Marius, 2 year-old giraffe slaughtered by the Copenhagen Zoo
I have made it a point in my blogs to avoid topical news stories, especially about politics which I find extremely boring. I don't talk about wars, strife, and destruction. You can read that easily on a thousand other blogs on the internet.
But this story about a perfectly healthy young 2-year old giraffe slaughtered by the Copenhagen Zoo has made me just livid. And I am going to comment about what this zoo did over the weekend. I am going to comment on it because as the author of the 12-volume book series, "Visit the Zoo" I have become attached to the animals scattered in zoos around the world. In zoos who protect, nurture and have contributed to saving many species from extinction. But what the Copenhagen Zoo did to this young giraffe and in the public way they did it is just so wrong I cannot understand why the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums finds nothing wrong with what the Copenhagen Zoo did.
Perhaps there is a difference in European sensitivities versus American sensitivities. But this morning I heard famed naturalist Jack Hanna rage on in anger about his disgust with what happened to this giraffe and I totally agree with his anger. He was ready to take this poor animal, so were other zoo and animal welfare organizations. But no, the Danish did not want to let "emotion" cloud their handy work.
This is basically what happened. The Copenhagen Zoo has a breeding program for giraffe. This young giraffe, Marius, was born with a gene set too close to the other giraffe in captivity in that zoo and was therefore "incompatible" for use in their breeding program. This how the murder of this giraffe was described in a London newspaper:
"In the chilly dawn of Sunday morning a healthy young giraffe in a Danish zoo was given its favourite meal of rye bread by a keeper – and then shot in the head by a vet."
Petitions to the Copenhagen Zoo did not stop this killing. Calls from other zoos to transport and take the giraffe Marius did not stop the killing.
And to make matters even worse, the dead giraffe was butchered in front of a crowd of average Danish adults and children. Parts were kept for research but major remains were fed to the lions in the zoo.
I am going to list a link from the New York Daily News where you can read about this animal murder:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/danish-zoo-kills-giraffe-in-breeding-concerns-article-1.1607522
You can read the article, consider this blog and decide for yourself whether what has occurred is right or wrong.
I can only say that I guess in some parts of the world this kind of senseless slaughter is condoned and even encouraged without any moral compass to determine or gauge whether that action was right or wrong. I am confident that in this country, the United States, something like this action taken by the Copenhagen Zoo would NEVER happen.
Yes there is slaughter of humans occurring daily around the world by other humans. My blogs subject matter is the fiction and non-fiction books that I write not politics or current news events, get that from someone else.
And finally, if the Copenhagen Zoo does somehow read my obscure blog written here Prescott, Arizona, very far away from Copenhagen, Denmark and they don't like what they have read or disagree with what they have read, what I have written, then they can go straight to hell. I don't care what they think or say. They are barbarians.
