In my heart, there is a different life for you. Wild and
free and true, instead of cold and bright and clinical, like the one you
were bred for. Perhaps you would have a name in my imagined world, if
wild rabbits care for such things. Yes, a name, instead of a number. In
my world, you would have *value*, value far beyond the "science" of
invading (hurting) you with a ventilator that will never be used to heal
rabbits. There would be alternatives, for in this other world, the idea
of using a sentient being as a teaching aide, of ravaging healthy lungs
beyond repair and then throwing innocent, broken bodies into the trash
like medical garbage . . . Well, it would be unthinkable. In my world,
the schools, hospitals and clinics dedicated to healing and easing
animal suffering would do just that, instead of marketing their charges
for a profit, to companies who use them and discard them like pieces of
machinery.
But you were born in this world, and so you never really
had a chance to live. I hope that somehow you know that, to one person
who was there the day you were drugged and paralyzed, your lungs ruined
with saline fluid and hooked up to machinery . . . to the one who
touched you with loving hands when no one was looking, and silently
begged for your forgiveness and raged that he could do nothing to save
you . . . and to the others who will hear your tale -- you mattered. You
were cared for, and we will not forget you.
~In memory of the millions of animals who suffer and die
needlessly in laboratories, universities and hospitals every year . . .
Go on to Cry of the
Wolves (poem)
Return to 19 September 1999
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