For the Love of Animals! - Animals as Pets

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Animals as Pets

Click below for an incredibly important message about an incredible animal that should never, ever have been taken from the wild for the pet trade ~ I found this site just this evening (6 Sep 02) and couldn't be happier (so to speak) to help Jerry spread this crucial, but little-shared knowledge!

Click this image to help! Click this image for main site

This heartbreaking poem was sent to me by my friend KillerX- while it might seem more appropriate on the 'Experiments' page, I chose to put it here because it illustrates a sad and alarming truth: that one of the ways animals are obtained for use in laboratories is that they're stolen off the streets, the bad guys not caring whether they're strays or someone's pets - they're free money to the bad guys, who sell them to unscrupulous dealers for use in medical experimentation. Please protect your pets by keeping them indoors or under careful supervision when they're outside and, by all means, PLEASE spay or neuter them to keep the homeless animal population to the barest minimum!! And PLEASE, PLEASE don't offer kittens, puppies, or ANY pet 'free to a good home' ~ this is another all-too-easy way these horrible people get them!

"Rags"
by Edmund Vance Cooke

We called him “Rags.” He was just a cur,
But twice, on the Western Line,
That little old bunch of faithful fur
Had offered his life for mine.

And all that he got was bones and bread,
Or the leavings of soldier grub,
But he’d give his heart for a pat on the head,
Or a friendly tickle and rub.

And Rags got home with the regiment,
And then, in the breaking away -
Well, whether they stole him, or whether he went,
I’m not prepared to say.

But we mustered out, some to beer and gruel,
And some to sherry and shad,
And I went back to the Sawbones School,
Where I still was an undergrad.

One day they took us budding M.D.s
To one of those institutes
Where they demonstrate every new disease
By means of bisected brutes.

They had one animal tacked and tied
And slit like a full-dressed fish,
With his vitals pumping away inside
As pleasant as one might wish.

I stopped to look like the rest, of course,
And the beast’s eyes leveled mine;
His short tail thumped with a feeble force,
And he uttered a tender whine.

It was Rags, yes, Rags! Who was martyred there,
Who was quartered and crucified,
And he whined that whine which is doggish prayer
And he licked my hand - and died.

And I was no better in part nor whole
Than the gang I was found among,
And his innocent blood was on the soul
Which he blessed with his dying tongue.

Well! I’ve seen men go to courageous death
In the air, on sea, on land!
But only a dog would spend his breath
In a kiss for his murderer’s hand.

And if there’s no heaven for love like that,
For such four-legged fealty - well!
If I have any choice, I tell you flat,
I’ll take my chance in hell!

Please give Bettas ~ Siamese Fighting Fish ~ room to live!

We've all seen 'em ~ the poor, sad babies crammed into tiny plastic cups and stacked by the
dozen on top of one another in pet shops and discount stores. The bowls designed specifically
for them are so inadequately sized that I shudder with claustrophobia just looking at them. It's
supposedly true that, in their natural environment, they spend their lives in a very small space
and have no need for much room to move.

(Still working on it...)

Ahead: Keeping the Homeless population down

Please be kind to ferals!

~* Much more to come ~*

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