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On Those Disturbing Animal Abuse Photos: "Ah, Humanity!"

Just when you think there is hope for the natural world you get assaulted with stories and photos of animal abuse even from the most unexpected sources, like the Danish zookeepers who made a public spectacle of their orchestrated bloody baby giraffe murder. I am not going to repeat the details here; you can find the references easily on an Internet search. Then there are the recurring photos of Michael Vick's butchered and wounded dogs and the many many daily postings of local animal abuse cases on Facebook. I don't like viewing these but I glance at them. Not with the curiosity of an onlooker slowing down to suck in the details of a car wreck but as a woman compelled to feel the suffering of other beings so that the fire within me illuminates the path for healing work. I, like millions of others, am drawn to volunteer in cruelty prevention and abuse recovery.  I do it through animal communication and Reiki. And while I don't pray for the parallel suffering of the perpetrators, I do hope for karma and Divine justice. And I know I'm supposed to pray for the healing of the abusers, so I do with admitted reluctance.

If the earthly powers of reason can't stifle the violent two legged beast, then I look to the forces of Spirit for reprieve.

I still don't understand the 2013 killing of Lennox in Northern Ireland and maintain my membership in the "I AM LENNOX" group. I fear what might happen if I ever do "get over it." I worry that fading memory diminishes our capacity for compassion.

Now let me share the story of Midnight.
Midnight's Journey


Here I am with her, almost fully recovered, and her generous adopted mom. I was doing a communication session at a Palm Beach County  animal fair raising funds for local adoptions and animal welfare. The reading was to help her ease into a normal domestic life filled with love and she stepped into my hands willingly, accepting me as a stranger with good intentions.   All she remembers is seeing the fire, nothing else, but she still suffers from male induced fear and anxiety and reacts with self protective  barking even at those she knows well.  All she wants to feel is normal, beautiful. That dress she's wearing isn't a fashion statement but to hide and protect the deep and wide scars -- long, unsightly bald patches that run the length of her body from  head to tail.

At times like these I am grateful for  the echoes of soulful writers like Herman Melville who have retained a home in my heart over the years.  At the end of "Bartelby the Sriverner," a tale of a lamb-like figure who willed himself to death by sadness as the indifferent world ploughed  around him, the narrator, the conscience of the world, ends with a two word lamentation of  solitary suffering.  Do we grieve for the creature who suffered the pain or do we grieve more that our society continues  without a soul?    "Ah, humanity!"

Comments

Anonymous said…
I feel the same with stories of such animal abuse I'm haunted by accidentally watching a video link sent to me that horrified me for days I hurt knowing what happened to all these animal's and I don't understand why or what makes people capable of torturing another being. I'm also saddened for my future children and the type of world they might have to live in. I pray for a change in the hearts pof people and the way they view all animals.
July 9, 2014 at 12:39 AM
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