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May 24, 2005

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Sometimes I wonder. Do animals learn these expressions from us, or do we learn it from, them? I think the latter.

 I don't know why, but it always seems that owls have some attitude. Maybe not directly towards us, but maybe towards life itself. Or maybe the life that they have been drawn into?

As I was walking around the desert museum I got this strange feeling that I was being watched. I turned around and here stood this owl, looking directly at me. Not on some branch or limb or perch. But just standing on the ground, looking right at me. I moved in a little closer. Yes, it was looking right at me. Not flinching, I thought it might have been a fake, like the bats I saw prior. But just then somebody else made a noise and it turned its attention to them for a moment. Then it turned it back to me. It was real, alright. It was alive. And it was looking right at me. And it definitely seemed to have an attitude. I took several more pictures of this amazing creature, wishing that there would be a way to help it in some way. Because, although we cannot really determine an animal's emotions, it did not look happy.

But that's where you all come in. Although you, on my email subscription, are a small crowd, especially since AOL attacked me. But please do what you can, where you can, to make a difference, in some way, to our environment, and our wildlife, and help in whatever way possible.

Our wildlife, although it is pleasant to view and behold behind a glass or a cage, should not be there. I realize that some of these animals have been rescued in some way or another. And I understand that they take very good care of the animals. But do they give the animal the freedom that it was born to have? 
I think that we all need to be a little more responsible in everything we do. By paying for admission to a zoo or wildlife park, are we not feeding the market to capture, harvest and gather these animals for our own enjoyment and amusement? 
Then would that not be the same, in some way, as buying a fur coat, even though we don't believe in the slaughter of animals for our own benefit and luxury? But in buying the product, we feed the necessity for the market, and then we are all guilty. 

So now we are faced with the perplexing dilemma of our own food resources.
 Do we, as carnivores, feed the market in buying meat products? Certainly. 
But where do we draw the line? I'm sorry, I don't have that answer. How much is necessity, or how much is overindulgence?
I guess that's a struggle we all have to deal with ourselves as individuals. And I'm not asking for us all to become vegetarians, or vegans. Because I'm certainly not going there myself. But I hope that we can all eventually manage to curb our appetites and learn to live reasonably within our excessive impulses. 

Now, the picture above was taken through a cage, with the focus of the camera creatively concealing  the wires of the cage. Now look below at our friend, in another light, and realize that he doesn't seem quite the same.

Suddenly I feel that a wild animal sometimes has the right to have a little attitude.

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