REXANO Who says it is immoral to have wild animals as pets by Bart Culver

Who says it is immoral to have wild animals as pets?

By Bart Culver, February 2007

Lets consult with the moral authority for this culture, the Bible.

Genesis 1:28. And God blessed them and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Genesis 2: verses18-19. And the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helpmeet for him.” And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature that was the name thereof.

Genesis 6:19. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shall thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee: they shall be male and female.

Genesis 7: verses 1-3. And the Lord said unto Noah, “Come now and all thy house into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shall take to thee by seven’s, the male and female: and of the beasts that are not clean by two, the male and the female. Also of fowls of the air, by sevens, the male and the female to keep seed alive upon the face of all the Earth.

Genesis 9:12. And God said, “This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations.”

Hosea 2:18. And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and with the fowls of heaven and with the creeping things of the ground: I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the Earth and will make them to lie down safely.

2 Samuel 12: verses1-5. And the Lord sent Nathan unto David and he came unto him and he said unto him, there were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and many herds but the poor man had nothing save for one little ewe lamb which he had bought and nourished up; and it grew up together with him and with his children; it did eat of his own meat and drank of his own cup and lay in his bosom and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveler unto the rich man and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd to dress for the wayfaring man that has come unto him, but took the poor man’s lamb and dressed it for the man that was come unto him. And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord liveth, the man that has done this thing shall surely die.”

Psalms 8: verses 6-8. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou has put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea and whatsoever passeth through the passages of the seas.

Isaiah 11 verse 6. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb. And the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

Proverbs 12 verse 10. A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

James 3 verse 7. For every kind of beasts and of birds and of serpents and of things in the sea is tamed and hath been tamed of mankind; but the tongue no man can tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

Surely there can be no Christians among animal rights fanatics.

Let us go back to antiquity.

Over 9,000 years ago: A jungle cat is ritually buried with a human, presumably a pet.

Egypt 5,000 to 9,000 years ago: The first great agricultural empire invites a variety of wild cats into their granaries to kill rats. This is so successful the Egyptians become a cat culture. Every tribe has to have its own cat so they begin hybridization to create new cats. The domestic cat arose out of this symbiosis of human and wild cats.

Skip to the middle ages: The Catholic church goes witch hunting. All beautiful women are fair game. If one of them comes to a pious man in his dreams and lies with him, then she is a witch, or a demon of the succubus class. If she has a goat or a cat, she is a witch. People raving around Europe murdering beautiful woman in the name of God thought it immoral to own cats, which is instructive. Today’s witch-hunt of animal lovers is similarly hysterical, cruel, phobic, irrational and destructive.

Rise of the Animal Reich Nazis

There are also disturbing parallels to Nazi Germany. AR fanatics use the same tactics the Nazi’s used. Fan the flames of public hysteria. Isolate and vilify an identifiable sub-set of people. Blame them all for the bad conduct of a very few. Grossly exaggerate the “problem”. Reduce a complex issue to simplistic slogans and platitudes. Offer a draconian “solution” and demand the power to carry it out. Sell your supporters a share of that feeling of power and relevance.

These tactics work best on the ignorant who truly believe that reading a pamphlet or hearing a slogan has made them an expert on the subject. It’s a no-brainer, right? So no brains are needed, just zeal. We have seen the rise of the Animal Reich Nazis. Two sanctuary associations; ASA and TAOS actively promote legislation to force the captive population of wildlife into extinction by prohibiting breeding and private ownership of exotic animals.

The American Association of Sanctuaries, ASA, was founded by Tippi Hedren. She still holds the world record for greatest number of big cat escapes and the greatest number of serious injuries inflicted by big cats in a single project. Every animal trainer in California refused to be involved in the making of the movie Roar because it was an absurdly dangerous idea. Tippi stubbornly went ahead with the project which involved cramming lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards and cougars into the same room full of lights and cameras while Tippi and her family ran around screaming hysterically. The movie set was built on a flood plain, which predictably flooded causing mass escapes of lions and tigers. Tippi bought and bred the animals for the project then the movie flopped so there was no money to care for the animals. So the movie set became Shambala Sanctuary and Tippi started asking the public for money to rescue her own animals from her own stupidity. These facts are revealed in Tippi’s book, The Cats of Shambala.

