Too pitiful to title

In life there are things that mold us. That fulfill us. That touch our souls so deeply we cannot run away from them. They make us who we are. To me what touches me most are children, animals and our environment. But mostly…animals.

Does this mean I don’t care for children? No of course not. Children are our future. It sounds cliché but it is the truth. They are innocence. They are love. How could I not love them? But animals are often overlooked. They offer us the deepest love and I’m not talking about the kind we receive from humans, but rather the unconditional kind that only they know how to provide. They can tell us we are sick before we know it. They put their lives before their very own to defend us. They cause us no harm and mean no pain yet we are torturous to them in many ways and aren’t even aware of it.

It is torturous when we buy lets say dogs, from pet stores, for those very animals come from puppy mills where they are kept in tiny cages in their own excrement and urine. Where they are tattooed with a date that expires them and they get killed. Where they have such little space they can barely stretch or turn around in their cages. These poor puppies often times if they don’t get adopted stay there for years without ever seeing the sunshine or playing in the grass. The have to urinate on themselves because they don’t let them go to the bathroom anywhere else. They don’t have their cages cleaned. There are too many of them to feed or care for and they never get human contact.

Other things we do without thinking of the consequences of the poor animal, is eat them. Many people are lovers of frois gras and consider it one of the most delectable of foods. When they go out to celebrate it is often something they order. But the grueling pain the ducks were put through to get you your frois gras on the table is disgusting and inhumane. Some of the things they do is stick a thick and long tube into their little mouths and force feed them. They aren’t careful they just shove them in there regardless of pain, discomfort, infection, cuttings, etc. They force feed them 10 times the amount of food their tummys can normally hold so that their livers will expand 10 times their size. And only then will they be released of such pain because they are murdered and then put on our tables, for our “celebration.”

And that delicious steak? Oh yes, major torture. Everything from getting beat up, to electrocuted, to having their throats slashed in front of each other. Can you imagine the horror of watching your friends and family being murdered and knowing you are next? YES animals have feelings. Or the pigs and chickens…well I’ll stop here I don’t want to give you more details. You get the point.

Why do we do this? Why don’t we care? If someone did this to our loved ones we would be in an uproar. However since these animals have no voice we turn our heads and pretend we don’t know what is going on. In many cases people truly aren’t aware. Others think animal advocates are just being ridiculous and exaggerating.

Right now I am reading a book titled, “A Rare Breed of Love,” by Jana Kohl. If you haven’t read it and you are an animal lover I highly recommend it. It has made me smile and laugh and yes cry. Both happy and sad tears. Tears of thankfulness and tears of anger. It has also taught me a lot. Ignorance is no excuse to do wrong so reading it has enlightened me and made me respect and honor animals more than I even did before.

The story behind this book is of Baby, a poodle that was rescued from a puppy mill and her life traveling with her owner (or mommy) to teach people about puppy mills and how harmful they are. The photographs in the book are beautiful and inspiring. You can see the joy in Baby’s eyes that now she has a forever home. You can see that she no longer starves as she did in the puppy mill, and there are photos of her running in a field and she looks like she is in heaven. Literally. But Baby only has 3 legs. Since she wasn’t allowed to move in the cage she was in for 9 years and never steped out of it, her bones became brittle and one day she stepped of her adoptive mom’s home and lost her leg.

The book shows baby (in more photos than I can count) with celebrities and politicians. She is a famous little poodle now and she looks proud to be doing such justice for her friends she left behind in the puppy mills. Baby can’t bark because the owner of the puppy mills stuck scissors down her throat and cut her vocal cords so that they didn’t have to hear Baby’s barking cry’s for help when she was in pain and agony from starvation, diseases neglect. But even though she can’t bark, you can see the joy of freedom in her face. (this procedure of cutting the vocal cords is a common one amongst puppy mills).

One of the many celebrities that Baby met was Paul Harvey, the radio personality. There is a picture of her with him in the book and she looks like she is purring like a kitten she is so happy. I wish I could share the photo with you. I bet she loves all that loving after not having received any contact for the first 9 years of her life. She is so grateful to have a forever home.

When Baby and her owner (mommy), met Paul Harvey, he gave them something he had written a while back. I find it so true. Here it is:



PRIORITIES
By Paul Harvey

This is partly personal…

If your heart is burdened most by the starving babies of Sub-Saharan Africa, I will respect that.

If you lose sleep worrying about brutality within our prisons, I will respect that and do what I can to help.

If you are most anguished by the world’s ceaseless wars or by
The prospect of a nuclear war, your preoccupying priority defends itself.

Will you lend me mine?

My nightmares relate all of man’s inhumanity to man—
To our willing acceptance of cruelty to the other animals.

Somebody once sent to my attention a “humane mouse trap.”
The label promised that the “mouse dies in his sleep
Without pain or suffering.”

Before recommending it, I researched it.

I learned that the mouse smells peanut butter inside,
Enters the plastic box, and is trapped inside.

A spokesperson for the product said that 2 ½ years of testing
Had proven the mouse panics and dies of fright.

Or—because the area is so tiny, the mouse from hyperactivity
Works up a sweat and dies of heat prostration.

This, the label describes as “without pain or suffering.”
So much for the trugh in advertising.

