By Clint Younts
I give up! I used to believe the majority of Americans were fairly intelligent and know what’s right and what isn’t. Over the past few months, I have watched thousands of misguided souls hovering over a venomous presidential candidate like a flock of buzzards with a hankering for a taste of bile. I’ve watched my southern heritage get plowed up and paved over. Every night I hear news of somebody holding a gun and a grudge taking innocent lives while our presidential candidates are griping about emails and Trump University. I can’t help but wonder what has happened to common sense here in America. Has some nasty virus swept over this country leaving millions with tunnel vision and a deaf ear?
Just when I finally get my blood pressure down with the help of my cardiologist, Dr. Jack Daniels, I see numerous reports on TV and the internet about this event up in the Cincinnati zoo. Y’all know the story. A three-year-old boy clambers into the gorilla enclosure, and in order to save the boy, the gorilla had to be shot. The mass media is calling this a tragedy. Thousands of folks wearing poorly-fitted panties are going ape-excrement over the killing of the 400-pound male gorilla, demanding that the boy’s parents and the zoo officials be punished. When the people of this country are more concerned over the life of a wild animal than the life of a small boy, then we have a serious problem here.
I know I’m at risk of ticking off a few folks with my personal view of this horrible event. I won’t call it a tragedy because the child survived. I am calling it a rescue. Whoa, now! All y’all who just cussed me because I expressed my view should stand up and adjust those drawers you bought at the Dollar Tree. Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t dislike gorillas although there was one at a zoo I once visited who amused himself by flinging his feces at the human gawkers. I will go out on a limb here and suspect that ape wasn’t a happy camper. Perhaps the gorilla in Cincinnati also was a bit hostile about his current lifestyle, and an angry 400-pound gorilla could easily kill a small boy.
I just don’t understand the reasoning of these animal rights activists. I suspect none of these chafed protesters have a small child or grandchildren or they might be more supportive of the boy’s family and the zoo officials. Now, I don’t want to step on any sensitive toes, and as usual, I pride myself in being politically correct, but I am bothered by the rationale of these contorted animal advocates.
I have a dilemma that I’ve been pondering over. Hypothetically, if some animal rights activist were to take a walking tour of my ranch, and inches away from this visitor’s foot was a 6-foot rattler, coiled and prepared to strike, should I shoot the snake and save this person or let the snake do its thing? By killing a deadly animal to save a human life, would I receive the wrath of rabid protesters and others in need of a proctologist to extract their heads from their colons? What a dilemma!
For the record, I have no problem killing any animal that poses a threat to me, my family or my livestock. Human life should hold a higher value than any other species. I understand that many people will disagree with me. They may take the side of the gorilla, perhaps because they are more closely cerebrally linked. And it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see them supporting another big, poop-slingin’ ape who is lumbering down on the campaign trail.
Snakes, spiders, scorpions, cows, humans. They all live together in a harmony, sort of.
