I have a maple tree I'd like to press charges against.

I was tooling around on Amazon, looking at new books, and I happened to see a blurb for a book called The Sorcerer's Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter. Of course anything having to do with Harry Potter excites me, so I decide to read the description. It turns out that this is not a new book, but Amazon's description of its contents immediately caught my attention:

"Harry Potter aficionados: remember when Buckbeak, Hagrid's pet Hippogriff, was put on trial by the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures? This crazy idea was not invented by Harry Potter's creator, J.K. Rowling. In fact, from medieval times all the way up to the 19th century, animals and even insects were often charged with crimes, arrested, imprisoned, tried, convicted, and sometimes executed."

I had to find out more. I marched over to Youth Services and found The Sorcerer's Companion, and it does contain a description of how animals were tried for crimes as early as the ninth century up to as late as the 19th century. Caterpillars, flies, locusts, worms, rats, pigs, cows, horses, etc., etc., etc. have been imprisoned and tried for crimes, sometimes tortured and even hanged. Surely, I thought, this has to be a joke someone is playing on unsuspecting kids. It's too absurd to be true. Sure enough, a little research on the Internets confirmed this. Animals have been tried for murder, theft, fraud (?), destruction of property; tortured for confessions, and even executed (unless they got a pardon). In 1386 a pig accused of murdering an infant was tried, convicted and hanged. Her six piglets were charged with being accessories to the crime but were acquitted "on account of their youth and their mother's bad example." Now, I abhor cruel treatment of any kind to animals, but this really just makes me laugh. People were really stupid.
I love my job. This is the kind of awesome stuff I learn every day.