Chicken Boxing
The Bayou State(that means Louisiana) motto is "Sportsman's Paradise. It's on the license plates, which means it's legal to engage in sports. There is a difference between a sportsman and a sports fan. The "sports" to which the license plates refer are hunting and fishing. Of course, this sports usually include the death of an animal at some point or another.
In keeping with that tradition, Louisiana was once the home of other animal death related recreational activities, such as dog fighting and cock fighting. Dog fighting was outlawed by an act of the legislator in 2001. Not only was dog fighting prohibited, but also made it illegal:
This left the sport of cock fighting untouched. I have been told, but never able to verify, the very old law animal fighting law, which forbade such things as bear and bull baiting(putting a bear and a bull in a corral and letting them fight it out) contained a clause which declared chickens to not be an animal, for the purposes of the law.
It took a while longer, but in 2005, cock fighting was also outlawed.
Fighting is not actually a natural thing for a chicken to do. In the wild, or even in a chicken yard, if a cock challenges another cock for territory, they put on a frightening display and will attack, but the losing cock is free to run away, and usually does before suffering serious injury. What this means, is chickens never developed the body language of surrender. A chicken has no way to say, "You win," and end the fight. With no escape for either, instinct drives them to attack until one is unable to respond. There are no rematches in a cock fight.
[Cock fighting trivia: The rhetorical question, "Are you trying to blow smoke up my ass?" comes from the sport of cock fighting. To prepare for the fight, the cock handler would hold the cock tight and literally blow cigar smoke into the chicken's cloaca. This put the cock in a proper fighting mood.]
To keep things interesting, the cocks are equipped with little razor sharp blades which are attached to their spurs(the rear pointing claw). Any hit could be a lethal blow. The original law which banned cock fighting omitted mention spur blades and other such things. In the current session, a legislator submitted a bill to rectify this oversight,
would now be illegal, as well. This is when it got weird.
Another legislator objected, saying it would interfere with the sport of "chicken boxing." Chicken boxing is an apparently little known poultry martial art, in which the cocks have “Leather spur covers and plastic spur covers, um, that are used in the legitimate sport of chicken boxing...". It is a non-lethal form of cock fighting. The proposed bill might outlaw the little chicken boxing gloves, or boxing boots.
Despite the objections of the Chicken Boxing lobby, the bill has been forwarded to the full Senate for a vote.
The Bayou State(that means Louisiana) motto is "Sportsman's Paradise. It's on the license plates, which means it's legal to engage in sports. There is a difference between a sportsman and a sports fan. The "sports" to which the license plates refer are hunting and fishing. Of course, this sports usually include the death of an animal at some point or another.
In keeping with that tradition, Louisiana was once the home of other animal death related recreational activities, such as dog fighting and cock fighting. Dog fighting was outlawed by an act of the legislator in 2001. Not only was dog fighting prohibited, but also made it illegal:
if there is evidence this stuff is used to train dogs for dog fighting. I have no idea what a "cat mill" might be. There was a lot of bitching an moaning when this law was passed.
This left the sport of cock fighting untouched. I have been told, but never able to verify, the very old law animal fighting law, which forbade such things as bear and bull baiting(putting a bear and a bull in a corral and letting them fight it out) contained a clause which declared chickens to not be an animal, for the purposes of the law.
It took a while longer, but in 2005, cock fighting was also outlawed.
Fighting is not actually a natural thing for a chicken to do. In the wild, or even in a chicken yard, if a cock challenges another cock for territory, they put on a frightening display and will attack, but the losing cock is free to run away, and usually does before suffering serious injury. What this means, is chickens never developed the body language of surrender. A chicken has no way to say, "You win," and end the fight. With no escape for either, instinct drives them to attack until one is unable to respond. There are no rematches in a cock fight.
[Cock fighting trivia: The rhetorical question, "Are you trying to blow smoke up my ass?" comes from the sport of cock fighting. To prepare for the fight, the cock handler would hold the cock tight and literally blow cigar smoke into the chicken's cloaca. This put the cock in a proper fighting mood.]
To keep things interesting, the cocks are equipped with little razor sharp blades which are attached to their spurs(the rear pointing claw). Any hit could be a lethal blow. The original law which banned cock fighting omitted mention spur blades and other such things. In the current session, a legislator submitted a bill to rectify this oversight,
would now be illegal, as well. This is when it got weird.
Another legislator objected, saying it would interfere with the sport of "chicken boxing." Chicken boxing is an apparently little known poultry martial art, in which the cocks have “Leather spur covers and plastic spur covers, um, that are used in the legitimate sport of chicken boxing...". It is a non-lethal form of cock fighting. The proposed bill might outlaw the little chicken boxing gloves, or boxing boots.
Despite the objections of the Chicken Boxing lobby, the bill has been forwarded to the full Senate for a vote.
