CNN - A professional soccer player in Colombia faces up to three months in jail for kicking an opposing team's lucky owl, which had been been hit by a ball after landing on the field Sunday. The owl died Tuesday. The owl was considered a good luck charm for the Atlético Junior squad in Barranquilla and lived in its Metropolitan Stadium...The referee stops play, and Moreno trots over and kicks the bird off the field, a distance of about three yards. The incident was aired on national television and prompted widespread outrage, and not just from Junior fans. Environmental groups urged sanctions against Moreno and called for protests at the National Soccer building in Bogota. Moreno apologized, saying it was not his intention to harm the bird. "I did it to see if the owl could fly," the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.
Everyone can calm the hell down here. Spare me the hyperbole of saying he "kicked" the bird or calling him a "murderer." People just love a good chance to show how politically correct they can be and its frigen nauseating. And to the environmental groups urging sanctions on Moreno, the guy isn't Libya. He's a person not a country. Who is going to sanction him? The local hot dog vendor isn't going to serve him when he rolls up hungry after the game. What a joke. Not to mention that this is Columbia we're talking about. Maybe they have more important things to be worried about? Like not scoring in your own goal and getting killed after the game? I'm sure animal safety is the last thing on their minds.
Moreno has nothing to apologize for, watch the video. He doesn't kick or boot the bird, he puts his foot under it and tries to get it to fly. That's it people. Nothing malicious here, guys not the Mike Vick of executing owls. The thing was DOA, dead on arrival. The poor bird has no one to blame but itself either, landing in the middle of the field of play and not having the wherewithal to get the hell out of the way when the ball was flying at its head. But no one wants to mention that part.
Blaming Moreno here is like blaming the public works crews that come along and scrape up the dead squirrel and skunk carcasses after they've been flattened by cars during the morning commute. They're just clearing the road doing their job and Moreno was just clearing the field so the game could go on. What should he have done called the team stretcher out? Hook the dumb bird up to a ventillator? It's an Owl people. They'll have a new one trained and ready for the games next week.
