Something that was in the news recently is the shark attack that was on a lonely beach in New South Wales. A man in his fifties was swimming about and got attacked. Unfortunately he was soon pronounced dead. The news chopper, however, spotted a shark swimming nearby. They did not actually have any way of confirming that it was the shark that had bitten the man- that needs to be made clear. It was just a shark. They killed it.
It is news like this that makes me angry. Not just angry, but ashamed of my own race. How arrogant does a species have to be, quoting a man who suffered a shark bite himself [and lost both his arm and leg], to kill animals for fun? My question is one step further- how arrogant and infantile does your mentality have to be to say “it hurt me, I’ll hurt it- an eye for an eye, a life for a life.” It is within the human nature as well to say, you’re in my territory, I don’t want you here, I’ll use whatever is within my power. For us it’s guns, for them it’s teeth.
I’m sorry the man lost his life. I’m sure he was not doing anything wrong, and that he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m sorry to his family who miss him and I’m sorry that he lost his life for practically no reason, but I am also sorry for that shark, and all the other sharks that people kill every year because that animal killed a human. The circumstances are rarely explained to us- we just know that there are people out there “keeping us safe”. Did the shark swim up onto the beach and kill more people? No, it swam away. It did what it is naturally programmed to do and it kept on living, until it was “culled” [the politically correct word we use for “killed”].
And why was it killed anyway? They closed off the beaches- they could have just waited for it to leave. It is not fair. It is not fair at all.
I hope both rest in peace.
Pears 