Saturday, November 7, 2015

Knowing Life Isn't Fair Doesn't Help...

There was a story today, of what was apparently an American Bulldog, who chased a wombat into a burrow and was trapped and people spent tens of thousands of dollars and a great deal of time to dig him/her out. I assume there was some truth in this?

The action sounds commendable, but it's very much looked at in a lopsided way. The wombat, who is indigenous to this country, and when in large numbers kept the forest floor excavated and aerated in such a way as to speed the decomposition of leaf and bark litter and reduced forest fires by so doing, was chased by a pampered pet. Not because it was in any way doing anything wrong, but was just there.

The dog went in where it had no place being. A child being chased by an adult should be able to get to their home and once through the front door be safe? Maybe not, if this story is anything to go by.

The dog gets rescued, dug out of the burrow, but in the process the wombats home is virtually destroyed. How can that be right? Why are we humans like this?

The yacht that has it's keel ripped off when it hits a whale has all the attention paid to the multi-million dollar yacht, replaceable, and the crew. No one considers the whale, whose only place of residence, the sea. Which is being used as a sports ground by a creature that has all the areas of the planet to play in? How badly was it hurt, and were the sharks already on the blood trail, even before the crew was rescued?

Our priorities are definitely skew whiff.

I made much the same mistake many years ago, and I feel shame about it still. Having gone to visit an old woman, we allowed our two Kelpies out of the car and they explored the woman's yard. We had no idea they had found, and were tormenting a snake till one of them was bitten and yelped. I called them off.

Before the dog fell over and we knew she was in trouble. The old woman asked me to kill the snake. I asked what reason there was for this, because the snake would go away on its own and it was the dogs who were the trouble makers. They attacked the snake defending itself against two adversaries, not the other way round. But she was adamant and I felt sorry for her irrational fear and to my shame killed the snake.

We raced the dog to the vet and the all up costs were over $1,000.oo to save her life. Yet she and her mate were the tormentors turned attackers and what they got they deserved. But I killed the snake? I must have been too young or still too stupid to do something like that. The dogs are not a snakes food item, because it wasn't a constrictor and they were at fault anyway.

Lessons to be learned here. But we see this sort of thing every day. The victim getting the blame for being hurt.