Maintenance Services has been doing some drilling in my office building and apparently upset a bat. My boss caught him in a box and moved him down to the basement where it’s dark and quiet, we’ve hope that he’ll find someplace to hang and sleep, and if we’re really lucky he’ll slip back into hibernation.
This of course is a hope of mine. It got me thinking about what people might do if they find out there is a resident bat in our building. What bothers me the most is when people immediately rush to “Lets Kill It” and spend exactly no time thinking about how we share this world with our animal companions, we don’t rule over it. I know this runs against what is written in several holy books, but I’ve never been one for those sorts of things, I respect my own instincts and my own beliefs than those “given to me” in some silly old book. I’m sure I differ in my opinions from a lot of people, whenever there is an animal caught after attacking a human the response is always the same, they kill the animal. It’s almost a reflex. This even happens when humans invade areas set aside for animals, like zoo enclosures. Nearly every year you hear a story about some inattentive parent who lost track of their child and the child scaled the enclosure to a bear exhibit and was mauled by the bear or killed. The response is almost always the same, “Kill the monster!” and this bothers me on a very fundamental level. I don’t do anything to hide the fact that I don’t think very highly of my own species and if one of us is stupid enough to invade an enclosure then mauling is the least they deserve. The animal doesn’t deserve to die for human stupidity.
Tied in with this, I received a message about how the US Congress was considering a bill to let the northern states conduct wolf culls and that really upset me. Haven’t we damaged enough of our world or do we need to do some more damage based on our greed and gluttony?
When it comes to animals, I really don’t see us as being any more worthy of survival than them. I see the world as belonging equally to every species, we just impose a will and think somehow we are more worthy than wolves or bears or birds. Based on population alone, the value of a single human being is 1 out of 6.8 billion. Compare that to say a wolf pack where there is 1 out of a thousand left and you can see which is worth more.
Next time you face an animal and there is a choice to be made, please select the humane trap-and-manage route and never ever the kill route. We share this world, we are not its dominators. Anyone who preaches that we are the master of this world should consider how easy it is for nature to kill us off in droves with storms and floods. We aren’t on top, the world is.