Save a Frog, Risk Your Job

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-04-20 04:48:00 UTC
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Speaking of roadside rescues, the following goes into the "And This! Is What's Wrong with People" category: a bus driver was suspended from her job because she stopped to rescue a frog, rather than run him over (h/t to PlanetSave).

As I'm sure you could guess, my consternation in this case lies with the bus driver's supervisors and with the bus passengers who were so offended by the driver's compassionate act. From the article:

Passengers on the already 20-minute delayed bus were hopping mad when Christina Pommerel, 46, leapt from behind the wheel, rescued the frog, put it in a box and released it on the side of the road.

"I couldn't just squash it," Ms Pommerel, who has been driving buses for 13 years in the southern German city of Regensburg, told daily Die Welt. "I did my job and saved a life."

But the irate passengers took a dim view of the rescue mission and one of them complained to the bus company, which suspended the driver.

Apparently, when the news broke, lots of people were displeased with the treatment of the bus driver for a kind act, so now "the frog-loving driver can resume her duties but only if she refrains from such mercy missions in future, company officials said."

And that's crap. I don't imagine that the bus driver encounters--and stops to move--frogs or other animals on the road daily, but the notion that someone can be fired for exercising compassion, that not stopping to avoid killing animals should be a condition of her employment, is ludicrous. If we as a society have a choice between being 5 minutes late (or 5 minutes later) getting somewhere and killing, regardless of species, and we choose to kill, to end a life, just so that we can save those 5 minutes, we are a sorry bunch. Bravo to you, Ms. Pommerel. The world could use more people like you.

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Frog on the street by Flickr user subtle_3106

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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