Today'sWhen this Associated Press story arrived on the wire Thursday, it read like a piece composed for The Onion:

"The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants the flyswatter in chief to try taking a more humane attitude the next time he's bedeviled by a fly in the White House.

"PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside."

PETA, thank you. Thank you for giving the world something to laugh about, for making the first hours of the work day a little easier to get through, for reminding us all not to take ourselves too seriously.

If only that had been your goal. But goals and logic may be beyond the grasp of this "animal rights" organization.

Here's a science lesson for you, PETA. Yes, flies are technically animals. But they're animals that live only a few days, exist almost solely to serve as food for other animals, and lack one important thing that makes ethical treatment meaningful: the ability to feel pain.

That's what was taught in a 1998 entomology class at Oregon State, anyway. Insects' neurological systems don't allow them to hurt or panic like more advanced organisms can.

Would killing a creature just for the sake of killing it be ethical? No. But this was no innocent fly. It was asking for disaster by buzzing a much larger being left and right on national television.

When Obama trounced the disease-carrying pest, it fell to the floor without ever knowing what hit it. There was no fear as the palm of death drew near, no searing pain as its body flattened on the back of the president's hand.

It simply ceased to live, and nobody except the higher-ups at PETA - and maybe the larger animal that would have made a meal of it - will ever notice its absence.

"I got the sucker."

That you did, Mr. President, and most of the world would put

two hands together to

applaud you - or to echo your fly-swatting move.

Karen Petersen