It Doesn’t Hurt the Human, It’s No Different than Kicking Dumb Meat

I thought about Sweettooth being poked and kicked, grabbed by the back of the neck and pushed to the ground by Grosso, and I had to post this entry before publishing part four of “The Haunting.” I feel my tales all the way to my core, my Wicked Luvs; when one of my characters hurt, I suffer with them. I cried for Sweettooth when I wrote “Berries for Sweet.”

So if my heart aches for a mara, a nightmare eater, a character I made up! can you imagine the pain that squeezes my gut when I read that human beings pay money to watch how a “donkey is shocked with a cattle prod until he tries to run away, once he is running people on horseback run the donkey down, throwing a rope around its neck, and another one around its rear legs. Once roped the donkey is then stretched between two horses?”

I read Oma Linda’s words more than twenty times. I love my friend, but I wanted her to be wrong. I wanted her love for donkeys to have affected her perception of the world around her, and to have pushed her to write a biased article.

But you know what? Denial can be infinitely delicious… and just as poisonous as ignorance. Still, I wanted my Oma Linda to be wrong. I told myself, Maybe there are some organizations that practice some kind of gentler roping. So I looked for articles on donkey roping. The third title in my search read, “Team Donkey Roping – Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue.” My hoping heart held on to “peaceful” and I clicked on. The link took me to “Lashing Out,” and there I read this:

“It doesn’t hurt the donkey, it’s no different than roping a steer. There is no harm done.”

How can an intelligent animal say those words and actually believe them? I wonder how the human roper would feel if a donkey splits his skull with a hoof, and says to his buddies,

“It doesn’t hurt the human, it’s no different than kicking a sack of dumb meat; fun, bloody and entertaining. You need to see how all the other donkeys bray loud cheers when a silly humans scream in delight.”

Yes, saying that donkey roping doesn’t hurt is just as stupid as believing that a kick on the head is fun. Oh, pardon me; I nearly forgot. Donkey roping is just like roping a steer. See? Harmless.

Borrowed from SHARK

And the horses seem to enjoy the fun just as much as the steer does. Of course that isn’t pain so raw that would make any souled animal know that this horse took all the abuse it could handle. That would be inhuman. Who would do such thing?

Borrowed from SHARK

This donkey seems to be enjoying himself the most. See? He carries souvenirs! 

Borrowed from CNN iReport

No; my goodness, those aren’t sores on his neck. We are a civilized nation; a humane society of builders and helpers. We would never put a rope around the neck of another being, and pull and squeeze until rough rope burned flesh, or until the tension snapped a living neck; only a soulless animal would do that.

I’m crying right now. I’m angry. I pray to the energy that made us all, in hope that you are pissed off, too. For if enough of us aren’t outraged and willing to do something about things like this, then our children will only get the carcass of the world we wanted them to grow up in.

If you haven’t done it yet, visit Oma Linda’s “Donkey lovers protest World Championship Roping Contest in Van Horn Texas.” Let the producers of CNN know how you feel about it. Tell a little boy that he is right, a roped donkey most likely feels “alone, hurt, sad.”

And if you are lucky enough to live closed to one of these lovely creatures, be a darling and give them a kiss for me.

Borrowed from Olde Baggs ‘n Stuft Shirts 

I will publish part four of “The Haunting” this coming Thursday.

Don’t be too upset, my Wicked Luvs. I don’t want to share spoilers, but as the story of Luna, Leo, the crows, Jeff, Sweettooth… develops, you’ll see why this post was so important to me.

Save an ass, rope the cruelty of a heartless jerk.

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