Animal Envy

by Ralph Nader

  “After all, you slaughter cows, goats, pigs, mules, even horses. You eat us. You boast about sleeping with your pets, dogs, cats and others. You spend more time with your pets by far than you spend on your ‘democracy.’ You shower you favorite animals with luxuries beyond description. You train war dogs to fight your enemies and detect explosives and drugs. You work us to the bone. We consider it crossing over into torture. Yet you see zoophilia as a taboo and criminal, calling it bestiality. The times are changing.”

  Another animal pushed forward, since he had something important to say about animals’ sexuality as it applied to house dogs.

  “I’m supposed to be the star Maltese at the fifteenth annual Broadway Barks cat and dog adoption event, a benefit for animal shelters and adoption agencies in New York City. OK, I don’t mind being showcased and I hope I get adopted by a good family. But the hostess, Bernadette Peters, with all her good intentions, seemed insensitive when she said: ‘It’s important for people to see how beautiful these animals are, how adoptable they are. They’re all healthy, they’re all spayed and neutered, they all have their shots.’

  “May I say in reply: You’ve taken away our dreams of ever having children, of ever having sexual love with a purpose. How would you like it if we were on top and we began showcasing you, Ms. Peters and Ms. Mary Tyler Moore and Mr. Harvey Fierstein, and said how healthy you are, having taken out your reproductive organs or castrated you? I’ll bet a hundred sweet barks that you’d be more than upset.

  “Where are the animal welfare agencies when we need our animal reproductive rights?”

  All this talk about sex, even this last complaint, didn’t hurt the ratings one bit, but even so, the TRIAD felt the questions of interspecies love and the evils of neutering should not be allowed to get any more attention. As they had originally conceived this touchy-feely approach, it was not only about making humans feel all soft inside. It could be turned to advantage by showing how lovely animals were under threat of extinction. (It was a strategy well known to charity fundraisers.) So, going back to that strategy, they called a visually arresting animal to the mike.

  A Zebra Speaks Out

  “I am Grévy’s zebra. Your nature magazines and tourists have taken many pictures of my kind with what you’ve called our ‘dazzling striped hide,’ our large, round conical ears that can rotate in any direction without moving our bodies, and our set-back eyes. You might say we have evolved in ways to ward off lions and other attackers. But we are in hard times, having lost two-thirds of our grasslands near the horn of Africa, very little of it protected. We’re only two thousand left in the wilds, mostly in a sixty-two-thousand-acre buffer zone near Mount Kenya. We are very much endangered,” said the Grévy’s zebra with visible, deep sadness.

  “Just imagine what millennia of evolution have done to us to survive animal predators. One of your Nature Conservancy magazines described us as ‘hidden in plain sight,’ with our black-and-white stripes forming a type of camouflage known as ‘disruptive coloration. The stripes break up the outline of the zebra’s body, making it difficult to spot—especially when viewed through grasses and scrub in the African bush.’ But we can’t evolve fast enough to deal with habitat loss, hunting equipment, and crowding on fewer and fewer grasslands. And we never will. Please help us! ”

  Humans by the millions dabbed their eyes, seeing for the first time in the TALKOUT a desperate appeal to ward off extinction. The animal rights organizations worldwide took notice and prepared for appeals to save the Grévy’s zebra.

  We’re Endangered Too

  However, the TRIAD, who had not been monitoring animals’ reactions as closely as they had been those of humans, were blindsided by hundreds of species who believe themselves to be endangered, calling the TRIAD and asking to be recognized for a similar appeal. Those species that are not on the endangered species list formulated by humans were keen to take this rare opportunity to make the case for protection from extinction. The petitioners for human compassion included the polar bear, the Oregon spotted frog, the Canadian lynx, the elfin woods warbler, the wolverine, the Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake, the Pacific walrus, the lesser prairie chicken, and the Dakota skipper butterfly, their danger having been underlined in New York Times articles.

  There was no way all these animals could get on the mike so the TRIAD set up a special news desk at which a finch, a gnat, and a sea turtle would evaluate danger levels. If they came across a case where the animal group petitioning was in real, present danger, they would ring an emergency bell, signaling that a spokes-animal could take the stage to plead for that group, and the bell did ring often.

  Animals That Humans Think They Know

  Meanwhile, they saw the humans were longing for more stories, more touchy-feely ones, but ones, like those about the pig and cat, that dealt with animals they were familiar with; that is, domesticates of some type. To comply with this and also massage human egos by pointing to a positive program humans had established, they brought forth a heifer from Heifer International, one week away from leaving the facility to join a poor African family in Malawi.

  “I’m a heifer,” she said, “a special kind of heifer raised by Heifer International, a group that has helped fourteen million families in the last seventy years. You’re asked to gift me to a family who raises me for my milk and breeds me to produce a calf every year. The protein in my milk, I’m told, will transform sick, malnourished children into healthy boys and girls. My surplus milk will earn money for the family for clothing, school fees, medicine, and improvements at the home. You can gift me for only five hundred dollars.

