Animals don’t have human rights

‘What happened to him?’ I said, meeting the eye of a thin magpie through the bars of his cage. Andrew Meads, veteran bird rescuer and proprietor of Safewings wildlife sanctuary at Isham, near Kettering, Northants, related the following case history. A fortnight ago a man driving a stolen car suddenly lost control, mounted the pavement, crashed through a wall and came to a halt in a flower-bed of a suburban front garden. Confronted by the angry house owner as he got out of the car, the driver suddenly whipped out a live magpie from his coat pocket and brandished it at her as if it were a deadly weapon. He then flung the bird in her face and hopped it.

The magpie has been recovering at Safewings for the last month, and I put my face to the bars for a closer look at the convalescent. The cold light of cynicism in the magpie’s eye challenged me to surprise him further about anything.