The Queen gave support to animal rights activists , today, as they launched a campaign against the multinational supermarket group, Wal-Mart.
Allegations have been made that the company was guilty of serious abuse of the humble robin red-breast..
The concern centres on claims that Wal-Mart operatives have been kidnapping the red-breasted song-birds and training them to whistle their company's T.V. jingle, before releasing them back into their bird communities.
Once the brainwashed birds start to whistle the catchy tune, their friends want to learn the tune as well and pretty soon, all the birds are singing the Wal-Mart jingle, thus giving the company free advertising.
The so-called ‘teach a bird to jingle' project is the brainchild of Dr Chris Walker of the Denver Academy of Bird Studies, who maintains that the birds love to learn new tunes.
Critics, however point to the abuse that the songbirds suffer in order to give free advertising and quote recent reports that the birds are forced to spend many hours in darkened cages.
Furthermore, it has been suggested that dyslexic and tone-deaf robins were kept locked up indefinitely because they were unable to remember the tune.
The scheme suffered a setback recently when the Queen and her Greek-born husband complained that their luxury London Palace was becoming unbearable because of the 10,000 robin red-breasts singing the Wal-Market jingle at 4 o'clock in the morning.
‘The bleeding ‘dawn chorus' is bad enough', explained Her Majesty.
‘But listening to thousands of demented robins whistling the Wal-Mart tune is enough to make one smack one's arse and call it a day,' she jingled.
