When turnabout IS fair play

It’s a dream come true for those of us who hate the very word “poacher” and the awful things poachers do to innocent animals.  Shoot, poison, trap and torture, cut off tusks or horns and leave them to die a hideous death.  All for money, also aptly known as “filthy lucre.”

Is this a great world for animals, or what?

Well, not often enough but sometimes, the worm turns, and the baddie gets his.  It happened last week in South Africa, where a rhinoceros-horn poacher was killed by an elephant (the “Enforcer”!) and eaten by a pride of lions.  The animals’ actions gave new meaning to “poetic justice”: they took the law into their own . . . paws. 

This situation invites myriad plays on words, and this time, it’s not triumphant man exclaiming, but advocates for animals who shout “Huzzah!”  It’s great that one poacher got his just desserts, or served as same for the lions. That poacher got his comeuppance -- or the opposite, his go-down-ance.

The newspaper story said the poacher’s end was reported by his fellow poachers.  But who knows -- maybe they killed him for some reason (dividing the projected profit from sale of the rhino’s horn?) and then left his body to the lions, who in turn left only a skull and a pair of pants.  Even so: one fewer poacher to apprehend. 
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/world/africa/south-africa-poacher-rhino-lions.html?emc=edit_th_190408&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=207602740408\

                                                              Rex-Shutterstock pic

If the story’s true, what a great kids’ book plot: Evil poachers decide to make money by killing animals for their in-demand body parts, but the animals have had enough of slaughter, and decide to fight back.  The elephant -- representing animals threatened with extinction by poachers -- steps up to stop the lead poacher, forever, and then the hungry lions, in memory of Zimbabwa's Cecil, the majestic lion lured off his sanctuary to be killed, finish him off.  Literally.

Let kids learn that such crime comes with high risk and that poachers might pay the ultimate price for their cruelty.

The only down side to this tale is that the Asian consumers, whose willingness to pay exorbitant prices for various animals and animal parts are driving the poachers to begin with, can’t also feel the wrath of the animals.  Traditional Eastern medicine values donkeys’ boiled skin, crushed lion bones, pangolin scales and rhino horns. . . and the Asian demand for ivory trinkets from elephant tusks, shark fin soup and dog and cat meat only add to the horror.

The recent report from South Africa was the second time that animals in effect punished a poacher. Last July, three men suspected of being rhino-horn poachers were killed by lions.  Again, money was the lure, with rhino horn going for thousands per pound, and whole horns selling for far more.  To obtain an entire horn, poachers drug the animal, then use a machete to “hack away at the face,” before leaving the rhino to bleed to death.

                                                                                                   NYTimes pic 

It’s not unlike the fate of sharks, whose fins are cut off, leaving them unable to swim or defend themselves.  Often still alive, they sink slowly to the bottom of the sea, dying of suffocation or being eaten by other creatures.

The animals in South Africa who killed the poacher last week ignored the Biblical injunction: “. . . avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

And who can blame them for ignoring that?  After all, it was the "holy Bible" that gave men dominion over “the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” -- or so said the translators and others who for centuries needed a seemingly official authorization for their cruel and murderous tendencies.

You go, animals!  

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