WHEN WE happened upon that story about Luis Moreno kicking Atletico Junior’s feathered “mascot” during a Colombian league game, we assumed he’d aimed a kick at a 6ft 5in bloke dressed up as an owl.

The video, alas, revealed that he had actually booted a real owl when it landed on the pitch, the fella dying of shock 30 hours later. The owl, not Moreno.

“Murderer, murderer,” the Atletico crowd chanted, their outrage seemingly mirrored by the rest of Colombia after the incident was shown on television.

“I can’t sleep. People are calling him all sorts on Facebook,” said Moreno’s mother.

Her son was a bit taken aback by the reaction to the incident. “The coverage made me suffer, it has been unkind, I just want to feel happy again,” said the native of Panama. “I was not trying to hurt the owl, or shame my country. I kicked it to see if it would fly.”

That worked well.