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Last week, following a technical glitch on one of their planes, the folks at Nepal Airlines went ahead and sacrificed two goats on the runway to the god of sky protection in an utterly mind-boggling attempt at crisis management. I have a couple of thoughts about this from an animal rights perspective: Firstly, while the strangeness of this particular incident certainly drives home a point about the mindless cruelty of treating animals like objects, the fact is that it's no more senseless or cruel than some practices that are more familiar to us—like, say, shooting deer and gluing their heads to a wall (I'll pause here for a moment so that the 15 or so hunters who are apparently avid PETA Files readers can post comments about how their little shooting sprees are actually the best thing that ever happened to animals).

The second lesson to take home from this sad story is as follows: If you have any other choice of transport—be it plane, car, rowboat, whatever—think very seriously about these options before you buy that Nepal Airlines ticket. I won't pretend that I'm up to date on the latest techniques that they're pushing in flight school nowadays, but I can tell you with confidence that when your pilot tells you the plane has been fixed via goat sacrifice, it's time to panic.