People tend to have an overly romantic view of animal life, like they are perfect little beings eating, grooming, and mating out in the wild without interference from man, which is about as plausible as this: I came out of my mother's womb wreathed in a cloud of fluffy pink cotton candy. No? It's some of the worst ignorance, and naivety at its crassest, often greatly acerbated by the idiocy of those who are most public with their views, the dreaded high school drop-out that is the bipolar bisexual former cheerleader, and now "Hollywood's Newest Sweetheart"!
I saw a film with a well-known, spray-painted, bobblehead blond floating on a surfboard in a Japanese sea (she was there illegally) to protest dolphin deaths from fishermen while the documentary was being filmed, of course, which is kind of like applauding a hooker walking by you on the street dressed in a furry dolphin suit, just for handing out XXX flyers to the tourists milling around Times Square. Something doesn't fit, and who cares about you, anyway? No one wants you here! It's a pointless protest designed to highlight an illicit business through the pointing out of another more immoral practice, which is like washing your muddy hands in filthy sewer water. Who has the higher ground here, anyway: the hooker, er, actress, or the dolphin-killer? Dirty business, indeed.
The animal kingdom is rife with crime. We learned about the other side of nature with our guide Mike, during our Yellowstone adventures off the beaten path (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2010/07/american-bison-of-yellowstones-lamar.html). By the way, you should always travel with a certified guide before embarking off-trail, and those Indian students still living in New Jersey, this definitely means you, because bears hunt in the woods, even wealthy students from their richer dads who are sent here from overseas for school (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/nyregion/black-bear-kills-rutgers-student-during-a-hike-in-new-jersey.html?_r=0). We have our towns to live in, and they have the world. Get it? Anyway, Mike told us the story of an evil bear he saw killing without any need for hunting, just to do it. Yep, a psychopathic killer bear roams Yellowstone National Park. Have a safe trip there this summer, by the way!
And so, it was with little surprise that the cute and gentle otters of my youth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmet_Otter%27s_Jug-Band_Christmas) turned out to be criminal masterminds of their own kind. Otters are extremely successful in the wild, except when their parents are dead, which has launched a rescue effort of its own, too, because pups left marooned on their own in the water will die. I'm not saying you shouldn't assist in rescue efforts if you live near the water, nor should you club them to death, either. It's just that otters live larger lives than you thought, though cuddly stuffed animals at Christmas are just adorable, with some of the proceeds going towards rescue work.
It's just that some single male otters grab pups from out of the arms of their smaller mothers, to hold them hostage by threatening drowning, if she doesn't feed the bigger male first. Oh? Don't know that one? Okay, well here it is: male otters sometimes grab a pup and push its head underwater until the mother hunts for shellfish to satisfy its hunger, upon which the pup (hopefully) will be released back to its waiting mother, who now has to fish for the both of them. It would be weird to me, except for this: how many single mothers do you know who are underfed, underpaid, and extremely overworked? Not ringing any bells?
Okay. How's this: when was the last time you met an overwrought rich white Rep...er, male, in business? In fact, every time a single woman is "let go" from her job, she now has no health insurance for her dependent children, because women are overwhelmingly given custody of their children in divorces. And why is that? I think we all know why that is, but I'll spell it out for you here: because we don't murder our own children as often as men do, or the children of other people. It's counter-intuitive to our nature; to labor so long to produce a child that someone else can quickly take away from you. Uh uh. I don't think so.
Mothers fight harder for the children they love, and by extension, the children of the world, animals and human alike, though if the choice was down to my own kind and the otter pup, I'd like to think I'd choose a human baby first! That's what my mom did. What would you do? Think about it, especially during your next "cruelty-free" vegan sandwich, packaged by...well, you don't really care about the "who, how, or why" of it, do you? As long as none of those cute furry lil animals were hurt, right? That way, if they do get hurt, you can swoop in as their champion to save the day, while the cameras are still rolling!
Oh, well. Shooting starts at 6:00 a.m. for the newest "save the animals" commercial, and you need to hire your own driver for going to the set and back, and, well...this is uncomfortable, but...we've been having a resurgence of "homelessness" in New York City recently. Maybe you should hire a bodyguard? Just for the ride into town and back, though. Or, I don't know, you could just step over the bodies you see on the street every time you come into town, like you normally do when you're horrified to find yourself walking on the same city streets as those other people much lowlier than you. I bet they'd even eat real meat because they're so hungry, those filthy animals! Where's my cute little otter doll for the ride into the city? "Save the otters for me!"
