Love Thou Animals

Maria YuDecember 29th, 2006

This morning when I checked my email I read the email coming from the International Fund for Animal Welfare. It’s about how Russian hunters rouse brown bears from hibernation and kill them and make the bears’ cubs orphans.

The hunter’s dogs dig and bark at the den while the hunters wait nearby with rifles poised.
When the bear climbs out of the den, the hunters shoot and the bear’s cubs are made orphans.
Each year 3,000 to 4,000 bear cubs are left with no chance of survuval by the Russian bear hunt.
If the cubs are not rescued, they die alone or end up as “pets” or circus props.

You are their only hope!

This way of hunting really disturbed me. The bears are following their nature for winter hibernation and the hunters are taking this as their advantage to easily kill the bears. How cleaver these hunters are and how cruel they are. The email says, “Most bear cubs when rescued weigh only one or two pounds and cannot survive without their mothers.” Just how can these hunters bear to do this!

And there are human hunters out there killing seal pups. Every March there is a massive and brutal commercial hunt for white-coat harp seals on the eastern coast of Canada. These hunter use clubs to brutally hit baby seals. These seals of a few weeks old are skinned consciously and their carcasses are left on the ice to rot. In 2005 the Canadian government permitted a quota of 319,500 seals to be killed, but a total of 329,829 seals were estimated to have been killed. What a massive hunt! Please read this report to learn more about the seal hunt, it is horrible. As a result of global warming, last year many seal pups were drown because of thin ice. This winter is the warmest winter in years, how are these seals going to survive even before the hunt?

I remember I read a story about the early Eskimo hunt. They hunted one seal and took it back to the community and the whole community shared this one seal. They hunted one for all. Another story is the native Indian people prayed to the mother Earth and father Sky for food. Then a stream of fishes appeared. They caught just how many they needed and they gave thanks.

The universe is abundant and provides for all. But it does not mean we can be greedy and abusive.

In Creation, God entrusted Adam and Eve with the animals. That means humans are responsible for the care and protection of animals. Is it really the matter that these hunters need to kill bears and seals to raise their families? Can’t they find something else to do? Or do they just want easy monies? It seems that in terms of “Law of Attraction” these hunters do not know to claim a life of abundance and of love. Not a selfish love but a unconditional love that cares for all creatures. Or could these hunters simply have a perception and consciousness that prevent them to see and feel the cruelty?

The story I read in the newsletter of The House Rabbit Connection (a group of people dedicated to the care and rescue of domestic rabbits) touched me. A HRC member has a friend who hunted. This member encouraged the hunter friend to feed his rabbits whenever this hunter friend came over. Soon this hunter friend gave up hunting because he felt the liveness of rabbits.

So people need to feel life and to be educated. Growing up I had visited zoos and sea world but now I question their rightness. These animals are meant to roam, leap, jump, fly, or swim freely and unconstrained in Nature yet we build cages and concrete cellss to package them. They live there until they die, almost like a life sentence.

When I worked in Biomechanics I used t go to Orthopaedic Surgery conferences. There were surgeons and researchers presenting their research projects about studying bone fractures by purposely hitting dogs’ limbs and killing them. Twenty or thirty dogs would be killed in one project. I didn’t see anything meaning and value in their research. I learned more about unnecessary animal testing from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. PCRM opposes unethical human experiments and promotes alternatives to animal research, and it has worked to put a stop to gruesome experiments. I have great respect for people working for animal welfare and environmental conservation. They are earthly angels.

When my rabbit Snowball died I searched for the meaning of life. It is to love and to be loved. Snowball did exactly that in his life. Animals are so pure - we humans are just climbing up the mountain of consciousness but they are already on the top.

Rabi, After Meal at Play