Living in an animals home.

As society grow and people populate the earth, the more that humans are encroaching on the animals habitats.

There is a documentary that I watched the other day about Mooses or Moosei not sure what the plural is, but they are coming into the cities.  And the problem with this is, is that they are attacking humans. 

It seems that humans are all happy to live with animals until they are threatened, but we don't seem to care what we are doing to the animals.

Mahatma Gandhi said "The greatness of a nation and it's moral progress can be judged by the way it's animals are treated".  And this is still true today.  We have started to move forward from animal testing, we are still suffering as a world with bad farming practices, and more people are starting to own exotic animals, that end up suffering or having to be put down due to lack of space or lack of cuteness.  This happens with dogs all the time.

I have worked on and off as a foster carer for dogs that are rescued from pounds, they are due to be put down.  The dogs have found their way to the pound due to various reasons, some are given up, some are neglected and taken away and others have been found abused.  On one particular occasion that I accompanied one of the rescue agencies to the pound I saw a dog who had it's eyes burned out with cigarettes, and various other injuries to it's entire body.  It was one of the most horrific sights I had ever seen, this dog had to be put down.  The worst part was even in this dogs death it was treated inhumanely, as the vet wasn't overly worried about using fresh needles for each dog, so by the time it got around to putting this dog to sleep, it was done with a blunt needle.  Not the most pleasent memory to have before you drift into death.

Recently I have read about a spate of shark attacks happening all over Australia, and I have just read about a Kangaroo that attacked some people.  In return the animals were culled, the experts say it's to prevent them from attacking again.  However, I have to question, if we didn't insist on living in the animals habitat would they attack?

It's the sharks ocean, it's the kangaroos forest. It's their home and their land.  If someone broke into our house, and we shot them, people would understand why we did that.  So why don't we understand when an animal attacks us when we are in their home?

I do believe there needs to be stricter laws on what animals we can own, it doesn't take all that much to be able to own an exotic animal such as a tiger or monkey.  The problem comes when people buy these animals because as babies they are cute and look so loving and cuddly, but then they grow up and the animal instinct to hunt, or to be wild comes out, the animal then spends the rest of it's life living in captivity, or is put to sleep.

But then I guess we do the same thing to humans don't we?  If someone does something that society deems wrong we keep them in a little box with only the minimum requirements.  And then I think that even prisoners are often treated better than these animals.


Much of the time the reason that the animals attack are because of humans, take the dingos on Fraser Island for example.  People had fed them their scraps for many years, then all of a sudden, rangers told us not to feed them, the problem was that the dingos had already become dependant on that food, and they weren't afraid of humans.  So what happens when the dingos are in the campsite?  They attack people because they wont feed them.  The result is that the Queensland Government has to cull a lot of the dingos, to reduce the number and prevent the attacks on people.  But at the start of it all was humans.  We domesticated these dogs and then expected them to become wild when we had, had enough.  The dingos didn't understand why, they were probably pretty pissed that humans stopped feeding them.  So they became agressive in order to get the humans to feed them again.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the earth is the animals land.  We don't have the right to own everything we see, we don't have the right to kill whatever we like, we don't have the right to do as we please.  As yes I know it is "just" an animal.  But when do we go from being humane to being no better than a predator?

Love you all

Sam
xxx