Kill a Pelican, Get Sixty Days of Free Food

What do you do when the world is full of political headlines that both scare and shock you?  You start only writing stories about bizarre animal occurrences.

This week in weird animal news I offer you a story that is sad on so many fronts.

Sergio Alvarez, a homeless man living on the mean streets of Malibu was arrested on August 22 for strangling a brown pelican to death.

Look at this guy. He’s not sorry. That pelican looked delicious. He had it coming.

Police were alerted by a passerby who said that Alvarez was seen with his hands around the bird’s neck and that after a struggle the pelican went limp.

Alvarez initially denied the avia-cide but later admitted that he killed the bird after not being able to catch any fish.  The man was hungry, people.  The bird was taunting him as pelicans often do, and in one of those cartoon-esque hallucinations where the predator sees it’s prey all neatly dressed on a platter, perfectly browned, he just couldn’t take it.

This is all he saw…

Honestly, there are several victims here.  Alvarez, because no one should be so hungry in this country of plenty that they have to strangle a bird with their bare hands to eat.  The pelican, because well, it was as much the fishes’ fault that he died. And finally, the passers-by that had to see a pelican getting its neck wrang…wrung?  Whatever.

Maybe it was self-defense. This bird is a jerk!

He was ultimately sentenced to 60 days in jail.  That’s 60 days of food that you don’t have to viciously murder on the pier.  Congrats Sergio, it’s your lucky day.

The brown pelican is not endangered, but it is a fully protected species in the state of California.  Unfortunately, homeless people are not considered a protected species.

Source, photo source

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