Animal revolt

I saw a really touching documentary the other night. It was about the "gentle giants" - elephants - who are not so gentle anymore. Caretakers have been killed in zoos, circuses, and in India the conflict between locals and wild elephants is becoming more and more serious, with less space for the elephants and more people killed. And it is all our own fault. Now researchers have finally come to the conclusion that many elephants suffer from posttraumatic stress - one of the circuselephants who killed his caretaker had witnessed his mother being killed in Africa, before being skipped overseas. The facts that elephants are intelligent, familycentered and longlived should have taught us to treat them with respect a long time ago. And not only elephants. But they seem to be reaching their breakingpoint now, and we cannot ignore them. I can't help but think they are at the forefront - they are not the only animals suffering tremendously in various ways from human actions. For elephants the problems are mainly in poor countries, but the roots to the problems spread all over the world. And at the core is money and survival - again, the money being elsewhere, being distributed so lopsidedly over the world, so that so many people have to take desperate measures to make a living.

I looked through my album from my two winters in Sri Lanka, to see the photos of elephants I have (I'll include some later, can't start making noise now in the middle of the night, D might wake up). There is a note on one of the photos from a zoo: " a zoo is a place where animals can watch humans without being shot at". A witty sign, but unfortunately I think it is just there to make us feel better about keeping animals locked up.

Things have to change. Let's hope "Fire the grid" on the 17.7 helped a little. I tried to do my part, but D wouldn't quite cooperate. So no meditation, but instead being out in nature together with the most precious "thing" in my life (D) - appreciating the sun, the sky, the grass underneath, the summerflowers and grasses and butterflies on the sides of the path to the fields. I guess the message of 17.7 is that we have to remember and focus on the positive things in order to increase the positive energies and hope that when enough people do that, we will find ways to rescue what we still have.