They Are Not Brethren

www.photolib.noaa.gov

Though I am both horrified and saddened by the death of a trainer this week at Sea World in Orlando, I can't say I'm surprised.

This post is not exactly on topic for my blog but as a veterinary technician with twenty plus years experience, I have seen my share of man's mishandling of animals. I feel strongly that many of our efforts are sadly misdirected.

While I understand the need to learn about animals, and for the conservation attempts involved, I don't think they need to be put on public display like dancing bears in a circus to do that.

I have been honored to work with many talented veterinarians over the years, whose specialties range from small animal medicine to marine biology. Never once did any one of them ever say to me:

"We really need to teach them to turn a few tricks in order to learn about the best way to help them".

It's just not necessary. Educating the public can be done without a side show. Funds can be raise without hosting a dinner and floor show by the animals.

Many years ago I read "The Outermost House" by Henry Beston, circa 1928 and this passage has become my credo. No one since has ever said it better:

"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.

We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man.

In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.

They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."

It's time to find a better way, a new magnifying glass.

Teaching Children About Personal Safety

Last week I received an email promoting a contest for teachers to win a classroom makeover from Got 2B Safe. Their website is about teaching personal safety skills to children.

Even though it is directed at classrooms they do have a free down loadable kit which can be used for homeschoolers as well. It includes resources for teachers, a personal safety quiz for children to take and a poster. All the pages from the kit are printable. The site also has other downloads to print including games, activities and safety posters for different holidays.

The Got 2B Safe program uses four simple rules that children can use in potentially dangerous situations – check first, go with a friend, it’s my body and tell a trusted adult. Hope you'll find this site useful for teaching your children about personal safety, I did.

Happy Valentine's Day

My son asked me to make him a sock puppet yesterday (sorry, the photo is a little blurry).

So I decided to make it a Valentine's Day gift as well.

I managed to find an old red tassel and I always have tons of buttons.

It was a quick put together and came out looking like a clown.

I also put a red felt heart on the front and my son named it "Coco".

He seems to like it...and this happy moment is mommy's

Valentine's Day gift :)

Sleeping Sisters

My son calls them his little sisters. Asia and Clara are about 5 months old now and doing well, despite a rough start. They are quite the team though and rarely separated.

I've had many talks with my son about picking up the tiny Lego pieces and he is really very good about it. It amazes me that they still seem to find them. Baby-proofing the house has been tougher with them than it was with my son!

Our older guy "Bug" is eight months old now and will be neutered soon. He walks, runs, jumps everywhere in spite of his birth defect and is usually watching over my son from nearby. After having lost so many of our senior pets last year, it's nice to have some youngsters in the house.

However, three kittens at one time is more than enough. That brings are house total back up to five cats, plus one difficult dog. We won't be adding any more (she says hopefully)!

Peddling Away From Home

My son received his first two wheel bicycle before he was one year old. My very generous neighbor gave me his son's old bike. It was in perfect condition and would only need training wheels when he was old enough. He was never that interested in his tricycle and outgrew it before he got much use out of it. We donated the tricycle last year to the thrift store.

One of the reasons for the lack of use is we do not have sidewalks here and our house is on a corner. Our driveway is very short and goes downhill straight toward the road. Not to mention the crazy teenager three houses down who never learned to brake for animals, let alone children.

So most of the time he rode his tricycle around in circles inside the garage. I know, not so much fun.

Well, I finally got around to putting the training wheels on the bicycle and off he went.

He can only ride back and forth in front of the house, and only when I'm standing out there, but at least he's peddling more than three feet. I still need to get him a helmet and then when he can go fast enough, we can bike ride together.

When I think of the amount of time I spent riding around our neighborhood when I was a child, I wonder if his bike will ever mean as much freedom to him. Of course I was nine or ten at the time, but we rode for hours away from our homes and I know my parents were never really sure where I was.

I can't imagine ever feeling secure enough to let him ride like that here. I suppose that's a sad reality, but then again he's only five so I may change my mind in a few years. Who knows, maybe the city will build sidewalks by then. Or we could just move back to Mayberry, circa 1960.