if I had a paintbrush

"...The best you can hope for is to die in your sleep..."
>> Kenny Rogers


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August 10 New York Times has an article talking about conservation practices designed to keep animal populations in balance.  If you go on Google and type in


the new York times outcry for cecil the lion


the article will appear and you can read it.  (The rest of the headline is "could undercut conservation efforts")


List of Thoughts and Observations:


= = =   People who don't go hunting have a visceral reaction to certain aspects of hunting, if they have to hear about it.  Cecil's story is an example of this.





= = =   A recent Reader Comment from the U.K. declared Walter Palmer "a self-entitled arsehole"; another said, "I don't really see the point of setting out an animal carcass, then waiting, & shooting the thing when it comes to eat.  That's hunting??"


= = =   The aspect of this story which was painful to me, in my mind, was that this animal was lured (unfairly, it seemed) out of a wild game preserve. 


To me, the visceral horror came from a sense that this method was akin to "going hunting" at a zoo, or luring someone's pet dog or cat out of its owner's yard and then shooting it with a bow and arrow.  A game preserve is not for hunting.  They should have stayed away from it.


= = =   The U.K. Readers who were commenting felt the luring of the animal was unfair, and ignoble.  And then one was adding in, "Hey there's some #_*&! on You Tube who shot an elephant that was asleep!" 


He did not like that -- not a Fair Chase.  On the other hand, I cannot help but think, what's worse, if I were an elephant, to be shot while asleep, or to be chased, and being terrified, and then killed? 


I think experts consider "putting" an animal "down" while it's asleep, unconscious, whatever, is the humane method. 


(What I want to know is, was that sleeping elephant wearing Groucho Marx's pajamas?)


= = =   Aspects of hunting are disgusting / distressing / disturbing to people who --


 - Do not go hunting themselves
 - Have certain personality characteristics and sensibilities and perceptions (or, as some hunters might say, "are idiots")...







= = =   One reader commented:  these greedy trophy hunters do not have the right to "strip the planet" of these beautiful animals


= = =   Farmers, meanwhile, have animal welfare (or "rights") activists at them on one side, and on the other side, hunting enthusiasts and conservationists who advocate saving some land for wildlife because otherwise "they'll farm it all! -- there will be nothing left..."


= = =   "The biggest threat to African lions is not hunters but the loss of wild habitat through human overpopulation, development, and climate change." -- Don Thomas, Traditional Bowhunter







(I'm Reb Tevye, here:
"You are right.  And you are right.  And you also are right.")








I still can hardly believe that Minnesota dentist is "in hiding" from those peaceful protesters and Internet-keyboardists.


When people protested the Vietnam War in Washington in the Sixties, President Nixon didn't go into hiding.  (Should we maybe say that -- Walter Palmer is "no Richard Nixon" - ?)


And who on this planet has had more silly-mean-stupid things said against him on the Internet than President Obama?  We don't see him going-into-hiding and "calling-in" to work.  (Walter Palmer -- "is no Barack Obama.")


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An excellent version of the "peaceful protest" is the artist who set up his easel in what appears to be the parking lot of Walter Palmer's dentist-office and simply painted a picture of Cecil the lion.





Protest is being done wrong, to some extent, in Ferguson; protest must be nonviolent.  Don't loot or say mean things; make a painting.








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