  “I’ll admit, humans, that Heifer International, which also invites gifts for sheep, goats, and water buffalos, represents a higher order of intelligence than we heifers will ever have. But we should get credit for having the skills of making your predictions accurate after we land at our destination. No small performance. A Thai farmer was heard to say, ‘If I die, my family will weep for me. If my buffalo dies, my family will starve.’ A water buffalo increases crop yields with its manure and is able to carry far more bananas to market than a human, among other benefits it offers host families.

  “So why, oh why, if Heifer International is so successful, aren’t there hundreds of such groups increasing the number of all domesticated animals in the developing world? A good hen can lay up to two hundred eggs a year and can eat food scraps, help control insects, and fertilize gardens. A flock of chicks goes for a twenty-dollar gift. As former president Jimmy Carter, himself a farmer, said, the gift of one animal can bring health, prosperity, and peace. Instead you give or discharge weapons of mass destruction in many areas of the developing world, which brings war, death, and poverty. Tell me what is so smart about your human intelligence?”

  That last note was a bit sour, but then captive beasts have a certain license with humans so long as they obey and do what they’re told. The TRIAD decided to make a calculated risk. If humans wanted to hear about animals they were familiar with or thought they were familiar with, then, the Dolphin proposed, what about having some zoo animals testify?

  They had recruited a trio from a large modern zoo to step up. The gorilla and the giraffe came forth with a watery guest, the intelligent, scrappy giant Pacific octopus, the camouflage specialist.

  The gorilla started off upbeat, wanting humans to know that modern zoos are different than the old zoos where animals were often displayed in small cages. Most of the animals are now born into captivity and given more natural room to roam, though the zoo designs must be such that the animals are visible and able to be close to visitors separated by glass (as with the octopus) or bridges. The idea is not just to protect the animals’ physical and mental health but to, in the words of zookeeper Satch Krantz, assure ‘that they are moving about during the day, they are foraging, they are doing the things they do in nature, to provide that experience for the guest.’

  “Visitors want an emotional bond with the animal. ‘Connecting kids to natu
re, connecting people to nature,’ said Tony Vecchio, director of the Jacksonville Zoo in Florida.

  The really wild animals watched this unveiling of what they have long viewed as prisons with amazement. They were muttering among themselves. To them there was no such thing as “wild” animals in prison zoos. More recently, they came to realize that perfecting animal reproduction in the prison zoos lessened the urgency of protecting these species in the wild. And with sperm and egg banks proliferating, they wonder whether humans will care at all about their survival in the wilderness. Luckily, the humans were not privy to these disturbing musings.

  They were watching the next spokes-animal, the giraffe. “I do not harbor the illusion,” said the giraffe, “that my keepers care about my species’ desire to roam far and wide. They think protecting me from predator lions should make me happy. Because of the new apps I can now tell them that their own founder, Benjamin Franklin, once said that ‘those who prefer security over liberty deserve neither.’ That’s the way I feel. Give me the freedom of the grasslands of my forebears and I’ll take my chances with the lions.”

  Now the feral animals were nodding their heads in agreement.

  Meanwhile, the Pacific octopus came forward. Of all the speakers, she felt most cramped in the zoo, regardless of the little cave given to her. “Sure I’m safe from predators but confess to being bored out of my mind from incarceration. That’s why I nervously change my colors and textures so often and why I slam into the tank wall in frustration. I also have no companionship, no one to love or be loved by,” said this beautiful specimen so brilliantly adapted to the ocean depths’ known 250,000 aquatic species. “I know that our brothers and sisters in the wilds cannot liberate us, but at least do not deride us, for we are at the manipulative mercy of our human wardens.”

  Reading the e-mail feedback from humans, it was noted that many were interested in a controversy at SeaWorld, which was not a zoo, but still a place where animals were kept in captivity so they could be displayed to the public.

  It seems that a documentary about an orca whale in captivity killing its trainer and implicated in two other fatal attacks earlier is outraging the accused company SeaWorld, which is fighting back. The film producer, related the Dolphin, asserts that “killer whales are 100 percent not suitable to captivity,” a claim SeaWorld rejects, given its many peace-loving orcas. Litigation may follow.

  Numerous wild orcas wanted to comment and the dolphins selected some of them:

  Orca One—“The documentary is absolutely right. We’re carnivores whether or not we have an audience.”

  Orca Two—“That’s the way it is with us orcas, guilty unless proven innocent.”

  Orca Three—“Of course, our dear Tilikum, the captured and imprisoned orca, would never do such a thing, unless mercilessly repressed. We orcas only kill in order to eat. The human was not eaten or even injured. Too much stress on us did it.”

  Thousands of orcas did backflips in concurring unison around the world.

  Wild Animals Scorn Pampered Pets

  Both the octopus and the tale of the imprisoned orcas hit a sensitive note in the ferals. It gave them new empathy for animals living in zoo-like circumstances though it did not change their negative views of pets. The wild ones look at what they call the domesticates with a combination of pity, contempt, and, yes, derision. As they saw it, dogs and cats are bred into nervous nellies, pampered with store-bought mush, given clothes during winter, and subjected to drug prescriptions and about the same number of operations and treatments as their human masters, including colonoscopies and joint replacements. Some are given hospice and funerals, and on their birthdays their upper-income masters even give them pet parties where they can express their pet peeves and be relieved of them for the day.

