Sol’s smile flooded the room as he peeked through the open window. The warmth felt good on Bobby’s face, and charming sounds of songbirds caused him to smile just as brightly as the morning sun. Opening his eyes, he rolled over in bed and hugged his best friend Buddy, who yawned and stretched a big waking stretch before giving Bobby some sweet puppy kisses. Kisses made Bobby giggle and he squeezed Buddy tighter.
Then the two friends shuffled out of bed and hurried to the kitchen where mom greeted them with a warm smile. “Good morning boys,” she said, “breakfast is ready.” Bobby rushed over and hugged his mom; Buddy right beside him, wagging his tail a mile-a-minute.
Curtains fluttered in a light summer breeze gently blowing in the kitchen window while the boys ate. After enjoying a delicious hot breakfast they gathered up the dishes and dirty clothes for mother to wash. Then all three were off on their regular morning adventure. Into the woods they walked, mom and her two little ones, on a well-worn path trod most nice days. They walked among giants: ancient red oaks, white oaks, and hickories that nearly blocked the sun; and they walked among parades of ants scavenging the forest floor for food to carry back to the nest.
The woods were full of life in the morning. Squirrels chattered back and forth amongst the limbs, occasionally stopping to cast a curious gaze at the ponderous trio down below. Sometimes deer and turkey were coming back from the meadow, and always there were birds going about their treetop business. Bobby marvelled at how it must feel to soar far above the ground and zoom between the outstretched arms of giants. Among the celebration of life Bobby and Buddy were happy as pigs in a garden as they looked for turtles, moths, lizards, chipmunks, treefrogs, and other acquaintances to make. And it never failed that they got dirty because they never tired of lifting looking in the nooks and crannies that might be harboring toads and crickets and moths and slugs and centipedes and roly-poly’s and those ever-industrious ants.
On this particular morning, adventures lasted until the sun was high in the sky and pond frogs were basking in full warmth. When at last they returned to the house, mom left the boys in the soft warm grass of the yard while she went inside to do a few chores. The yard was a busy place; butterflies, bees and hummingbirds danced all about, attracted by the sweet fragrance of a thousand blossoms.
But as much as Bobby loved watching the bright fliers, he was looking for something else. When at last he spied his favorite ball lying in the grass, he raced over and kicked it as far as he could kick it, and the great game was on. Bobby laughed and Buddy barked with delight as they chased that ball. Over and over Bobby kicked the old ball and Buddy chased it down and slobbered all over it until Bobby could catch up and kick it again. Buddy’s tongue nearly dragged the ground, and soon the ball and his whole face was a dirty, slobbery mess. But no amount of dirt and slobber bothered those boys because they enjoyed nothing more than playing ball together.
Time flew by, and the laughs and giggles grew louder and more boisterous in celebration. During moments like that, it was good to be alive. At that time the world was as big as a ball, a yard, a wide open blue sky, and a best friend to play with. Inside the house momma smiled knowing the boys couldn’t be any happier as she stood at the window and watched the simple fun go on and on as they played, without a care in the world. Paradise was the fun and happiness of youth, and clearly nothing could be better. After a while, momma went outside and joined in the fun. And she too was laughing and grinning ear-to-ear with a smile brighter than all the stars of heaven. Perhaps momma even laughed hardest of all; because in her heart she knew that joyous and blissful moments like those were truly the time of their lives.
It was nearly lunch time when the boys’ fires cooled and they started to run out of steam; leaving them ready to take a break to rest awhile. By the time they were cleaned up, mom had lunch ready to eat. And after eating a hearty lunch worthy of growing boys, Bobby and Buddy laid down for a welcome nap and fell fast asleep.
Having some errands to run, momma couldn’t join them for a nap however, so she let Buddy out and carried Bobby to the car, still asleep. When he awoke he was in the car as it wheeled into the grocery store parking lot. But after a few shopping stops, they were back on the road home, and Bobby was standing on the seat with a smile on his face as they drove up their driveway. He was always happy to get back home to his best friend. But his brow wrinkled and he started looking all around as they made their way down the drive to the house. “Where’s Buddy?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” his mother replied. “He’s usually waiting by the drive when he hears us coming.”
When the car stopped Bobby got out and yelled for Buddy. But, still Buddy was nowhere to be seen.
Bobby’s mom took his hand. “That’s odd,” she said. “It’s not like Buddy to leave the yard by himself.”
