Heart 4 Animals

Dear Suffering Animals , I’m so sorry

I wish there’s more that I could help

I think about you who are defenceless against we humans,

little dogs caged in wire confines yelping away, taken away from your parents days after you were born.

caged in that little space living in your own urine and faeces..scarcely a concern of those who profit from your sale
for mommy dogs, never to have experienced the clean sensation of a fresh smelling bath, humped on each period to breed and bear puppies in the puppy mills,

each offspring whisked off somewhere or killed, depending on their conditions , for in-breeding triggers abnormalities which the rich would be horrified to see in the cute puppy trade

Panting from the sweltering heat of the day, how we need to lap up some clean water that’s nowhere in sight

in the cold months of Fall and Winter, how we long to be in your houses , where warm lights glow and shimmer behind the curtained windows. ..some days, my caged companions never wake up from their frozen slumber after spasmodic shudders in the night

I think about you — the family of African elephants trying to escape from the firing squad, always hiding somewhere for you

…not many escape, those who do have shot wounds in their flesh that fester with maggots in the savanna plains,

and your unfortunate loved ones collapse to the ground injured, stricken by armour-piercing bullets, while my human poachers run excitedly towards their prized catch of the day

My heart pains for the baby seals bludgeoned to semi-consciousness, while their moms plead for mercy at the hunters swiping away at their heads to deal that crucial blow

Consider it lucky to suffer an instantaneous death , or else suffer an ignominious pain while my human hunters tear off your blood-soaked coat of fur in your throes of slow death… I cringe at the thought of your skin-less baby freshly stripped and tossed into the mass of red snow, alive,  in extreme pain and crying till it whimpers its last breath.

Somewhere in a lab, the lights turn on a few minutes before office hours, and you wonder, what’s going to happen to us today? We scutter about nervously in our cages; somewhere frantic screeches could be heard.

Will I or my fellow caged friends suffer the excruciating pain and torture?

At that instant, somewhere on many TVs and myriad communication media, flashy commercials beckon with the latest new formula shampoos, anti-ageing cream and body wash

a pair of gloved hands reaches in and grabs a struggling rabbit, injects some fluid into its arteries . As its taut muscles relaxes, liquid chemicals are deftly applied to its eyes and shaven skin during its sleep

it wakes up with an unstoppable burn…blinded by the chemicals, too abrasive for the next new formula. Oops, this doesn’t work, notes the researcher

Sometimes, I wish there was no birth.

I wish animals never have sex, I wish eggs never hatched

for in many cases, it’s better never to have an opportunity to live, and then be sentenced to a life of misery which grows worse each day

Foie gras, veal, farmed chicken….anyone ?

A calf snatched away from its mother and confined for the rest of its life in its small pen to keep its meat supple, so that we may enjoy tender veal ? NOT ME !

Geese and ducks machine-pumped with food through their beaks forced open by strong farm-hands

It’s not a meal-time to look forward to I bet… each passing day, these ducks and geese grow weaker with a bloating liver that increases to reach foie gras proportions, that’s the time to be served in some high-end restaurant

> Visit NoFoieGras.org to see how it is made

Chickens in cages, well, the story goes on…as long as their trip along the never-ending roads,

Transported from one place to another in their tight coops, their beaks gasping for air from the pack crammed into a tight crate, amidst the foulness of their dried droppings and tongues parched from the heat and thirst

no option to rest, stand they must with the rest of the pack.

The many which collapse from mere exhaustion can only be discovered when their journey ends , as live chickens are wrenched away from the coops into a processing centre, and they topple to be chucked into some grinding machine with a petrified squawk

Animals may not be smarter than any one of us humans (except perhaps dolphins), but each one has a life like ours.

They experience fear and the sensation of pain.

I’m not sure how to ask humans to change their perspective on animals, to treat them with care

if only love for animals was fostered at a young age to nurture compassion!

Would humans care to spend some time putting themselves in the shoes of these animals ? Perhaps they don’t have the time, or see no need to.

What if humans were one day to be dominated by some other “superior”, or more powerful species and be treated like these animals ?

I wonder.

letter to animals, April 10, 2008, by Andrew Wee