  They have burial grounds, caskets, hymnals, and monuments. Dogs and cats have been known to receive major bequests by masters who predeceased them—these are the kinds of royal dogs and cats who get transported by limousines from one place to another. The wilds know—especially the tough wild dogs and feral cats—that these pampered domesticates couldn’t survive a week in the wilderness.

  Even their utility in guarding their masters or catching mice is rapidly atrophying. More and more of them are now used as ornaments or “comfortable shoes” or “children” for long-time owners. Some owners are now dog-pecked or catpecked by these domesticates, who sense such opportunities and flip upside down the power relations of who is the boss in the household. Every night one Boston terrier growls and starts tugging at his master to go upstairs to bed at precisely 10:00 p.m. Furthermore, to the wild ones, the fancy dog and cat shows put on by the wealthy ones are beyond bizarre and simply grotesque.

  They also found rib-tickling humor in stories of how about-to-be-vacationing human couples would shop for a just right puppy sitter or what the commercial services call “hosts.” Comparison shopping for these services was elaborate. The pet owners would ask whether there is health insurance available, where the puppy will sleep, the layout and safety of the backyard, and what were the favorite walking routes. The hosts’ profiles were analyzed and the varieties of prices and payment options were reviewed.

  Pet cats also had it easy. To transport them, humans used “cat strollers” sold by Kitty Walk Systems pet products on Long Island, New York. Strollers come in all sizes and extra dimensions; one called the “Gazebo” is advertised as a hexagonal structure large enough for your pet to entertain visiting Siamese and Maine coons in comfort. Another called the “Clubhouse” touts sunshade and a hammock. The owners of Kitty Walk Systems become minor celebrities, appearing on the Today show, Martha Stewart Living, and The View. And there was much more publicity. It was enough for two ignored Third Party presidential candidates to put out press releases saying they would don cat suits and go into the stroller anytime if they could get on these national TV shows just once.

  All the grousing by the ferals was leading to caucusing and complaints about the TRIAD’s leadership. Our three leaders explained that they had decided to follow humans’ demands by temporarily highlighting the animals that humans thought they knew, but whose real point of view they had no idea about. If the feral caucuses would just be patient, they would now listen to a side of the domesticates’ story neither ferals nor humans had been privy to.

  Pets Speak for Themselves

  A domesticated feline rose to explain his embattled point of view. Heavy and shaggy, this tomcat belied the worst stereotype of his overbred species. He was a good choice.

  “Humans and especially cat lovers, I rise to explain our predicament and the comforts of our lives. You know there is no cat free will. Our kitten litters are so fertile that they can’t be given away, unlike dog litters in which the puppies fetch a variety of nice prices. Our litters are often drowned.

  “Our owners think it is messy to feed on the few rats and mice we catch. We’ve lost our learned hunting skills and are left with what you humans call our genetic instinct to chase lesser mammals. True, in the U.S. we stand accused of killing over two billion birds a year, but they are so helpless when we pounce on them that it is not much of a hunt. The little birdies offer no real resistance in or near their nests; many would have expired anyway.

  “Humans think we’re incorrigibly independent, unlike their sycophant dogs, and they’re right. But we know that, even though we don’t fawn, we exist to serve and make our masters comfortable in their living quarters. We have no real duties. Our wants—food, drink, cat beds, and veterinarians—are cared for. They do interfere with our reproductive rights, spaying the females, but we can get out in the alleys at night sometimes. Then we can feel the thrill of freedom felt by the feral cats and the big jungle cats that command such awe from humans and their protective societies.

  “We really have no challenges and no purposes in life, unlike our animal kingdom wild-lifers. You ferals know danger and you have to live by your wits. There is a thrill to living in the wilds and the freedom to love
and to flee, to learn and to defend your young. You have more numerous clusters to your community. We are largely required to be loners and loneliness is our worst fate.

  “Enjoy your freedom while it lasts. Play and procreate and keep communicating your intelligence to humans, which advances your own survival.”

  Emergency Bell

  Just then for the first time an emergency bell started ringing. This means the three processors had come upon an urgent situation and had given the signal. Truth is, the TRIAD was thinking that it would be hard to find a more voracious flying insect to bring forth, right when humans seemed willing to be enlightened about the lives of animals they falsely thought they knew so well, and when they were in a somewhat mellow mood. Humans certainly didn’t want to listen to this next fellow, but they had to play by the rules they had established about emergencies.

  The bell was rung by the locusts—yes, locusts—and the spokes-locust rushed in to exclaim: “Since biblical times we have come out of the Sudan and Egypt in great swarms looking for food. It is our curse that we like the same food that the farmers grow, including potatoes and cumin. Just a few days ago, our remnants swarmed in the millions into southern Israel, which unleashed spraying “pesticides” from both ground and air, slaughtering us in great numbers. The farmers complain their crops are ruined, but they are catching and frying us for their meals. They see us as a crunchy snack and kosher.”