There’s plenty of
other animal news to share here, but it will wait for later posts. Today the world-wide news item – the one
that’s frightening humans instead of animals, for a change – is the coronavirus
that began in China and is spreading around the globe.
For how long have people exploited and terrorized animals – hunting them, poaching them for their body parts, experimenting on them, slaughtering them en masse to
eat them?
Abetted by
biblical teaching about our dominion over animals, humans have treated animals
like disposable commodities who are here exclusively for our use -- and abuse.
But now, finally, people are “walking in animals’ shoes” for a change: wondering whether they’ll
be caught, whether they’ll get sick, whether they’ll die . . . Humans
are no longer in control.
And now, irony of
ironies: from a “wet market” in China (where animals are freshly slaughtered rather than chilled and where wild animals may have been sold
illegally) comes this
virus that’s spreading around the world, scaring, sickening and killing humans.
Picture this: Cruise ship passengers enjoying lavish (animal-based)
meals – now isolated for testing or quarantined -- and frightened. Still other travelers, from Asia, Italy, . .
. becoming ill and testing positive.
Theories abound
about various wild animals behind the spread of coronavirus: civits, bats and pangolins, the world’s most human-trafficked
mammal.
It gets even more
grotesque: Because there’s some
possibility that people who have the coronavirus may infect their beloved pets,
they’re advised to line up safe alternative pet housing, just in case.
For millennia, we have shamefully mistreated the animals who share this world with us. Now, as the coronavirus has spread from
non-human animals to human animals, are we finally getting our just desserts?
#
If you want to
comment on this post, just go to 1moreonce.blogspot.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment