Yesterday, a person who is a rather prolific writer in various newsgroup maintained in our company, had posted a few pictures of a recent encounter he had had with a Cobra. Let's call him SM. He and his wife were out shopping, when they chanced upon a lady selling the said cobra.
It seems that this was his second encounter with the said lady, and that he had seen the same lady trying to sell the same snake a few days ago. And apparently, at that time, the snake was rather angry, hissing and striking at passers-by. There wasn't any problem of anybody getting poisoned if bitten by the hapless snake, because the lady had "defanged" the cobra.
On the day of the second encounter, the snake was looking rather weak, and wasn't hissing or striking at anybody. Upon asking the lady, she said that it was close to dying, and that even though she was feeding it milk, it was just regurgitating the milk. Such was the ignorance of the lady selling the snake.
Now, though SM got his chance to personally touch and feel a "live" snake, he was feeling rather morose about the pitiable state of such a magnificent creature. That, because of human greed, non-human life-forms have to suffer, be forcefully removed from their natural surroundings, brutally violated its way of life, and made use of for human greed and commercial gain.
SM was asking what can be done. At the time, I didn't fathom that he was asking that question "philosophically".
I happen to know the contact of a person who is the head of the local PFA (People For Animals) chapter. And I myself have been in touch with this PFA person quite a few times when I rescued a few creatures and called him up on what next to do.
I gave SM the contact details of the PFA person, and asked him to immediately contact the PFA person, so that the PFA person could immediately rush to the spot, and confiscate the hapless cobra, and take good care of both the poor creature and the wrong-doing lady.
It was then that SM raised the philosophical angle to his question. He was questioning what would the PFA person do? The cobra had been defanged, and would surely be a total misfit if once again re-released in the wild? To this, I said, the PFA person will, in most likelyhood, not be re-introducing the Cobra back into the wild, and that he would personally take care of the Cobra, and that the Cobra would be in good hands.
SM then asked - don't you think that by doing that, we are putting frogs and rats to more harm? In the normal course of action, all those rats and frogs wouldn't have been caught by the snake. Aren't we short-circuiting nature's way by now helping a Cobra, albeit helpless, in continuing its way of life?
I hadn't thought of the situation in this angle.
But then, I immediately told him - did anybody ask the Cobra whether it can be defanged so brutally, and be made use of commercally for human greed? Was the Cobra given a chance to take this decision?
By helping this "defanged" Cobra with "artificial" food - by way of rats and frogs - though we are just ensuring that the Cobra is more successful at getting its food, are we doing anything against nature's preset food-chain?
SM was initially sticking to "I feel we are not doing this the right way". But when I put forth the argument, he was like "Oh.. hmmmm... Yeah... That is also there..."
Are we doing anything that is not normal? Are we trying to make two wrongs a right?
Why is it that every other creature on this planet needs to be put to enormous strain and misery just to satisfy our human greed and need for commercialization?
I do not like to say this, and I feel rather demoralized and discouraged, but I feel well intentioned channels like Discovery and National Geographic are fighting a losing battle against Human Greed.
There is this quote that is regularly aired on Discovery:
Our world can satisfy our needs, but can't satisfy our greed! So please - use only what you need!
1 comment:
In the normal course of action, all those rats and frogs wouldn't have been caught by the snake.
Not necesssarily... the snake would catch exactly what it needed. The human intervention would have to make sure the smaller prey animals are bred to ensure supply, so naturally there would be a lot more in surplus. Anyway this is only speculation, needs verification from PFA.
There's nothing majorly philosphical about it, I was just trying to be more pragmatic by not doing just the obvious but looking at alternative possibilities as well. It could be a zero sum game - whether the snake confiscated would result in another snake being caught. The people who solve such problems must take a broader view of the problem instead of just doing whats obvious.
Btw I did call him this morning, he was in a terrible hurry to catch some snake or something (wow) and so I requested him to call me back. I had only managed to tell 1 or 2 lines about her, and he said he'd ask someone to go there that was it.
There's no real cause for discouragement. The very fact that you care about them enough to have given me the PFA contact details is in my opinion a GREAT thing (it differentiates you from the masses). We see so often that one person who truly cares is all that's needed to make a lot of changes. Love is so powerful!
Another positive thing is that in my schooldays I used to see a lot of people with snakes roaming around begging for money, but now definitely such a thing is quite rare in Bangalore.
Btw, really nice writeup.
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