Someone to Love

Please write President Obama about the attack on Linda Brown!

This has to be talked about: The big reason why people want exotic pets.

They want someone to love. For some reason every human has a different set of affinities for different other creatures. Some seem to have no natural affection for anyone or any animal, and that's another story. Most humans can love some or all members of some non-human species, up close and personal the way that it should be.

The point of a free society is not just to tolerate diversity but love it. The fact that different people like different plants and animals is a blessing. We have three hundred million humans in the U.S. alone who can make a difference in the life of an animal or a plant by giving it a home and helping it to propagate With all the varied tastes, not only do people take in different animal species, they are certain to promote genetic variety. Look at the difference between a Cocker Spaniel and a Great Dane.

The fact that a person loves an animal is in itself a good reason to allow that person to keep that animal if at all possible, and yes, to allow propagation of that species. We should be suspicious and more than a little afraid of the people who try to prevent that. Those people often have a history of physical and psychological violence and alcohol and drug abuse. Take a look at the behavior of the animal rights activists who want to stop us from owning animals. That tells you in the negative. A picture of a cougar hugging his human tells you in the positive why we should own animals. The human-animal bond is more important than that little bit of safety that some people keep yammering about.

There is a duty as caretaker that humans acquire when we take over an animal's habitat. Fortunately there is also a surfeit of willing volunteers. To some degree all animals can be tamed. It's certainly a good time to begin the process of domestication when human growth threatens to wipe out several species. By making them more or less domesticated humanity can save them all.

A caretaker should love the animals that he works for, hands-on. This makes for much safer, more cooperative animals and less monetary expense. The caretaker deserves the love and pleasure from caring for the animals. He or she has earned it. Animals understand caretaker duties to the point that some have successfully raised human babies without human supervision, which is more difficult than caring for their own young. Wolves and tigers have shown that much understanding. There is also the story about the tigress who placed her cubs in Roy Horn's lap. She not only understood the duty of a caretaker, she assigned it!

Humans and the human mind do very well as assistants and servants for the animal kingdom.

An Animal Rights-ish Feeling

I have to admit that I like most animals better than I like most humans. When there is a quandary between saving an animal and a human, I don't always have a clear answer. Maybe I'd save the animal because I can eat the animal. Those questions don't answer the big question as well as how I live my life in real life.

Why would I want people to keep pets and livestock if I think that animals are better than humans? Part of the reason is because I don't think that better in some ways means better in all ways. Also, even if an animal or human is better in all ways, we can still associate and live and play together. They're really good at putting on their best to be with their humans and that's why they will always make us feel as if they are better people.

Love and happiness are resources. These are resources that humans provide for animals.Love is something that humans seem to be uniquely able to be good at in the company of an animal, largely because of something that I tried to explain earlier. A companion animal relationship is based on shared love, happiness, and pleasure. Farmers who keep livestock and draft animals also find that kind of relationship.

An animal that might have been doomed to a lonely search for the rare morsel of food, and that would have starved to death if it didn't, can find a precious resource in humans. Wild deer, bears, and raccoons routinely beg for food, or steal it, or scavenge it from humans because humans are good at getting food and often have a lot of it.

Even if animals are better than humans, smell better, are more pleasant to the touch, are happier beings filled with more light, are somehow morally or ethically better, they have uses for us and they love us. Nature produces an animal that can do everything that requires technical expertise simply because nature accretes genetic and outside-world information and that's how to deal with it, to produce a brain that can process this information in practical ways. Of course the other animals that are part of nature want a part of this. They have curiosity, even a sort of intellectual curiosity. They helped make us. They definitely have a right to share.