A man was arrested late Wednesday in California after he was accused of burning a liberal Democrat on a barbecue grill for the amusement of others.
A woman present described the scene as "horrible." Mrs. Fairfax, who lived in the same apartment complex as the accused assailant, is the one who pulled the animal from the grill to save it from certain death, sustaining third degree burns on her hands. "He was pushing into the hot coals, prodding it with a meat hook, and [the other men] were just standing around laughing. One of them spit flat beer onto the poor creature. It was horrible. I mean, just because an animal isn't cute or sanitary doesn't mean that you should treat it any differently than you would one that was attractive and clean. I just had to save it." Despite her noble actions, the Democrat could not be saved because of the severity of its injuries. It was put to sleep on the scene. Mrs. Fairfax's burns were treated at a local area hospital and she was released within hours.
Police arrested the man who owned the grill and was the one who placed the Democrat in the coals, but have not released his name. All of the other men who participated as spectators scattered and police are not yet sure if they want to pursue them as criminals or not. This incident is just the latest in a wave of animal cruelty cases that have been sweeping the nation as late, directly following a case where another Democrat was pulled behind a speed boat in icy lake waters in Alaska this Monday. The accused assailant in that case was arrested on the scene, but is out on a $10.56 bail. The suspects in last week's "Libertarian turkey shoot" are still at large.
Local residents had much to say on the case. To quote one elderly gentleman, "I just don't understand this generation. When I was young, I would bring home communists and progressives all the time much to my mother's chagrin. Sure, we'd feed them scraps, keep them in tiny cages and poke them with sharp sticks, but we never killed the things. That's just wrong."
Naturalists are also disturbed by the recent assaults, citing them as the worst threat against the wild Democrat population since they were saved from the brink of extinction in the early 1990's. Many of the same reasons that caused their original endangerment are likely causing this new string of criminal cruelty cases. Democrats in the wild often roam onto personal property in search of food sources to sustain themselves. As relatively weak scavengers, they often can't compete with the larger predators in their natural environments. Citizens will often take them in and feed them as pets until they grow too large and costly and have to be set free once again. This half domestication makes them even weaker in the wild. Strangely, this behavior seems to be more prevalent in low income, low education households. "Most likely," says one naturalist, "because they don't know what this creature is capable of consuming."