Twitter has a whale of a time after Peta culls 'racist' animal sayings

Animal rights organisation People for the Equal Treatment of Animals (Peta) – you know the ones who throw blood at millionaires wearing fur coats and break into labs to free rabbits used in the testing of medicines and cosmetics – are up in arms about something absurd this time.

It seems Peta is calling for a replacement of common phrases they deem “speciest”, arguing in a recent tweet: “Just as it became unacceptable to use racist, homophobic or ableist language, phrases that trivialise cruelty to animals will vanish as more people begin to appreciate animals for who they are and start ‘bringing home the bagels’ instead of the bacon.”

It’s not only “’bringing home the bacon” that’s getting up the noses of the animal loving army. Peta has highlighted a number of other animal-related phrases which they say should be replaced by less speciest alternatives.

Why kill two birds with one stone, when you can “feed two birds with one scone”? Instead of offering to be the guinea pig for some new outfit or experience, consider offering to be “the test tube”. When that annoying relative continues to beat a dead horse at the Christmas table long after everyone has stopped caring, suggest perhaps they’re “feeding a fed horse”. And when your friends urge you to take advantage of a new opportunity by seizing the bull by the horns, pause for a second and remind them  it’s far more animal friendly to tell you to “take the flower by the thorns”. 

As one Twitter user - among many who have taken great delight in this nonsense – replied, “Don’t Peta have bigger fish to fry?” After all, as another user pointed out, there are plenty of positive expressions using animals - eyes like a hawk, anyone?

It seems the good people at Peta are either pulling the wool over our eyes or just having slow days at the office in the run-up to the holidays. Perhaps the person in charge of their social media feed has flown over the cuckoo’s nest.

Animals don’t read English and so have no idea of the terrible hatred that it is encouraging: the rise of two-bird, one-stone killer gangs in Europe, increased incidents of innocent bull-horn grabbing in India and incessant flogging of dead horses in the Gobi desert. Our animal friends are unaware of these problems but thank goodness for their friends at Peta, who are feeding their fed horse in the name of false equality and seem unable to grasp the idea of a figure of speech.

As far as Twitter is concerned,  it’s lambs to the slaughter, bulls in china shops, cats getting the cream and dogs eating dogs and thank you, Peta, for a whale of a time.