If only people would take up a Vegan lifestyle then things like this wouldn't happen!

To me Geoffrey died when Toys R' Us changed the look of their mascot to be the cartoony version seen today.

Anyways, the news of the actual giraffe is sad. Hopefully PETA is wrong on this one.

Wow, PETA kills so many animals every year, yet decries when an animal dies of natural causes.

Was probably killed by a deranged Jaiku fan.

Or most likely someone who wishes death on twitter. Which is to say, most people with brain cells.

[Tweeting to get companies attention is cool though.]

@GitEmSteveDave_HasANewiPodTouch: They're attention whores. It's easy to stir up controversy.

Anyone who really likes PETA needs to watch Penn & Teller BS, Season 2, Episode 1.

@Raekwon: ah... if only u wud have eaten more beef, then it wud have reduced green house gases sent out by animals and saved the plants that recycle CO2.

@Raekwon: HUH? What does a vegan lifestyle have to do with it? We weren't doing to eat Tweet.. Even if everyone in the world was a Vegan we would still have zoos.....

BOY, I hope Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner & Blitzen have alibis...

@W10002:

I dunno, I kind of like it. It looks more friendly to me, which is great for a kids store.

I remember when the first Toys 'r' Us opened near me (prior to that going there required driving to the US). It was a ridiculously big deal, they even brought David Hasselhoff there to autograph stuff.

I was going to wait in line with my parents, but they gave up after a couple of hours and we went home. I expect I was being impatient. *sigh*

@sharkzfanz: Frank Buckland would have eaten Tweet; he tried giraffe. [en.wikipedia.org]

First Heath Ledger, and now Tweet - what is happening to all our stars?????

I would have hoped by now that EMTs showing up to celebrities in distress would know to put them flat on their stomach before putting the oxygen mask over their face.

Jone Bouman, a spokeswoman for the American Humane Film & TV Unit, disputed PETA's complaint, and said a necropsy performed at the zoo within 30 minutes of Tweet's death did not find any pieces of tarp in the giraffe's mouth or stomach.

And PeTA fails it again!

And what kind of tarp are you going to make that *isn't* toxic? I've never met a food that didn't get ruined in the sun and rain, and anything that isn't food is generally toxic (Yes, play-doh could be considered food since it can be eaten without harm).

So PETA only cares about celebrity animals, or do they naturally assume any time any animal dies anywhere that it was due to noncompliance with some ridiculous animal rights law?

@coan_net: I see what you did there.

@W10002: Just reading the front page article I thought this was a joke because I honestly don't remember Geoffrey EVER being a real giraffe.

Back in the day I used to respect PETA as an organization; but these days they've gotten a little too hysterical for me. A lot of horrible s**t happens to animals as a result of human stupidity, cruelty and negligence, I'll be the first to admit--but PETA never seems to accept that sometimes animals die of natural causes. They are creatures with a finite lifespan, for pity's sake.

I have to agree that, altough I think a 'vegan lifestyle' is probably a good thing in many respects, I can't see where it has any applicability to this case.

@Pibbs: that was a great episode.

@Pibbs: It's the whole episode? What's in it other than euthanasia and possibly the diabetes controversy?

Any animal stupid enough to eat a tarp may not be an animal smart enough to survive in nature.

If the giraffe wasn't supposed to eat the tarp, they shouldn't have made it taste like acacia leaves. Duh.

@Raekwon: Keep your politics outta my damn food.

How is being a vegan helping a giraffe that died of natural causes? If we were vegans, how would that have kept the giraffe from dying? More plantlife for it to eat, more methane? What? I might demand to cut the balls off every Halliburton exec, but I'm at least pointing the blame game at the right party.

@TinkishDelight: I don't remember a real giraffe either but I just read this on Wiki:

"Geoffrey was then re-introduced in 2001, after being given a full makeover. He then appeared not as a cartoon character, but rather as a real-life giraffe who talks"

And now I do remember a few of those commercials.

@GitEmSteveDave_HasANewiPodTouch: So true Steve.
Even when I show people who adamantly support People Eating Tasty Animals, they still deny that those dogs and cats were euthanized. Bastages.

@glevkoff: I understand what you mean. PETA has done some pretty stupid stuff in recent years. However, they still expose a lot of legitimate animal abuses. You can't say that they're all bad or all good. But yeah, stupid, careless, definitely annoying at times.

How sad that the community can't just mourn the loss of a beloved animal without PETA sticking its big, fat, non-animal-tested nose in.

@Chumas: i think you missed the sarcasm in raekwon's post....

@Chumas: I was being sarcastic. Sorry for the confusion all. I just always see people apply the "If only your were Vegan," line to all types of animal cases that have no pertinence.

Personally eat meat or not, hunt or not, I don't care what others do. We all have our own lifestyles and right to live them. I hate animal cruelty but in this case I think it isn't involved until proven otherwise.

Peta is so full of nitwits, nutjobs and hypocrites that nothing they do can be taken seriously.
They're worse than politicians!

Needs "om nom nom" tag.

@Raekwon: If only more people accepted the vegan lifestyle, your sarcasm would be understood...

@Raekwon: the thing abt being sarcastic is it has to talk on similar lines. If the report said tht someone had eaten Tweet, then it would have made sense.

Even if is proved to be the tarp, being a vegan does not help in this case. How is being vegan help tweet from not being kept in a tarp?

@shadow67: It doesn't. That was his point.

I just always see people apply the "If only your were Vegan," line to all types of animal cases that have no pertinence.

@Raekwon: Well I thought the sarcasm was fairly obvious. But I guess one should never overestimate the intelligence of people on the internet.

Hehe. Toxic tarp. Get it? They're bad for economic recovery and giraffes.

According to unnamed sources, the mascot has quickly been replaced by another giraffe named Retweet.

@Shadowman615: I got it right away. Made me lulz all the way to the break room. I half-expected someone to be nomming on a giraffe.

@Shadowman615:
Here's the thing though. There are people dumb enough to actually say it without sarcasm.

What's the PETA equivalent of Poe's law?

Doesn't PETA have anything better to do? I'm sure there's some honest-to-god animal cruelty going on somewhere in the world. No need to create something out of nothing.

Or maybe they thought their reputation wasn't tarnished enough already...

I put PETA in the same category as Greenpeace. Those attention whores do their cause more harm than help...

SirWired

@shepd: Maybe if we all had banded together and collected leaves from trees (dead ones so as not to hurt the tree!), we could've woven a leaf tarp for poor Tweet and he wouldn't have died so tragically.

@harvey_birdman: Tarps aren't found in nature, so they wouldn't know to stay away from them, would they?

@harvey_birdman: It was in a zoo, and probably couldn't survive in nature anyway.

@MooseOfReason: don't quit your day job :-)

Don't worry guys, I'm back.

@sqlrob: This post made me kill a newborn kitten and eat it :)

Sucks for the Anima, PETA is a bunch of attention whores and I can't believe how many people can't distinguish between sarcasm and real thing. Kudos to harvey that comment made me laugh a lot

@Raekwon: People don't get jokes, I'm sorry.

@TinkishDelight: Those 2 points are the major ones, but also the support of groups that firebomb testing facilities, supporting known animal rights terrorists. The group harassing the director of Animal Control in Los Angeles sickens me. My favorite point is looking at pet owner's for donations and support, and then forgetting to mention that in a perfect world according to PETA, all pets would be set out into the wild and released. No zoos, no cats in the house, no dogs, no fish, no nothing.