Toby, of Fauna Sanctuary
"It's for the good of humankind",
animals tortured in research labs.
Who took the "kind" out of humankind,
the same ones who poke and maim and jab?
They come with jolts and zaps and pokes.
They douse their eyes, terrorize their minds.
They feel like "well-intended folk".
"It's for the good of humankind."
They inject diseases into their arms.
They calibrate their work's "success".
They "never meant them any harm",
animals tortured in research labs.
They live in cages their whole lives long.
They know no sunlight, some go blind.
Their eyes reveal their mournful song.
Who took the "kind" out of humankind?
Some few are rescued and try to heal
but none forget the times so bad.
Who I'd like to see be caged for real,
are the ones who poke and maim and jab.
Because a few people have given me hope by writing to Hedgewitch's challenge to Write a Cascade poem, over at Real Toads, I challenged myself to attempt one. Right now, I am reading The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, by Andrew Westoll, who spent a considerable amount of time at a Canadian sanctuary for chimps rescued from research labs. I am learning more than I want to know about the treatment of animals, especially chimps, in research labs. I cant stop reading, as I feel I must know, in order to do what I can to voice my objection that these situations exist at all.
It is not all heavy reading - there are humorous glimpses of what daily life is like to the chimps as the author develops a relationship with them. The humans in the sanctuary are marvelous beings, who love the chimps, and do everything they can to make up for what they have endured.
The book describes how the animals are scooped from Africa (which means killing many of the tribe in order to take the one or two they "need"), a great number of them being sent to the USA, where they spend countless years in cages inside laboratories where horrific things happen to them. This book is about some chimps who were taken from such situations and placed in sanctuary, where they are loved, and where healing is attempted.
But, like inmates of any concentration camp, especially where medical experimentation has been done, no sentient being ever truly heals from such trauma. Bless the loving people who provide sanctuary. But I am appalled that there is not legislation to prevent these intelligent, feeling, sentient creatures from being tortured in this way EVER.
