Monday, December 12, 2005

Darien-Based Friends of Animals Missed the Boat on Darien's Hunting Decision

To return to the deer-hunting issue, imagine how embarrassing it must be personally and to your organization if you are the head of a large, well-known advocacy group with a $5 million annual budget, a group that speaks out and gets attention for its issue around the country, and you’re so committed to your issue that you have even changed your last name so it fits your organization’s mission, and your organization pays you $93,000 a year to be on top of things, and then in the very town where your organization has its headquarters the local government goes through a public process to solve a problem that is precisely the kind of issue you are in business to address, and you don’t even realize it’s happening! You miss it completely!

That is the situation Priscilla Feral, the true-believer who changed her last name, and her organization, Friends of Animals, find themselves in.

Darien, Connecticut, has been conducting a public debate and discussion about allowing deer hunting on town land, but Feral, whose organization is located in Darien, missed a recent public hearing and didn’t even known the town discussion was going on. She blames the town. Here’s what the Advocate reported:

Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, said no one notified the group of the public hearing. She accused town officials of deliberately keeping the meeting secret.

"What they did was conceal this agenda," she said.

Darien First Selectwoman Evonne Klein disagreed.

"The town has been discussing this for over a year," Klein said. "There were a number of meetings at which this was discussed. I think given that this was topic of discussion a number of times and was written about in the newspaper, and that there was a public hearing involved, there was certainly the opportunity for any group to step forward."

Klein said she received one e-mail, one phone call and one letter opposing the hunt. One person also spoke against it during a public meeting, she said. …

Feral said officials should have reached out specifically to her group.

"We have an organization whose international headquarters is in Darien. We've got a budget of $5 million," she said.


Perhaps some of that $5 million should go towards a subscription to the local paper.

And if you were under the misimpression that Feral relies on reason and logic as a foundation for her positions, consider yourself disabused. Here’s what she thinks of hunters:

"Most of them look like they can hardly walk around. They got to get down and they've got to run as far as two miles" if a deer does not die immediately, she said. "These guys don't look like they can walk much less run. Big fat stomachs. Most of them are loaded, going in early in the morning. I've seen them with their beer."

Charity Navigator, a website that tries to help donors decide which charities to give money to based on how efficient the charities operate, awarded Friends of Animals only two stars out of a possible four, by the way.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hilarious! Thanks for the belly laugh.

12:46 PM  
Blogger Hungry Hyaena said...

Well, Priscilla, it's true that I only shoot my guns when I'm heavy drinking. My poppie always teach me it's safer that way. Oh, lookie....something's moving yonder in the bushes. I'ma shoot me a anteloper for the good Lord's birthday.

2:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually, charitynavigator.org gives Friends of Animals four stars out of four:
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3730

12:31 AM  
Blogger Marick Marissa Hebisen said...

Anonymous is quite correct, charitynavigator.org does give Friends of Animals four out of four stars. I realize that blogs are formalized so that people can make their opinions known, but anybody who intends to commit anything to writing and put their name on it should make sure that they have all of their facts correct before they do so. Not doing so only convinces the people who also obviously know nothing about what they are talking about, people with knowledge are likely to never entertain another blog with your name on it once they know that you print inaccurate information. I truly wish that people would verify things for themselves and make sure things are true before believing any idiot with a computer.

3:09 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

eXTReMe Tracker