Hunter? I don't even know her!

Want to spend the rest of the month in a back-and-forth debate about hunting?  Just post this link to the article about a wild game hunter by the name of Rebecca Francis, who found it necessary to go to Africa to kill...a giraffe.

Ms Francis is from Utah and has eight - count 'em, 8! - children and still finds time to traipse around the world slaying wildlife:
“I prefer bowhunting, and the animals I have taken with a bow include: a 10 1/2 ft. brown bear, black bear, shiras moose, alaskan moose, dall sheep, stone sheep, desert bighorn ram, rocky mountain bighorn ram, mule deer, whitetail deer, elk, mountain goat, antelope, arapawa ram, kudu, zebra, black wildebeest, giraffe, springbuck, blesbuck, lynx, badger, and squirrel. I have also taken many of the same species and more with a rifle.”

I would assume that any spider or housefly that ventures into her home does not stand much of a chance.

Ricky Gervais, that saucy British comedian, took to Twitter to call her out:

And the debate was on.  As a confirmed meat eater and leather jacket owner, I cannot take a moral high ground here.  Cows, pigs and chickens are diet staples here at the Lazy 'C' Ranch, and very few of them have been known to report to the butcher and commit suicide, so someone is bumping them off.

But a giraffe?  The only kind of longneck I want to see on my dinner table contains 12 oz of ice cold beer.

Gervais's tweet generated lots of heat, and it quickly progressed, or more properly, regressed into a back-and-forth that included threats from animal lovers to do bodily harm to Ms Francis, who pointed out in her own defense that this was an older giraffe who had been shunned from his pack and would soon have perished naturally anyway, so, “I chose to honor his life by providing others with his uses and I do not regret it for one second,” she insisted. “Once he was down there were people waiting to take his meat. They also took his tail to make jewelry, his bones to make other things, and did not waste a single part of him,” Francis continued. “I am grateful to be a part of something so good.”

I think Ms Francis is overdoing it a bit, but I also think that those of who so energetically defend the rights of animals while tossing a 16-oz T-bone on the grill might have to look a little more inwardly also.

A giraffe.  Really?