"In grammar school they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fairy tale. In the university they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fact!" -Ron Carlson
I got mad at work today. Really mad. Not that you'd have known if you looked at me, but inside I was seething. I really really badly wanted to bash some sense into someone's head. Specifically, the ignorant numbskull animal rights 'activist' who was standing outside the zoo protesting the ZSSD's importation of 9 African elephants. The animals are being imported because if they stay on the reserve in Swaziland where they are now, they will be killed. The herd's too big, so whoever it is that runs the reserve has declared that these elephants have to die. Lovely, hmm? So the SD zoo and another zoo in the States have gotten together to import these elephants and save their lives, except that for some reason, the animal rights people don't want it to happen. They would, apparently, rather have the elephants stay in Africa and be killed than come to world class zoos with state of the art veterinary care, no shortage of food, and keepers to look after their every need. So you can see why I so wanted to pound some facts into this fruit loop's head. These animal rights groups hear something about elephants in a zoo and they get all up in arms without bothering to learn all the facts. *gasp!* We can't have an elephant in a zoo! They need to stay in the wild where they can run and frolic in fields of wildflowers! Sorry to burst your bubble, but there are no fields of wildflowers for them to frolic in. People are encroaching on their territory and yes, it's a crying shame, but you can't put the people in cages to stop them. The best we can do for the elephants is to move them to a place where they'll be safe. If you don't want that to happen then you aren't much of an animal lover, are you? I suppose you'd rather have the pandas in the wild too, where they have almost zero territory left, and the few bamboo forests that are left are so isolated, the pandas would never find each other to mate. Thanks to you, the species would go extinct within the decade. At least we're trying to help, which is a heck of a lot more than you're doing, clueless weasels. So get out of the way of people who actually want to help, attempt to educate yourselves, and maybe you can find a way to help too. Either that, or change your sign from "Keep the Swazi elephants free" to "Keep the Swazi elephants dead." At least then you'd be telling the truth.
