I have received over 20 e-mails since I last wrote just a few hours ago.
They express fear that the lovely ferret has been injured or is dead.  He
is very much alive, and has just had a bath.  I am surprised at how many
of you think I would write jokingly of the loss of a living being.
 
The e-mail I sent was in present tense, and describing a funny dirty
goofball and his feminine sedate brother.My apologies to all of you who
expressed concern.  But please know this:
 
I pray that I will never find it humorous to find any race or species
terrified, fighting for his, her, or their life, seriously injured, dying,
or dead.  Even my dead bat Harry got a wonderful burial.  I wished I had
known him in life.
 
That is not who I am or ever want to be.  But I welcome you to let me know
if you ever find that this is not true.  It would mean that I have lost my
way.  I will welcome the feedback.
 
Some Indian tribes, I have read, said prayers of thanks after they killed
their prey.  They thanked the animal specifically for giving up its life
so that they could stay alive.  I feel this way.  And more, because I know
that the animal probably suffered his entire life before the slaughter.
 
I will not Joke about a serious injury, or of a fighting for ones very
life, or the death of my ferrets.  This would-if nothing else-simply be in
extremely bad taste to do on a ferret list.  I hope that I will never joke
about any species or race in this manner.
 
I feel literally revolted when I read or hear of something that makes light
of another's terror and suffering or death.  Even if it is an imaginary
story.  What utter disrespect for life that is to me.  Let me try to
explain:
 
When Sunny got caught in my sisters heating duct, it was me who was
terrified.  Sunny had a marvelous adventure.  When we set him down-he was
leaping sideways and chirping with joy.  Thus I wrote in a joking manner.
It was a close call-but Sunny never knew this.
 
If it had been Sunny who had been in terror for his life-I would not have
written about what happened in a joking manner.  I once described how
Little was terrified in the woods.  There was nothing funny in what I
wrote, or in the way I wrote about it.  There is nothing funny about a
helpless animal in terror.  Any animal-real or imagined.  Not to me.
 
Laughing over a helpless being in fear for his life, or torture of a living
being, or laughing over the serious injury or the death of others-fiction
or actual-is the sign of a blind eye, and shows a calloused disregard for
others who are" not like us"--in MY strong belief.
 
Maybe it should be o.k. to laugh  at pain and/or suffering if...
 
He is just a Lutheran.
 She is just a woman.
 It is just a rabbit.
They sit in wheel chairs.
He doesn't smoke cigarretes or do drugs like we do.
They talk with an accent.
 
It is only a ferret.
[Posted in FML issue 3136]