Earlier this year, back in February, I blogged about a pitiful little koala that, through the compassion of a volunteer firefighter named David Tree, had been saved from the horrible wildfires in Australia. The people who worked at the animal clinic she was brought to named the injured creature Sam, and said that, with a lot of help and time, her badly burned paws would heal and she would be ok in about seven months or so.
Sadly, the first thing I saw when I signed online this morning, was that this little koala had been killed. The article said "euthanized", but as far as I'm concerned, that's just a euphemism for the more unpleasant truth. Supposedly, the poor thing had a number of cysts inside her body that had spread so much that there was no hope of operating to remove them. As I think about that, I can't help but wonder why her condition was allowed to get that bad. She'd been at this clinic, under the care of veterinarians, for half a year. Didn't they know earlier that she had these cysts? I wouldn't want the animal to suffer needlessly, but I can't help but wonder if the staff at the clinic were aware of the problem (and in six months, I can't believe that she hadn't undergone a thorough exam at least once) why was it allowed to advance far enough to be life-threatening, as they claim it was? All the pain of the burned paws, all the time spent healing from those burns, all for nothing. Then I read some comments from others who'd read the article. The callousness of some of them just made me sick. One said "it was just a stupid koala, not a person." I have blogged in the past about how I feel regarding animals and pain -- I am sure they feel pain just as strongly as we do. Maybe not in the same manner, but I'm sure they do, and to them it would hurt just as much as if we went through what they did. I tried to comment back on that board, but it wouldn't let me, saying i had to type in that crazy twisted text in the box, but the text never showed, no matter how many times I refreshed. I tried to remind that poster, and whoever else was echoing similar lines, that we humans are animals as well, that just because we think ourselves "civilized" doesn't mean we're right. I wasn't happy the koala had been killed after all it had gone through, but this person's attitude was making me almost just as mad.
Unfortunately, the koala's death wasn't the only heartbreaking story I saw recently. I don't remember exactly when it was, but there was also a dolphin that had been rescued, sick, injured and very close to dying, by a team from an acquarium in Florida. After seven long months of treatment and rehabilitation, the staff caring for the young male dolphin decided he was ready to be released back into the ocean. He was thus equipped with a sattelite transmitter so his movements and location could be tracked, and then he was set free off the coast of Florida. After some initial hesitation, the young dolphin headed out. It seemed all had gone beautifully. Sadly, though, within a few hours of his release, he was attacked by sharks once again, not once but twice, the second attack injuring him so badly he couldn't be saved. Once again, all that pain he'd gone through, all the time taken to heal... Some might say it's Nature's way, that maybe there was something wrong with him that no one knew about... But that still doesn't ease the loss of any life. I know there are likely thousands of animals like them about which you never hear, but those we do hear about... we can't let their deaths mean nothing.