Animal Mothers Have Feelings Too!
From OXanimalOX@aol.com
Only a few years ago, a cat named Scarlet made headlines around the
world when she risked her life to reenter a burning building FIVE
TIMES to rescue her tiny kittens one by one. Even though her eyes
were blistered shut and her paws were burned, the cat did not rest
until she had retrieved all of her babies, tenderly touching each one
with her nose to make sure they were safe.
It's funny, we humans think we have the market cornered on motherhood
-- we've even set aside a day to celebrate it -- and yet a scrawny
stray cat still manages to show us all up.
Scarlet is not alone in her motherly devotion. Look anywhere in the
animal kingdom and you will find it. A dog named Sheba wrenched
hearts last year when she frantically dug up her puppies after they
had been
buried alive by her owner.
When a British bovine named Blackie and her calf were sold separately
at auction, the distraught mother broke out of her stall and went off
in search of her calf. The next morning she was found seven miles
away
contentedly suckling him at another farm (they were identified as
mother and son by the matching auction labels still stuck to their
rumps).
Even fearsome alligators can be gentle mothers, delicately cracking
open the eggs of struggling-to-hatch babies in their powerful jaws.
A tourist recently captured on videotape a dolphin mother grieving
for her dead baby, a phenomenon long reported by marine biologists,
but never before
documented on film. The entire pod surrounds the mother and protects
her while she grieves. "They'll stay with [the baby] and will not
abandon her, and the little funeral cortege will persist until the
disintegration of the baby," said dolphin expert Wade Doak. It is
also a sad fact that the greatest number of dolphins killed in
fishing nets are mothers and babies. The infants are too young and
bewildered to escape, and their mothers will go to extraordinary
lengths to join them, singing their comfort, even when it means they
too will die.
Yet there are those who still say animals have no feelings. "It is
only instinct," they say. "They're just dumb animals." When a cat in
Texas was beaten to
death by a group of high school students, their heinous crime was
defended with the words: "It was just a stray cat." Just a stray.
Like brave Scarlet.
Who are we to say animals have no feelings? Call it instinct, call it
hormones, call it the full moon, call it love, call it what you will.
Just because we can't figure out what to call them doesn't mean
animals feelings aren't very powerful and very real. What heroic
feats must they perform before we hear what they are trying to tell
us?
We show our indifference to animal mothers in myriad ways. We wrench
wobbly calves away from their dairy cow mothers within a day or two
of birth so we can have the milk nature intended for them. We clamp
intelligent pigs in "iron maidens," literally iron cages, that allow
the piglets to suckle but prevent the mother from ever so much as
nuzzling her babies. We shuttle off kittens and puppies at 8 weeks
old with never a thought to the fact that Mom might worry about them
and grieve for them.
Alice Walker noted the similarity between human and other-than-human
moms when she visited Bali and saw a mother hen and her brood
crossing a road. "She was that proud, chunky chicken shape that makes
one feel that
chickens...have personality and WILL," wrote Ms. Walker. "Her steps
were neat and quick and authoritative; and though she never touched
her
chicks, it was obvious she was shepherding them along....[H]er love
of her children definitely resembles my love of mine."
"Why did the Balinese chicken cross the road?" continued Ms. Walker,
who is a self-confessed struggling almost-vegetarian. "I know the
answer is,
To try to get both of us to the other side."
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Grace Slick’s Mother’s Day Message
http://www.marchofcrimes.com/gslick.html
PeTA’s Mother’s Day Card – Spoof
http://www.peta.com/news/0501/0501momcard.html
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Mothers' Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870
Mother's Day was originally started after the American Civil War, as
a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their
sons. Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation from 1870 by
Julia Ward Howe who also authored of the classic American anthem,
"Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
......................................
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant
agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage,
for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to
unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy
and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the
bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of
justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of
war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and
earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and
commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after
their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a
general congress of women without limit of nationality may be
appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the
earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance
of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement
of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870
http://www.peace.ca/mothersdayproclamation.htm
