Scavengers?
Have you ever been driving down the highway and come up on several crows clustered around a road kill?
Even though your vehicle may be barreling down the road at 65 mph or sometimes more toward them, those scavengers are reluctant to leave. Sometimes they wait until the very last second before flying away, and before your vehicle has even passed, they're back at it.
I'm beginning to wonder if some humans are taking on the same characteristics.
Monday, I heard that nine people were arrested for failure to turn over debris from the doomed space shuttle Columbia. Now, whether they planned to keep it for themselves as a piece of history, or sell it for profit, is unknown.
No matter, it's wrong, especially since those pieces of wreckage are necessary to determine exactly what happened to set off the chain of events that caused the shuttle's destruction.
Although a piece of debris the size of a nickel, may not seem of much importance, any clue can be important in the reconstruction of the accident. By now, people should know this, especially since search and recovery crews have been combing the debris field area for more than a week.
These arrests for keeping shuttle debris is just one example of the "finder's keepers" mentality which seems to pervade some people's way of thinking.
A couple weeks ago, I read a story in the Salina paper about a family who was asking a person or persons to please bring back several sacks of baby clothes left at the scene of a fatality accident in mid-January.
The woman who died in the accident on U.S.-81 north of Salina had just purchased the baby clothes that day, a gift for her as yet-unborn grandchild. Returning home from her shopping trip, the roads iced up, she lost control of her vehicle, and was fatally injured.
The rapid change in road conditions contributed to a number of accidents at about the same time and law enforcement officers had to leave the scene quickly to attend to another fatality accident just a few miles away.
It was then someone helped themselves to the baby clothes — the only gift this grandmother would ever be able to give the new baby.
My mother tells me people stealing from accident scenes is nothing new. She said her parents witnessed something even more callous years ago. Back in the days when cars only went about 20 miles per hour, two vehicles hit in a head-on collision. Both vehicles exploded in flame, and all occupants died.
Before "The Law," as my grandparents always called officers, arrived on the scene, several people removed the jewelry from the deceased occupants.
Is there some type of point I'm trying to make with all this? No, other than to express a frustration with the human race in general.
— KATHY HAGEMAN
