As Joe the politician prepares to be inaugurated as the next President of the United States, another Joe has also been making international headlines. Joe the pigeon was found in a backyard in the Australian city of Melbourne last December. He was carrying a leg band that seemed to suggest that he had been in the US state of Oregon two months earlier, raising questions about how he made it across the Pacific – no small feat!
The story made it onto local news and Australian authorities took notice. They declared Joe a “biosecurity risk” and decided that he must be killed in order to protect local birds from possible infection. A spokesperson for the Australian government did not actually use the word “killed,” but instead said that Joe must be “destroyed,” as if Joe was a car, a stone, or some other inanimate object.
Continue reading “What we can learn from almost murdering Joe the pigeon”
Rainer Ebert 