Life: spreading

Let me paint you a little picture. Imagine a golden retriever, real cute thing. We'll call him "Woofy". Imagine you've grown tired of Woofy getting into the trash and spreading it all over the kitchen floor. Yeah, that really gets you cheesed. What do you do? Well of course, you lay out some bacon (Woofy's favorite). When Woofy goes to retrieve the bacon you've so obviously laid out for him, a steel bar catches him and instantly snaps his spine. It blocks Woofy's airways so it doesn't take long for him to suffocate to death. That'll teach good ol' Woofy not to play with the garbage anymore.

What? You're horrified at the picture I've painted for you? Your mouth is hanging open in disgust? Really? Well all I was describing was a dog-sized mousetrap. Plenty of people use those everyday. All the time. One probably just snapped a mouses spine in half. Yeah. I'm going there.

When, in the evolution of man, did we take on the God-like task of deciding which species have value and rights and which are nothing more than dirt to walk on? If I were to kill a dog in the way I just described I would be crucified in the media. Peta would be hounding me. I would be ostracized from society. Yet, a mouse is nothing to us.

It's not like a mouse can feel pain. Oh wait...it can. Just like we can. Would you be so okay with killing little Mickey if it could scream in pain like we can? I bet not. See, dogs can whimper. That gives them a human quality. Us humans love human-like qualities. It's just not fair. Why do cats and dogs get rights against abuse yet mice are slaughtered on a daily basis and no one bats an eye?

And for that matter, why are we allowed to hunt for pleasure? What makes it okay to kill an innocent deer but not okay to kill an innocent dog? And I don't want to hear the whole "People have been hunting for hundreds, even thousands of years!" excuse. Our ancestors hunted out of necessity. I doubt cavemen went out on Sundays to see what kind of trophy they could come home with, just to stuff it and mount it on the wall. As for the more recent past that includes hunting for pleasure, I really find the "back in the day" excuse quite flimsy. I happen to recall a thing called "slavery" being all the rage a while ago. Should we bring that back in style? I mean, the people of yester-year must have known best, right?

This is just something that has been percolating in my mind and it has finally spilled out on here. No, I'm not calling for a rally to ban the killing of mice. I just want people to think about what they're doing to the world. Just because your actions may not directly affect another person they can affect the world around you, including animals (not just household pets, I mean things that aren't necessarily cute and furry). Please, please just think about what I'm saying and consider the fact that I might just be on to something.