahuas. Smokey will be there to yell, "FUEGO!"