Nature of Living in the Wild
The average American probably understands, at an instinctive level if nothing else, that most animal-rights activists (ARAs) live in Fairy Tale Land. Like Bambi. The crazy things they do prove that.
Example: Years ago a woman wrote to a state Fish & Game magazine complaining that the cover of a recent issue was grossly unsuitable for children and if the magazine didn’t stop printing such inappropriate pictures, she’d have to cancel her subscription. Assuming an overly eager young editor had run a photo of a nubile fisherwoman in a bikini, I searched out the offending issue only to be disappointed. And confused. It was a painting of a horned owl with a limp cottontail in its talons. Horrors! A painting of an owl doing what owls do every day. Hide the children. Call out the FCC censors.
The odd thing is that many of these same ARAs often indulge in public displays of nudity to protest the wearing of natural, free-range, perpetually renewable, biodegradable animal skins. They strip, they prance, they dress down to the lowest common denominator on city streets. And they don't find this "unsuitable for children?" The PR value of such shenanigans slips my grasp. Prurient curiosity will certainly draw attention, but then, well, all that blue, goose-pimpled flesh should inspire most viewers to appreciate all the more the practical value of thick, silky, warm animal pelts. Someone do us all a favor and throw that fat, nude ARA a bear skin!
As for the naked female models and actresses in these displays, what’s the difference? On the street, in a movie, magazine layout or Internet site, a peep show is a peep show and we’ve already seen it. Recently one of those juvenile, bikinis-and-nighties men’s magazines (it was lying on a seat in an airport – I couldn’t help but notice) printed a reader’s letter complaining not about all the pseudo pornography in the publication, but about a picture of lions attacking prey in a previous issue. It read, in part, "The photo of the lions attacking the tearful hippo was one of the most disturbing and heart-wrenching pics I’ve ever seen ... sometimes ignorance is bliss."Just as we’ve suspected. These people prefer ignorance. Ignorance keeps them in tune with their loony tune world where hippos frolic with lions rather than get ripped apart by them.
That’s not beet juice. Last time we checked, this lioness rejected the vegan diet for raw meat.
Oh well, it’s a free country. If playing make-believe is necessary to retain a toehold on sanity, go for it. Unfortunately, wildlife can little afford such sentimentality. Old Ma Nature herself is busy with more practical necessities like sacrificing soft, innocent bunnies to hungry baby owls. In their defense, many anti-hunters mean well. They're just overly-sensitive souls ill equipped to handle reality. I feel their pain. (Did I really just type that?) But I respect wildlife too much to let ARAs have their way. This churning, screaming, bleeding thing we call life requires death to drive its recirculating pumps. It has neither time nor reason for molly coddling. Too many mouths to feed.
If anti-hunters really do wish to help wildlife, they should join hunters and realistic non-hunters in recognizing several facts:
There is no balance of nature. Populations constantly rise and fall in response to weather, fire, moisture, forage and predation. Some species go extinct (Brontosaurus); others emerge (mule deer.)
Predation is natural and "green." It’s recycling. Every animal lives by eating other living things. Nature doesn’t care. Get over it.
Pain hurts, yet is a natural defense. It’s necessary. That’s why it occurs in Nature. (If ending pain is their goal, ARAs should go around anesthetizing wildlife.)
Humans are not gods, angels or extraterrestrials. We are animals and must consume once-living things. We are no more evil than rabbits or foxes.
We help some species, hurt others. Wheat farmers on the northern plains plow under grasslands and drain ponds. This kills ducks. But the wheat feeds raccoons. But they prey on ducks, ergo vegan wheat eaters kill ducks. If we want ducks we either restore the ponds, abandon the farms or kill some raccoons.
Farming turns wild land to cropland. Whether crops are "organic" or not, they displace wildlife habitat. They must also be protected from marauding wildlife. Whether killed outright or starved, the animals are just as dead. Eating cabbage instead of meat won’t bring them back.
Nature is painful. It is bloody. It is cruel. But it’s also beautiful, wild, fecund, and real. And that’s better than a fairy tale.
