I've been volunteering at the Rickshaw Rally VBS this year at my church (in a Kenshin costume as well). The leaders bought a kiddie-pool and put some live goldfish in it as well as some stones and lily-pads to make it a nice environment.
These were such cute little fish. Little orange baby goldfish, some of them with black speckles, some brown with orange specks, all of them very cute and very timid.
At the VBS store, the goldfish were being sold to the kids for fake money that they'd earned for having good behavior. A handful of fish were left, however.
Today, a bunch of teens claiming to be Christians thought that it might be "fun" to torture the remaining goldfish. I'd heard that teens had been dropping them from the balcony, but I didn't believe it until today, a friend--Kevin--came running up to me, shouting that "the teens were throwing fish onto the roof!"
I raced outside to see three of the most well-behaved teens in the church throwing live fish at the roof of the church. They were bashing against the walls and were bloody and ripped apart. A few innocent little children were sobbing and begging the teens to stop while they tried to catch the fish.
I screamed at them, calling them "jerks" and totally catching them off-guard while I told them that it was WRONG what they were doing to the poor fish. After I'd yelled at them for a few moments, all the while being stared at by everyone else who were in total shock at the side of me that they hadn't seen before, one of the leaders came out and had a word with the teens.
I went back inside, hoping that the leader (who had more respect from the teens than I do) had taken care of everything.
Not half an hour later, Kevin came running up to me, saying that "fish were being flushed down toilets!" Since I can't go into the men's room, Kevin went in for me. After much shouting, he came back out with the fish. Soon he found a home for it.
My mother, who was volunteering as well, caught someone coming out of the bathroom while Kevin was gone, and she asked the boy what was going on. He said that they were going to flush ANOTHER fish down the toilet. She made him give her the fish.
Then some poor kid was talking about how the teens were dropping the poor live goldfish off the balcony and how they were hitting the floor and the pool and how a few were dying.
Kevin and I guarded the last fish until kids took them home.
I am very, very disappointed and will be talking to the youth group about cruelty to animals.
By the way, these are what the fish looked like:
