What would you do if you had a million dollars?
Maybe go on one of those fancy safaris with a rifle and a ready supply of exotic animals to terrorize and kill -- while snapping lots and lots of pictures?
Yeah, same as us.
Yet there do seem to be a lot of idle and affluent hands in the world. And plenty of places to satisfy that slaughter-lust.
This photo, for example, pretty much says it all.
A woman, with a high-powered rifle, astride a dead giraffe, wears the winningest of grins.
She did it. She's come a long way. She has triumphed over an unarmed, minding-its-own-business giraffe in what was likely a staged hunt.
According to Animal Shame, an organization that collects and posts these 'trophy' pictures on Facebook, the giraffe was eating from a tree at the time of slaughter.
The photo was originally posted on the Facebook page for Koeshall’s World Hunting Adventures, a a full-service taxidermy shop in Wisconsin. The site has since taken down the image, but there's still plenty to despair about in its gallery of grotesques.
And here's what you can do with lions.
According to Animal Shame, the lion-killer in the above photo added this telling line to her dubious souvenir.
"I am very happy with the hunt. It was scary. The growling was overwhelmingly intense. I've never seen a cat that big in a tree."
And what do you do when you see cats that big cowering in a tree?
Why, take us one step closer to not seeing a cat that big ever again, of course.
They're called 'canned hunts' -- often hosted on South African reserves, where visitors pay a mint to bag something exotic -- if you can call animals that were raised by humans specifically for the hunt exotic.
And if a rifle isn't enough of an advantage the animals are also frequently drugged to ensure maximum killability.
'It takes no skill or strength for "trophy" hunters – what a ghastly term! – to track down and kill these beautiful animals. Having been hand-reared by humans, they are accustomed to our presence. Heartbreakingly, it's not uncommon for animals to trot trustingly toward canned hunters for a handout of food. Because these animals are usually kept in fenced enclosures (ranging in size from just a few square yards to thousands of acres), they never stand a chance of escaping, fighting back or surviving, and many endure prolonged, painful deaths.'
The Marois Conservancy -- made famous recently for what this thrill-killing TV host got up to on its 21,000-acre range -- advertises its prices online.
Turns out, there's something for everyone who likes to kill things. At $65 a pop, jackals and baboons are the real bargains here. Hippos, on the other hand, cost north of $8,000 to take down.
Those prices include a daily laundry service, presumably for washing up the blood and not so much the visitor's surprisingly stain-resistant conscience.
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