Animals

Animals

by Richard E. Noble

Dogs and cats are being butchered in China for their pelts. An undercover reporter went to China, posing as an agent for a fir buying firm and with a hidden camera filmed his experiences.
He showed film of little kittens in cages all cowering in the corner, while a man with a string looped on the end of a stick, strung it about the neck of one of the little kittens, then pulled it tight and lifted the kitten to the top of the cage where it was left to dangle, kicking, mewing and struggling until it died. While we all watched the little kitten struggle, the camera caught the faces of the kittens still in the cage awaiting their turn with the noose.
“Those kittens are cowering in the corner with fear in their eyes. It is almost as if they understand what is about to happen to them,” offered the show’s host.
In another scene a man is shown walking a dog on a leash. The dog is wagging its tail as he walks obediently at the side of his master. The dog’s leash is then hooked to a fence, and the owner then takes hold of a back leg of the animal, slits an artery up in the thigh, and as the dog yelps, wines and whimpers he proceeds to skin the dog alive. As he peels the hide off the living dog, the dog’s tail continues to wag in friendly adherence to its master’s torturous demands.
The reporter comments that some of these pictures will be imbedded into his mind forever. I knew the moment that he uttered that phrase it would be the same for me also.
I wanted to scream out in righteous indignation at the brutal unfeeling Chinese, but before I could squeak out even a peep, I saw the dead, cooked carcasses of turkeys and chickens on my dinning room table. I saw pork chops and steaks sizzling on my Bar-b-que grill. I saw burgers and sausages browning in my sauce pan. And so, I thought, we humans choose some living creatures to pet and others to torture.
And how does a man who would like to consider himself as “good” rectify this sight with justice and morality?
I guess he doesn’t. Like much else in this world and life about us we simply turn our heads and deny that it is happening. We hire others to do the killing and perform the dirty deeds and we avoid as best we can the responsibility for even our own appetites. Or we perform the dirty deeds ourselves, and say that we have done it because it is so. But what should we do?
Well, I suppose that we could stop killing and eating other living things. If we can’t do that, we could at the least be a little more humane. After all, animals are also the possessors of that divine spark that we humans call life. Is it not that spark we attribute to the image in which we have supposedly been created?
“Humane”? That’s an interesting word, isn’t it? Humane does that mean treating other living things kindly, or does it mean treating other living things as we treat other human beings? You know - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
But, I am told that we are already doing that. It doesn’t seem to be working all that well.
Obviously we need to look for higher standards.