A Day in the Park

I was feeling like crap this morning.  Maybe I shouldn't have eaten that expired margarine the night before.  But once I drove to a park and started walking, I began to feel better. 
I saw some deer.  They were staring at me.  I stopped and stared at them.  They weren't far away from me.  I smiled, waved, and talked to them.  I told them they were beautiful, and they are. 
I saw a guy and two happy dogs approaching me.  The dogs started to make their way to me, and the guy assured me that they were friendly.  I petted the first one to reach me as the other one ran toward me.  He was quite enthusiastic, and he jumped on me and slobbered on me, which was okay.  The guy yelled at him to leave me alone.
A little later, I could hear a dog approaching me from behind as I was walking.  Then I heard the guy yell, "Bucky!  Leave him alone!  He doesn't want you slobbering on him!"
None of this would have happened if I hadn't gone outside.

Cruel Holidays

The holiday season is when humans celebrate their dominance of animals and nature.  They put turkey carcasses and hams on their tables.  They cut down living trees so they can put them in their homes for a matter of days or weeks.  Then they unceremoniously toss them to the curb.  How much of this sort of death and destruction occurs during the holiday season?
It's too easy to be cruel to animals.  Meat is everywhere.  It's advertised.  It's acceptable to be cruel: especially if you're not getting blood on your hands.  Meat is too far removed from the animal it once was.  Perhaps they should put pictures of lambs on lamb meat in stores and on menus in restaurants. 
A coworker showed me pictures of 2 dead deer her friends had murdered.  She was so happy about it.  Also at work, a customer asked another customer, with a smile on his face, if he had killed deer, because he was buying a freezer.  He had killed deer.  A customer was buying a squirrel trap to catch a "dirty, rotten, stinking" (definitely his words, not mine.  I love squirrels.) squirrel, which he thought was funny.  I shudder to think what he would do to a squirrel if he caught one.
At work, we have a wall of cruelty, that's covered with gift cards to restaurants that serve meat: Burger King, Red Lobster, steakhouses, etc.
I don't have much of a reason to live.  At work, I'm surrounded by people who think nothing of being cruel to animals, whether directly or indirectly.  They talk about the meat they enjoy with smiles on their faces; they never let me forget it.  At home, I have to hear my loud, shitty neighbors.  Whenever I am, I'm always in pain and tired.  I've had a runny nose for weeks, if not months.  The skin on my hands is dry and cracking open as a result of the cold weather.  On the way to work, in a blizzard, I lost control of my car twice.  I'm lucky I didn't hit anything.        

Surrounded by Cruelty

It's not enough that I have to see and smell meat in the break room at work when I'm eating my lunch.  I also have to hear my coworkers talking extensively about meat.  At least 2 of my coworkers think it's hilarious to say that "Bacon makes everything better."  The 2 of them, and others, have repeated this over and over again.  I hate hearing this, especially while seeing their smiling faces, because I know what sort of extreme cruelty people are supporting when they buy bacon and other pig meat products.  They just go on and on, laughing and smiling, about the meat they like to eat.  It is so insensitive.  I can only assume that the animals they are eating mean nothing to them.  This is what animals, and those that really love them, are up against. 
A wise man told me that the only real hope "food" animals have is the development of vegan meat that is cheaper than real meat and also resembles it closely.
In the meantime, cruelty is everywhere.  At work, customers approach me, clad in leather, buying things like mousetraps, gopher poison, and beef jerky. 
I was flipping channels on my TV, and I saw a sweet, innocent, vulnerable, beautiful deer, who was foraging in the forest.  I was full of love and good feelings toward that deer.  However, I know that there are plenty of hunting shows on TV, and, indeed, this wonderful image was replaced by a hunter aiming his rifle at the deer.  I immediately changed the channel, because I didn't want to see that deer get shot.  Shooting at deer is monstrous.  Animal liberation is something that is long overdue. 

Turkey Day

My Thanksgiving wish is that adult hunters will be hunted by a maniac like Danny Rolling.

People call Thanksgiving "turkey day" as though the slaughter of millions of these animals each year for this holiday is something "cute."  What a crock.  Most of the people in this world don't care at all about animals like turkeys, chickens, cows, and pigs.  If you're one of them, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Someone on PBS has a heart.  Yesterday, they aired 3 shows in a row.  The first was about turkeys.  A naturalist received some wild turkey eggs.  He hatched them using an incubator and became their mother.  The little turkeys cuddled with him.  He'd walk through the forest, and the turkeys would follow him.  It was a beautiful show.  I'd rather die than eat meat.  The show that came on after that one was about ducks.  They are wonderful animals too.  I'm so disappointed that a show like Duck Dynasty is a big hit.  These jerks got rich by helping people kill ducks.  It makes me sick that they would become so popular and successful.  Ducks are cute, they don't hurt us, and people have every advantage when they hunt them.  I once saw a piece on the news.  There were a bunch of ducklings on the roof of a store or restaurant on the street of a small town.  They wanted to get down, but they were scared.  They were jumping, and a man was catching them.  He used a ladder to get onto the roof to gather the ducks who were too afraid to jump.  Then he stopped traffic as he led the ducks through town to a pond, where they safely jumped into the water.  It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.  That man, to me, is a real hero.  The jerks from Duck Dynasty are villains.  The third show was about deer.  I think hunting season just recently began.  I love to hear stories about hunters getting shot.  When hunters get shot, they get what they deserve.  If you grab a gun and try to kill living beings, then you deserve whatever violence comes back your way.  He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.  Adults who shoot at living creatures deserves to be shot at as well.  That's how I feel about it.