I am going to try and be as dispassionate as possible about this.

I do not mean to suggest that it is but one step from
Suffocating animals to putting people in ovens.

It’s not.

It is several steps.

The first step is tolerating any pain which we cannot
Ourselves feel.

Anguish is anguish. It known no gender, no race, no species.

Pain is pain.

If it is your own child who is suffering,
You relate especially to his or her hurt
Any hurts to others---yours included
Are comparatively insignificant.

It is not that your child is suffering any more…
Perhaps your child is suffering less…

Than a mouse suffocating in its dark cramped coffin.

Your child is tortured. “That is hideous—a high crime!”
A mouse dies in agony. That is pest control.
And there are options.

So somebody allowed it to happen. Confronted with the options of allowing
The mouse to die in peace or pain, somebody had to say, “What’s the difference?”

There are equally effective options.
And civilization should have reached the point which we should care
which is which.

When it comes to suffering, the only thing which separates the smartest of us
From the dumbest is our vocal cords.

If we allow them to hurt only because they cannot speak,
May God have mercy on them—and us.

Caribbean Monk Seal Becomes Extinct

This is sad. The extinction of anything is, well...sad. But what makes the extinction of this particular seal so sad is that it wasn't due to "life" or "natural causes." It was do to US, the HUMAN RACE. We seem to be the coldest blooded-killers that have no respect for anything that does not benefit us. We kill innocent animals for our own profit. The forests for our own gain and even harm our own race due to envy, jealousy and too many other reasons to count.

We seem to be so proud of being "human." Walking around with out heads held high. Believing that we are the ultimate creatures on Earth. And yes, in reality we are superior to other animals in the sense that we have reason. That we have intellect and many attributes that they don't have. But with more power, more brains, more beauty, more of anything, comes more responsibility too. Did we forget that part? Responsibility not only to our own race, but to our 4 legged friends as well. To any living thing really. Why did we allow ourselves to forget this?

If I had one wish, it would be for Humans to start realizing the harm and destruction they cause and STOP. But who am I kidding? We've been the same...since the beginning of time.

This morning I read an AOL article about the extinction of the Caribbean Monk Seal and it broke my heart.

You can read the AOL article below:


CARIBBEAN MONK SEAL BECOMES EXTINCT
By James Song, AP
Posted: 2008-06-07 12:37:04
Filed Under: Science News
HONOLULU (June 7) - Federal officials have confirmed what biologists have long thought: The Caribbean monk seal has gone the way of the dodo.

Humans hunting the docile creatures for research, food and blubber left the population unsustainable, say biologists who warn that Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals could be the next to go.

The last confirmed sighting of a Caribbean monk seal was in 1952 between Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service confirmed Friday that the species is extinct.

Kyle Baker, a biologist for NOAA's Fisheries Service southeast region, said the species is the only seal to become extinct from human causes.

The seals were first classified as endangered in 1967, and wildlife experts investigated several reported sightings over the past few decades. But officials determined they were other seal types.

The federal agency says there are fewer than 1,200 Hawaiian and 500 Mediterranean monk seals remaining, and their populations are declining.

"We hope we've learned from the extinction of Caribbean monk seals, and can provide stronger protection for their Hawaiian and Mediterranean relatives," Baker said.

The Hawaiian monk seal population, protected by NOAA, is declining at a rate of about 4 percent annually, according to NOAA. The agency predicts the population could fall below 1,000 in the next three to four years, placing the mammal among the world's most endangered marine species.

"When populations get very small, they become very unstable," Baker said. "They become more vulnerable to threats like disease and predation by sharks."

Vicki Cornish, a wildlife expert at the Ocean Conservancy, said the fate of the Caribbean monk seal is a "wake-up call" to protect the remaining seal populations.

"We must act now to reduce threats to existing monk seal populations before it's too late," she said. "These animals are important to the balance and health of the ocean. We can't afford to wait."

Monk seals are particularly sensitive to human disturbance. And the sea creatures have been losing their food supply and beaches, officials say.

"Once Hawaii, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean were teeming with fish, but these are areas under severe fishing pressure," Cornish said. "They'll eat almost anything - shellfish or finned fish - but their food supply is waning and they're in competition with man."

The Caribbean monk seal, first discovered during Christopher Columbus' second voyage in 1494, once had a population of more than 250,000. But they became easy game for hunters because they often rested, gave birth or nursed their pups on beaches.

From the 1700s to 1900s, the seals were killed mainly for their blubber, which was processed into oils, used for lubrication and coating the bottom of boats. Their skins were used for trunk linings, clothing, straps and bags.

The endangered Hawaiian monk seals face different types of challenges, including entanglement in marine debris, climate change and coastal development.

About 80 to 100 live in the main Hawaiian Islands and 1,100 in the largely uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, a marine national monument.

Biologist Bud Antonelis said NOAA's Fisheries Service has developed a monk seal recovery plan for the Hawaiian monk seals.

"But we need continued support from organizations and the public if we are to have a chance at saving it from extinction," he said. "Time is running out."

As for the Caribbean monk seal, NOAA said it is working to have them removed from the endangered species list. Species are removed from the list when their populations are no longer threatened or endangered, or when they are declared extinct.