The Association of Sanctuaries, TAOS, was founded by Pat Darby. In her book, The Lady and Her Tiger, she describes her failed attempt to become a learn-as-you-go Hollywood animal trainer who claimed to be able to work with any animal. If she got a contract she would go buy such an animal and attempt to train it. When this fake-it-till-make-it approach failed to earn her a comfortable living, she simply disposed of her animals by killing them with lethal injections.

In order to preserve some shred of self respect Hedren and Derby followed a course familiar to psychologists. Instead of admitting their own shortcomings, they blamed their failures on others, on the whole idea of animal husbandry, “If I can’t do it, nobody can do it”, was their message. And through some bizarre twist of fate, Hedren and Darby at last found a way to make animals pay them handsomely. Darby took in $800,000 in one year and spent $40,000 on the care of her animals. Soon enough the message had morphed into, “I’m the only one who should be allowed to have exotic animals”.

The new ‘Fuhrer of the Animal Reich’ is Carol Baskin, former president of TAOS. For years Baskin’s web site, www.bigcatrescue.org, has contained a diatribe against the breeding of white tigers, which includes this statement, “Only one out of four tiger cubs born to white parents will be white.” Baskin has been informed repeatedly that she is incorrect. The white gene is recessive. White tigers have no yellow genes; therefore all the cubs born of white parents will be white. Yet Baskin persists in making her false statements. This is not just a demonstration of Baskin’s ignorance; it is a test of the ignorance of her following. She wants an ignorant and deluded following, and she has it.

Her newsletter featured an article by a professed “animal communicator” who claimed that the animals at Baskin’s “sanctuary” told her their stories of abuse. This is interesting because nearly all the animals Baskin has were not rescued. They are the residue from the most extensive, aggressive, feline breeder/broker enterprise in the country, Wildlife on Easy Street, Carol Baskin’s business when her name was Carol Lewis. If those cats were abused, Baskin was their abuser.

The Lewis’ were notorious for their business strategy of taking orders for kittens and filling those orders by buying large numbers of kittens from fur farmers and quickly re-selling them. At the same time they were buying and reselling cats from auctions. They had so many neonates at one time; they literally raised them in buckets as their video plainly shows. A few issues of Animal Finder’s Guide from that time suffice to show that the sheer volume of this operation made it virtually impossible to provide the comfort and care that exotic kittens need.

Some of the Wildlife on Easy Street ads placed in Animal Finder’s Guide circa April 1995 – February 1997

Fanatic Morphogenesis

The Lewis’s were on Easy Street but the cats were not. Many of them sickened and died. At least six of our customers sought us out after the Lewis’s sold them sick kittens that died and the Lewis’s would not even talk to them. With so many outraged customers the Lewis’s reputation was eventually ruined.

They blamed their customers, the fur farmers, the auctions, everybody but themselves. After Don Lewis mysteriously disappeared, Carol blamed him too and began walking on the other side of ‘easy street’ and changed her facility name to Big Cat Rescue. First she harped on animal welfare issues. The more radical her message got, the more money rolled in. Soon she discovered fear and hysteria. Her efforts to falsify data to create the perception that pet exotics endanger the public has been thoroughly debunked in another article titled AR Fanatic Falsifies Data.

For years these fanatics have enriched themselves by vilifying others with their lies. It is past time they are discredited with the truth. Knowledgeable and conscientious animal people cannot, and must not accept the absurdity of animal husbandry’s biggest hypocrites, smallest minds, and coldest hearts morphing themselves into the animal Nazis.

Bart Culver has over twenty years experience living with dozens of exotic felines. Contact him at Klandaga@yahoo.com