Selfish. Uncaring. Easily amused.
These are just some of the words that occurred to me as a few hours ago the afternoon descended to a base level of humanity that is frankly, embarrassing.
Even though it was still bright daylight, some of the less-patient folk found that they couldn’t wait any more and so random explosions began to fill the late afternoon air as flame hit fuse.
The Chinese have a lot to answer for and while some of the red sheep instantly think of “kung flu” as the dotard-in-chief called it, I am actually referring to fireworks.
As the first explosions began to go off, Marty came slinking into the living room with tail to the ground and as low a crouch he could get into, while still making forward progress.
By the time eight o’clock had happened, he was huddled frightened in a little ball, under a sofa.
So, I went outside with the camera and visited the locations where I had placed the food (as I do every day) for wild creatures to enjoy and these pics (at the end of this blog) are what I got.
Most of the food was uneaten. Trees were empty of the normal singing birds and squirrels, and even the bread pieces which I had scattered across the back yard were only attracting attention from the ants.
Now, to put this into context, normal evenings by six or seven, all the dishes are emptied. Raccoons, Possums, and Squirrels will have filled their little bellies on an assortment of healthy foods and sweet and savory treats.
Cardinals and Blue Jays, who normally appear as I throw the bread across the yard, will have polished off all they see and what they don’t see is carried off into the trees and eaten on high by happy squirrels.
But twice a year, the yokels discover fire and proceed to terrorize creatures all over the country. In the name of what?
Independence from britain or the arrival of a new year.
Really??? These ridiculous events are worth terrorizing countless numbers of little creatures, who have no fucking idea what is going on and flee for their lives from the torture that goes on for 5 or 6 hours.
They don’t know why it is happening. They don’t know when it will end.
But do the morons care? Not a bit.
They selfishly and without concern light fuse after fuse and gape in awe as if they have never seen a fucking firework before.
I mean surely by now every person on the planet has already witnessed every possible combination of colors and shape that the buy-one-get-one-free brigade in tents have to sell.
As in almost all other holidays, commercialization has long since taken over what the holiday was actually about, but presents under a tree or chocolate eggs with pastel colored wrappers, don’t normally cause widespread panic in the wild world.
Our reckless abandon of everything decent in how we deal with the non-human creatures on this planet is simply stunning.
They don’t have voices for their injury. They can’t hold protest marches. They can’t elect animal-friendly governments.
No, they require that humans have some sense of decency and responsibility for the creatures that share the planet with us. And unfortunately for creatures, human decency has long since left the building.
I am not railing against community or nationally organized events that are generally conducted in safe centralized areas, where consideration to wildlife and the environment has been carefully considered.
But I am against the reckless and overpowering back-yard explosions that only cease once the children’s allowance has been blown. As long as it doesn’t interfere with their beer money, more fuses keep getting lit.
Terrorizing wildlife twice a year is by no means the worse things that humans do to animals every year. Atrocities abound daily and typically reside under the radar. Only when something mind-numbingly awful is done, does it even make the news pages.
Interestingly enough, there are 10,000 emergency department injuries to humans every year from July 4 fireworks. That doesn’t even make the news either.
With their own association and lobby group protecting an annual sales number of almost $1.5 Billion, is there any wonder that animal interests, or human injuries (often to young children) don’t even figure in the equation?
And with 98% of all fireworks sold in the US being made in China, is it any wonder that tariffs mysteriously missed the fireworks coming in after $1.5 million in fireworks were donated to the dotard’s fireworks extravaganza last year?
Yes, it’s a big business. And like all big businesses in America, they manage to shape the rules in their favor.
And while you could argue that the human casualties (the 10,000 ER victims) are somewhat self-inflicted casualties, the millions of creature-victims are purely innocent collateral damage.
So pardon me, big industry. And pardon me boozy yokels. But for god’s sake haven’t we done enough damage to wildlife already?
Can we not just show a little compassion to the poor little souls that unfortunately have to share their planet with us?
