Sometimes I feel so very down and discouraged when I read about animal mistreatment and cruelty to animals and it all seems so hopeless, but then something happens that shines a light and I think, "maybe there are more of us than I know".
I wanted to mention a few animal heroes I know about so you won't feel so alone. Of course, if you have read earlier entries you know about my cousin Bobby and Duncan Griffin, but there are so many others. Years ago there were great floods up north in my country. Cities that had never flooded were flooding and people were caught unawares and calling for rescue. On a show I heard a recording of one woman's call to 911 in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The house was surrounded by water and it was coming in the door.
The operator asked how many needed rescue and she said, "three adults, four children, two dogs, three cats, and two birds in cages". The operator responded that they would only transport the people, that the animals would have to be left and the woman yelled, "then don't come! We'll stay here and chance it because we're not leaving one of them!" All the people and all the animals were rescued.
In another flood a young couple were on their roof with their three dogs when a helicopter hovered over and lowered one of those rescue basket things. The woman was raised to the helicopter and the rescuer tried to put the husband in the basket when it became apparent that the rescuers were planning to leave the dogs on the roof. The husband declined to be rescued, stating he would stay with the dogs on the roof until the water went down. The young man and the dogs rode the basket up together.
Many, many animals were abandoned during the recent hurricane in New Orleans and many groups and individuals made great efforts to rescue and care for them. I have never been a fan of Matthew McConaughey, even if he is a fellow Texan. His looks don't appeal and his acting seems lacking, except in "Dazed and Confused", however that was really type casting, but I must stop saying anything negative about him, because in the aftermath of the storm he drove his truck to New Orleans and drove and swam around loading dogs in the truck and driving them to shelters.
So, you see, when least expected, in the most hopeless dark, one stumbles on heroes and one thinks, "I'm not alone".
Many years ago I was reading an article about the places in the Pacific that were monitored years after the atomic bomb testing done there, most famously on the Bikini atoll. I remember reading about how disfigured some sea creatures were and how the exposure to radiation had caused reproductive damage. Then I remembered seeing films of the explosions and I wondered how many fish and crabs and sharks and whales and whatever had died and how anyone could think it was our right to do that. I have always been bothered by all the horses dead in battle and the horses forced to haul cannon in the winter at Stalingrad, the horses who died in Napoleon's retreat, and all the animals that died in bombed out cities, the victims of our stupidity.
I hardly ever feel sorry for the people, most of whom seem to have participated in determining their fates, and who at least understood what was going to happen and had a chance to escape or hide.
So many creatures are destroyed as collateral damage to our progress by people who never even think about them: the builders, the loggers, the armies and navies, the scientists testing in their labs, the people who drive too fast and don't think it important to let an animal cross the road; I call those people bikinis because they never realize that all life is as important as their own.
Some nights I think of the dog sent into space by the Russians in the 50s, whose vital signs were transmitted and read until she ran out of oxygen and died, or the monkeys the Americans sent who made it back, but were then "sacrificed" so that their bodies could be studied.
On those nights the world seems very black and cruel, but then I hear the woman in Grand Forks, ND saying, "then don't come! We're not leaving a one of them!" and I know that I am not alone.
