Lions Gotta Eat

Let’s keep things in perspective.  It is horrifying that, in the 21st century, people still starve to death.  It is horrifying that people in West Virginia cannot drink the water that comes out of the tap.  It is horrifying that people are still serving life sentences for possession of marijuana.  It is horrifying that police in America can kill people in cold blood and stone cold get away with  it.  It is horrifying that elephants are being slaughtered just for their ivory.  (If hungry Africans were looking for elephant steaks, I would not be as bothered, but the body is left to rot.)  It is horrifying that homeless people in American are freezing to death while there are plenty of empty houses  they could be sleeping in, but they belong to the banks and the banks are in the business of making money, not preventing people from freezing to death.  It is horrifying that children around the world, every day, are molested, exploited, mistreated and abused. It is horrifying that people in 3rd world countries have to work in slave-like conditions for pitifully  low wages.  It is horrifying that, if a giant asteroid were to hit the Earth,  there wouldn’t be a darned thing we could do about it, because we haven’t had the vision or intelligence to develop the extraterrestrial infrastructure that would be needed to defend against it.

We don’t need to get all bent out of shape because the zoo in Copenhagen decided to put down one of their giraffes. 

They Are NOT Playing

It wasn’t sick or anything, they just had too many giraffes, there was a risk their giraffe group would become inbred (the poor giraffe probably had lots of brothers and sisters and cousins).

It’s sad, but it’s not a cause for outrage.  If they’d turned it loose in the wild (and it would have been somewhat problematic just to get it to Africa – a  giraffe won’t fit on a plane.)  There was one guy with more money than sense who offered to adopt it, but the poor giraffe probably would have been miserable anyway.

So, they put it down and “animal lovers” all around the world, to the four corners of the internet, went nuts.  Of course, the grim details that people watched the skinning and the meat was fed to the lions made things sound much worse.  But, that wasn’t done out in the open, if people wanted to go in the buchering room they could, and budding young veterinarians (and butchers) probably learned a lot.  Then, the meat went to the lions, who appreciated it tremendously, I’m sure.

After a steady diet of hay and hamburger, I’m sure they were thrilled with a bit of variety.  And killing the giraffe probably let a couple of cows off the hook.  At least for a couple of months.

If they really wanted the zoo to be natural, they should just take down the barriers between the lions and the giraffes and the zebras, maybe throw a few cows into the max, and let the big cats go to town.  This way was actually much more humane.

Save your outrage for something  important.