Cruel and unusual punishment

NO DOUBT many animal lovers have noticed two things in the papers recently regarding animal cruelty the other one being an advertisement by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and the other a letter written by someone who recently visited our Emperor Valley Zoo and felt compelled to pen a letter to the editor and bring it to the attention of the general public. The PETA ad showed a dog with a sad face tied up with a chain, and the message appealed to the public to be kind to their dogs and not leave them tied up or locked in a kennel all day. The letter regarding the zoo outlined the supposedly appalling state of both the zoo itself and the animals, and the letter writer said it was very sad to see the animals living like that.

I myself cannot say whether it is true that the zoo is in ruins and the animals are miserable and suffering, because I haven’t been to the zoo since I was in primary school and don’t care to go again because it was too depressing. I have never really agreed with the purpose of zoos, which supposedly exist to allow the public to interact with various animal species and also allow scientists to study these animals. But I’ve always found zoos — and more so travelling circuses — to be another form of cruel and unusual punishment for animals who are forced into captivity for our private amusement. I have a number of memories from my last trip to the zoo, the most heartbreaking being staring through the glass wall at the lion. I remember feeling very sorry for the king of the jungle, whose life forevermore would consist of three concrete walls and one glass window for us to ogle at him.

The ostrich, which I believe has passed away by now, had some room to walk around, but ostriches belong in the open, where they can run at tremendous speeds with their powerful legs. Then there was the wild deer pen, but the wild deer were always cowering in a corner. This also applied to the wild boar. I also remember the large snakes being kept in very small glass tanks, giving them barely enough room to curl up around a branch and zero room to move, crawl or exercise. And who could forget the monkeys who spent their days eating corn curls and hurling faeces at passersby? Maybe that was small retribution for having to spend their life condemned to a cage. No, I do not like zoos and dislike circuses even more. It just seems very selfish and cruel to condemn a wild animal to a life sentence in prison for being beautiful. Yet people seem obsessed with capturing and keeping animals, even wild ones that are not meant for domesticity, thus fuelling the multi-billion dollar illegal animal trade, which in terms of profitability ranks right up there with guns and drugs.

Take, for example, people who like to keep birds. Birds do not belong in cages. Birds belong out in the open where they can fly and be birds. I especially have a problem with people who keep parrots. Anyone who has ever seen our beautiful local parrots flying around in the wild, or sitting in a tree with their mates, knows that parrots are not supposed to be kept in a cage with their wings clipped. This is why parrots, the very second their wings grow a little too long, instantly make a flight for freedom. This also applies to those people who insist on keeping snakes and iguanas. There is nothing quite as sad as an iguana sitting on a branch in a glass tank with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Iguanas are wild animals, they were born to climb trees and run through the bush, yet we insist on capturing them and staring at them while they live out the rest of their meaningless existence in a glass tank.

Yet we happily adopt animals on a whim, take it home and put it in a cage, neglect it or even let it die due to our ignorance, all for our own selfish amusement and narcissistic and fickle emotional attachments. A lot of people have no idea what a big responsibility having a pet is — whether it is exotic or tame — which is why so many animals suffer from neglect, violence and sometimes death. And many people are violent and abusive towards their pets, usually because they have no other outlet for their bottled up emotions and frustrations, so the animals end up taking the brunt of our wrath. But animals cannot call the police for help, they cannot get a lawyer for protection, because they have no voice and they have no choice. Trinis also have a very bad attitude towards neutering their animals. Allowing your animals to breed incessantly is a form of animal cruelty and very irresponsible. Many people who have dogs couldn’t care less if they go and mate with every stray out there, not realising how many puppies end up dying on the streets, either knocked down by cars or by disease and starvation. But for some reason there is this ignorant cultural belief that spaying your animal is somehow wrong.

The worst part is that in today’s day and age even our Government is not interested in preventing animal cruelty. In fact one of the most disgusting forms of animal cruelty is taking place daily thanks to our tax dollars. Are you aware that the Port-of-Spain Pound, which is responsible for picking up stray animals, electrocutes them to death, rather than administering a lethal injection like other shelters do? Surely we have not forgotten the man who stabbed a dog and then doused it in gasoline and lit it on fire in the street to burn to death? Does anyone remember what happened to the man? He was fined a puny sum of, if memory serves correctly, $400. And more recently, when a whale washed up on our shores, what did a handful of particularly ignorant people do? They went and carved their names into the whale while it was still alive.

Perhaps we have this sick and cruel attitude towards animals — that they exist solely for our bellies and our amusement — because we have been sitting at the top of the food chain and thus animals are seen as disposable and lesser life forms. But anyone who has ever given a cat a back rub, and felt that deep contented purr rise from its chest, knows that animals have all the same emotions as us — love, happiness, anger, hunger, tiredness, pain and sadness. And as such, they deserve to live with dignity, respect and freedom from our human cruelty.
Email: emilymdickson@yahoo.com