Who's A Chicken?

You all know that this is a high-tone conservative opinion site. But in pursuit of the goal of becoming the HuffPo of the right, I felt that we needed a few more of those news alerts about items that you wouldn't hear about anywhere else. As a Second Amendment purist, I support the right to bear arms as a sacred individual right. And I don't limit it to guns. Here's an example of the right to bear knives as exercised in California.

Kern County Headline: "Knife-wielding bird kills local man." See what happens when you oppress angry males? This is a story of how simple physical size and strength is not enough to win against a smaller potential victim who is armed to the beak. Jose Luis Ochoa, a resident of Lamont, California, was known to the local authorities to be a chicken-oppressor. He was well-known in the cockfighting community. Ochoa took innocent young roosters away from their families, taught them how to commit dangerously illegal tasks, imprisoned them in filthy cages, fed their lust with voluptuous young hens, and paid them chickenfeed.

No right thinking being with any self-respect will tolerate this kind of maltreatment for long. And though he would otherwise have been denied his Second Amendment rights, this rooster was no chicken. While the oppressor's attention was focused elsewhere, this proud gamecock deviously attached a very sharp, very large knife to his leg. Ochoa and his fellow oppressors sent two of the gladiators into the Tulare County arena, but instead of the usual feathered blood sport, this guy turned on his tormentors and attacked Ochoa. He went for the jugular, but apparently missed and hit the femoral artery instead. Rumors circulate that the rooster's name is Spartacus, but I don't yet have independent verification of that.

Ochoa did not expire immediately, but instead fled when the local police arrived at the arena. Deputies found five dead avian gladiators and other evidence of cockfighting, but their masters and arena-owners were nowhere to be found. There is some evidence that if Ochoa had remained at the scene instead of fleeing, his injury might not have cost him his life. The autopsy conducted in neighboring Kern County determined that Ochoa died of "sharp force injury." Ochoa had tried to make it to his home in Lamont, but decided he'd better stop off at a Bakersfield hospital first. He didn't quite make it.

Ochoa apparently hoped not to be caught and charged for cockfighting. He had already paid a $370 fine earlier in the year on the same charge. In California, a first offense is a misdemeanor but a second offense is a felony. Ochoa didn't want to be placed in the same kind of iron cage he kept his roosters in. What he didn't realized is that unlike the chickens, the caged humans get HBO.

Now you can't say we don't do breaking news. And I learned something as well. As a lawyer, I knew a second gladiatorial offense was a felony. But it took finding this story in the deep recesses of local newspapers to realize it carried the death penalty. It sounds like rough justice to me. As a sidenote, the ACLU (American Chicken Liberties Union) has offered to represent the rooster and offer the battered-bird syndrome as a defense. So far, however, nobody seems interested in prosecuting.