What would the world be like without animals? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I’d rather live in an animal-populated world as we know it or in a world like Jurassic Park. I am, have been, and ever will be an animal lover.
So in a new article called “Praise God For Animals” I tell a couple of animals stories and finally put in print a record of my own growing-up dog, Peppie. She was a good dog, one I can still miss.
In that article I discuss what I believe God thinks about animals. He is, after all, the one who gave us animals in the first place. Yes, he made us humans smarter, but with our smarts he also gave us responsibility. We are his care-takers. We are stewards of the world and everything in it, including animals. So there is no place for cruelty, misuse or abuse, needless slaughter or any other decimation of a specie.
Loving animal life meant, for me, loving reading about animals. Each month in junior high and high school I read religiously Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, and Sports Afield. In time, I read some of the classic stories involving animals: Jack London's White Fang and The Call of the Wild, then Moby Dick, Animal Farm. I read and than watched Black Beauty, My Friend Flicka, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan books and later films. I watched Gentle Ben, Old Yeller, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, Lassie, and every other film or television program involving animals. Later still, I read some of Theodore Roosevelt's reports and books about his big game hunting and other expeditions. Loved them all.
Animals provide us with companionship, food and clothing and a host of other products necessary to life. They provide us with a labor force, intriguing true stories, and entertainment. We need to care for them, domesticated and wild. We could not do without them. Who would want to?
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011
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