Was just picking up a few bits in M&S and there was a girl about 8 years old or so swinging one of those butterfly net thingies off her arm. On closer inspection I saw she had one in there (not the ones you send away for, although that would be bad enough, one that had obviously been procured organically)
Her mum was busy looking at something so I said to the girl ‘oh! What a pretty butterfly. That’s a large white. I except you’re going to let it go after you’ve finished your shopping, aren’t you?’
The mum came over beaming presumably ready to hear a comment about what a fun summer holiday activity this all is, and said ‘no, we’ll take it home, keep it for a few days and observe it. It flew straight into the net so we had this ready to pop it straight into!’
‘I said ‘well I’m sure it would have been preferred to be observed in nature, where it was, not caught in a net and taken round the shops. Don’t you think it’s a bit cruel?’
Anyway she was visibly annoyed, and said ‘it’s fine. My children are learning about nature! We know what it eats!’
Anyway she steered her child away from me and said some people are just very joyless and bitter.
Yeah I know I probably sound like a busy body but I can’t bear it when parents tell their kids it’s ok to just take stuff out of nature for their own amusement. Why is it ok to do this? It’s so Victorian, to capture a creature to just look at it, no thought for the poor thing at all. Don’t get me started on why they still sell butterfly nets 😭