Wild Animals…
IN  Jack London’s novel “Call of the Wild”, which some of us read in secondary school, the owners of the half-wolf named Buck have to eventually let him return to the wild. No matter the amount of  kind loving given to him, the canine is still killing the chickens, for example.

We see this myth  of “harmless” wild animals cruelly debunked when Dawn Brancheau, an employee of SeaWorld amusement park in Florida was drowned by a killer whale performing for tourists in a pool.

She was at the pool side and it grabbed her by her ponytail and took her under. The whale also ripped-off one of her arms.

And we remember the sad death of Australian Crocodile Hunter and naturalist, Steve Irwin. He was stabbed in his heart with the spine of a sting ray, a flat type of fish, when he apparently tried to ‘hug’ the fish.

I don’t know of any Guyanese who keep those big snakes like anacondas as pets. But there have been some horrific stories of little boys and girls, even adults, in the USA being swallowed when the snakes are kept in houses like a domestic dog (sometimes the dog ends up being squeezed to death and swallowed).

But in Barbados, I see some people walking around with young vervet monkeys on their shoulders. There are colonies of them in what is remaining of Barbados’ forests.

The reality is that, despite the need to always send the message that animal life is part of us and need protecting  where appropriate, wildlife’s genetic makeup will always make them wary of humans. They are not domesticated. They are wild.

They will never, in the main, lose what London described as their “memories” of  killer or food gathering instincts in the wild.

Their innate defence feelings tell them to fight back when they  think they may be harmed. Those vervets (monkeys), when they grow up, will bite you. Wild animals may be cuddly when young, but they may kill you when older.

They will also protect their young. Its a natural instinct. We see these vestiges  of wild behaviour in common domesticated animals like cats. They may be purring alongside your leg one minute  but when you try and touch their kittens, with some breeds, they will snarl and paw you.           

Most urban areas in North America and Europe have strict guidelines about keeping pets and animals in households, including to ensure that wild animals are not a threat to people.

Dogs and cats, for example, may have to be licensed and neutered.

I met a Danish couple in Barbados who showed me a “passport” of their “husky” dog  (it is  the type that pulls the dog sleds on the snow). It even had a computer chip implanted under its skin.

There are good health reasons for this. We must support these regulations, including those already in place in Guyana and any forthcoming regulations. The People’s Republic of China has a strict policy on roaming dogs in urban areas. Among other things, dogs can spread rabies.

This brings me to the related  topic  of the “animal rights” campaigns in recent decades.

In my view, it has gone overboard in some areas. True, we must pay tribute to the raising consciousness among general populations of the need to protect wildlife. Some species were simply being slaughtered and going extinct.

Despite protective regulation, the poor tiger is some Asian countries were being hunted mercilessly so the poachers could sell body parts, like the cats’ penis, for so-called medicines.

The same with elephants killed needlessly for their ivory. Many countries, including Guyana,  have now more strict animal protection legislation. Greenpeace has done a good job in sensitising about endangered whale stocks. And promoting a safe environment for them can have good economic benefits – like the turtle nesting grounds in Guyana.

There are, of course, religious dimensions where some faiths have animals in their teachings. Tellingly, when archaeologists dug up former Amerindian village sites in Barbados, they found the burial of dogs done in a special way (they pointed in a certain direction for example) alongside human remains. We must respect such sensitivities.

But animals are not humans. They are there to serve humanity. For example, they provide protein (food) or transport. I remember a news item about a man entering a fish vendor’s stall in Europe and seeing the gills of a fish still moving. The customer complained that it was cruelty to the fish. The vendor  – and I think this is what happened – took a wooden club and gave the fish one blow to the head. “There, that’s the end of the suffering”, said the vendor.

Recently, a number of Canadian members of Parliament had ‘Seal meat’ for lunch in the House of Commons restaurant in Ottawa.

It was  a symbolic criticism of the over zealous animal lovers who wanted a ban on seal pup killing (the furs are used for clothing) on the ice flows off Canada’s east coast. Such harvesting of the pelts provided employment in an important fisheries sector in that region.

The MPs were quite right. If animal stocks are not endangered, they should be permitted to be killed to serve humankind – with certain exceptions. I still remember “digging into” a humpback whale  meat steak (tastes like beef if  properly spiced and limed-up) when visiting the neighbouring  island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The island has permission from the International Whaling Commission for its indigenous whalers to kill two humpback whales annually.

We must, however, recognise the importance of animals to our everyday culture. What better picture could we have of an elderly single person enjoying the company of a pet dog. We must cherish our pets.

Animals are there to serve us. We must respect  their contribution to our civilisation. And remember to respect the difference between domesticated and wild animals.

(Norman Faria is Guyana’s Honorary Consul in Barbados. Responses to this article can be emailed to: nfaria@caribsurf.com)