Soundtrack to Mary

A friend recently pointed out the hypocrisy in how I love bloody, mobbed-out films where people get whacked with a ball point pen in the jugular—and yet nearly have a nervous breakdown when I see a squirrel smashed in the street.
I don’t know if this requires serious examination on my part but it is true. Even though I can watch Scar Face without flinching, I have to turn away when they feature animals on America’s Funniest Home Videos. Throw a dude in a wood chipper, fine. But don’t show me a cat with his head stuck in a drinking glass.

I imagine this is hereditary, as I’ve repeatedly heard the story of my mom, out for a stroll one summer day, finding a stray dog who she claimed was “dying of thirst.” She promptly went up to someone’s house, filled her shoe with water from their hose spigot, allowed the mutt to wet his whistle from her sensible navy pump, and was on her way without a second thought.

This is also the woman who toasts bread for the birds in winter. Kind-hearted or insane? Maybe both.

Whenever some grisly story hits the news about a psychopath who has bludgeoned his wife with a ball-peen hammer and run off with the babysitter, the first thing my oldest sister will say is, “Oh no, that’s terrible—I hope he made provisions for someone to look after their dog!” Somehow she believes that a man capable of cold-blooded murder surely also he had the good sense to find a responsible caretaker for “Winky.”
Same goes for the occasional circus-elephant-rampage story. My family will undoubtedly rationalize that “Jumbo,” in a moment of elephant clarity, looked down at the tutu and roller skates he was wearing and thought “The hell with this!” So what if he snapped and mauled a family of four? Did his sadistic trainer really have to swat him with a stick during the act?

I know to some this sounds rife with contradiction. How can a self-professed animal lover be so cold and indifferent to people? I don’t have an answer, but I’d bet my Sopranos DVD collection and a lifetime’s supply of Pounce that there are people who feel the same way I do.

E-mail Mary at popularcreeps@yahoo.com.