The Wild 1, Humans 1

Two stories caught my eye this morning as I browsed the news. They both contain animals not in the news that often. The first is Winkie, an elephant. Seems Winkie doesn't like the direction her life has taken. She used to be a performance elephant and now she's still in captivity....in Tennessee. Winkie has a history of being naughty to humans. Gee, I wonder why? Now don't get me wrong - I'm not a PETA supporter. All I'm saying is this beast has never lived a day of it's life the way it was intended to be lead, that's all. I can understand. It's like the Doctor that blew up his building in New York. I don't agree with the method....but I understand why he did it. Every once in a while we get tired of "The Man" telling us what to do. If you have any kind of backbone at all, you push back a little. Maybe Winkie decided "You know what, I'm sick to death of eating hay all day. Get me some peanuts, bitch". Do we know what really happened? No. Maybe the caretaker was having a bad day and did something to annoy Winkie? Someone will probably have Winkie's head on a wall by the end of the week. I sympathize with the trainer's family but if elephants were supposed to be in Tennessee, then they would be native to Tennessee. How pissed off would a PA black bear be if we dropped him in the middle of Africa and poked and prodded him all day? And speaking of bears.....read this. This bear is minding his own business in the woods, and takes a nibble of a boy's arm. He knows instantly it's not his normal diet and he lets go and runs away. Later the next day, the camp is cooking ribs and the bear comes back because it's smells cooked flesh! For this, it gets SHOT. First of all, how on earth do they know it's the same bear? It was dark and the kid was in a tent! So, if you go out in the middle of the woods and cook food and attract a bear - shoot it! That will solve everything. Maybe when bear hunting comes into season....you should just shoot a cow in the head...put it over an open flame and wait. Shoot anything that comes to check it out! Listen, I'm from western PA and I have no problems with the NRA. If I had $1,000,000 to give and it had to be the NRA or PETA, there would be a lot of happy hunters out there. Hunting and tracking take skill and precision. I'm not impressed however when someone builds a tree stand right by a path leading to a cornfield. A hungry bear smells meat and goes to it and gets shot. Almost makes me feel bad for the bear. It's also an ironic twist - aren't the Boy Scouts supposed to be about protecting and respecting nature?