Last week, some 12 year old kid was killed when he was attacked and munched on by the families two pit bull dogs. Attendant hand wringing and cries of tragedy soon commenced, with lots of debate about whether pit bulls should be legal or not. The story is sad and awful and all that but I don't feel that sorry for the family. After all, in a strict Darwinian sense, what happened wasn't as much of a case of tragedy but of being a dumbass (dumbassosity?). Everyone knows pit bulls can be dangerous and they had two. They then left the kid alone with them for several hours and bad things happened. Quelle suprise. Would everyone, especially the virulently anti-gun people, be as upset if, say, the father brought home two semi-automatic weapons, left them lying around the house, only to have the kid accidently blow himself up?

But wait, the story gets better. The mother called the Chronicle to say that hours before the kid was munched upon, the mother told the kid to go into the basement and stay there until she came back. Because the dogs were acting up.

"I put him down there, with a shovel on the door,'' said Faibish, who had left the boy alone with the dogs on June 3 to run some errands. "He had a bunch of food. And I told him, 'Stay down there until I come back.' Typical Nicky, he wouldn't listen to me.''

So the dogs are acting up and she told the kid to hide in the basement? Wouldn't it of made more sense to, oh, I don't know, lock the dogs up in the basement? Nothing to see here, move along. She then told the writer that she was upset because people were criticizing her for what happened. Don't you see, she was a good parent? She saw the dogs were acting up and she knew they were dangerous, so she locked the kid in the basement and went off. What? She left him with some food. She also called to say that she wanted to say that pit bulls are getting a bad rap as a breed and wanted to defend them . Which is true if you think about it, I know plenty of people with poodles and when one of them either gets a bit peevish or horny, the mother has to send the kids to the apartment safe house.

The other thing about pit bulls is that they're a pretty popular breed. You would think that with all the bad press that they get that they wouldn't be such a popular breed and that, say, a mother with a small child wouldn't want to have one. But that's not the case- it's kind of cool to have one. Why? Because they've been to known to kill people. That makes them dangerous- edgy even. Thus they're cool. If they did nothing but lie in the field all day and sniff dandelions, they wouldn't be popular. All of which is another reason I'm not that teary when a pit bull attacks their owner (neighbors, on the other hand....). You got the damn dog because they're known for being a killer so what the hell did you expect?

And yes, they can be totally sweet dogs. I know. I even know from first hand experience in that I once helped out in a pit bull rescue (poor, sweet Scraps). I also know that they have jaws that are so strong that when they clamp onto something, they hold on for so tight that you could up the ball or rag that they're holding onto, and swing them around. Strong jaws and sharp teeth mean that when they bite, bad things could happen. Even if they don't intend it that way. Which is why, say, Retrievers make such good pets- they're jaws were bred so that they have a soft bite. Retrievers don't accidently kill small children. But you wouldn't want Junior to have a Retriever would you, because they're soft. They're not edgy. They don't kill things.

In other words, whatever.

Oh, and speaking of dogs, I was riding the 22 the other day when some lady gets on with some big retriever type mutt dog. For awhile there, dogs weren't aloud on buses, or they could but only if they were guard dogs. Because the dog lobby is pretty vocal here in SF, that's been slowly amended to allow other dogs on. But there were always stipulations- they had to be muzzled, they couldn't be too big, they could get on but only by paying a special fare. Somehow it's slowly turned into a policy of just let the damn dogs on.

Now this dog was well behaved. It didn't bark, didn't get all hyper, didn't do anything. She/he was from what I can tell a totally well behaved, sweet dog. The problem, though, was that it was also a big dog. With a big leash. And all of this on a crowded bus. What this meant, then, was that whenever somebody had to get off, they would have to somehow navigate not only over and around the dog, but over and around the dog's leash. This is never an easy feat on a crowded bus and when the person with the dog is strategically placed right by the doors and so people from both sides of the bus had to get around her and the dog.