Sunday, November 25, 2007

Save the Animals

As media students, we are aware of the mass damage that goes on every day. We are aware that people in the world are suffering. This is why we chose to do our “activist project” on something other than the tribulation of mankind. Personally, I’ve never really been a “save the whales” type of girl. I knew that animals suffered due to poor human interaction, that dogs and cats went hungry and sometimes people did really bad things to their pets, but the topic had never interested me. It really just made me want to turn off the TV when I saw things like that.

I decided to go along with the idea, however, and when we agreed upon the devastation of mistreated circus animals, I can’t say I was overly impressed. None-the-less, I know this is a learning experience, so I agreed to help out with it. One of the other girls had done most of the research, so it was up to us to post the flyers around residence and hand them out in class.

I can’t say that I was overly surprised by what is still happening today. One of the things that this course has done is opened up my eyes to the cruelty of mankind. Still though, before this semester, I didn’t put a whole lot of time into informing myself of the world’s wrong-doings. I guess as naive as I was I couldn’t even fathom the idea that someone would want to purposely hurt a defeated bear or starve a zebra. Some of the pictures I saw during my own research afterwards were shocking, which is why I can admit that I didn’t spend too much time looking through the images that came up on “google image search.”

I did find it really interesting how one of the members of our group did the math and realized how much money the circus would be losing if we didn’t attend it every year. My family never went to the circus. I remember we did once when I was 14 and there weren’t any animal tricks there. I hadn’t ever thought that the circus was still a growing entertainment business, because whenever I thought “circus” I kind of think, “circus freak” and in today’s world I can’t see a place for that. Maybe that’s just me being naive again.

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