Then the two of them started walking down their favorite trail, calling Buddy’s name. “Buddy! Buddy!” they called. But still no reply; still no sign of their true friend.
They walked the whole trail calling for Buddy. Then they walked up and down the road. And they circled behind the house and around the other side. But they couldn’t find Buddy anywhere. By the time they had looked the last place they knew to look, Bobby was really worried for his best friend. He started to think something bad might have happened to him. Tears started welling up in his eyes and his lips started to tremble and his cheeks puckered up as he called out for his best friend as loud as he could; hoping more than anything that Buddy would hear him.
But Buddy couldn’t hear him. Buddy was in a crate in a stranger’s truck, surrounded by other dogs in crates. And when the truck pulled down a long, bumpy driveway and stopped beside a dirty old house, the man got out and went inside, leaving Buddy and the others in the truck. Buddy called out for Bobby. But the other dogs were barking and Buddy couldn’t tell if Bobby could hear him. And Buddy kept barking from inside the crate, and miles away Bobby stood in the yard calling for Buddy. And they both called for each other into the evening until their throats were too hoarse to call anymore. And Buddy finally whined and laid down in the hard old crate, and Bobby finally went inside and cried himself to sleep.
Bobby woke many times throughout the night, crying for his best friend. But Bobby’s anguish and tears couldn’t help Buddy, and early the next morning the dirty man came outside, started the truck and hauled Buddy and the other dogs down the road. Back home, Bobby arose in the daylight and looked over, hoping that it was all just a bad dream he would wake up from and his best friend would be right there beside him. But Buddy wasn’t there. He was on the way to a hellish abomination called a research laboratory.
Bobby felt sick and he got dressed and went outside. His mom tried to console him and get him to come inside and eat breakfast, but Bobby didn’t want to eat and couldn’t feel good while his best friend was missing. So, mom went inside and grabbed a staple gun and the missing friend posters she made the previous night. Then she went back outside, took Bobby by the hand and walked down the road to staple posters on power poles and road signs before getting in the car and driving to the vet’s office, the newspaper, the radio station and a few other places to pass out posters and ask for help in finding Buddy.
Nobody they asked knew where Buddy was, and even as Buddy was being taken into the research lab, Bobby was walking around their house calling his name. Buddy was still calling for Bobby too, but neither could hear the other. Buddy was too far away, locked in some cold concrete building that smelled like chemicals inside. For the rest of the day the two boys felt sad and frustrated, as they occasionally called out for each other. Buddy pawed at the cage door, and Bobby pounded his little fist on the floor. And both went to sleep that night still hoping that the other would soon show up.
After another long night in a cold, cramped cage, Buddy sprang to his feet when he heard the building door opening. Somebody came in and turned on some faint lights. Buddy thought Bobby might be coming to get him, so he started barking and wagging his tail and scratching at the door to his cage, hoping it would open and he could run to Bobby. But Bobby wasn’t with the man that came in the building, and that man didn’t even come over to see Buddy and the other dogs, he just went into another room and turned on some more lights and sat down at a desk. Before long, more people came in the building. And all the dogs got excited, thinking someone was about to come over and let them out of their cages and let them go home. But one by one they walked on past, not paying them any attention.
Finally, someone came over to Buddy’s cage. But he didn’t pet Buddy and he didn’t open the cage door. He just filled the food and water dispensers and left. Buddy couldn’t do anything but sit and wait. It wasn’t until almost lunch that a man came over and opened one of the cage doors. When he did, a cocker spaniel bound out, ready to go. “Where do you think you’re going?” the man said, grabbing the golden dog by the neck. Then the man carried the cocker spaniel into another room.
It was quiet for a while and then Buddy heard the golden dog yelp. It wasn’t a really long bark, or a really loud scream, but it made Buddy nervous and he stepped back in the cage, which seemed so strange, and he looked for a way out, but the only way out that he could see was through the metal bars of the door. So, he stepped forward again and started scratching and pushing at the bottom of the door. Now, on top of missing Bobby, he was getting scared.
When the man brought goldie back, she was pretty quiet, she didn’t seem as energetic as she was earlier, but her breathing sounded a little quick, shallow and shaky. The man had no sooner put her back in a cage, when he opened another cage and carried another dog away. Some of the dogs were starting to turn circles in their cages and yap excitedly, but Buddy just wanted to go home, he wanted to find a way out of there. Every time the man came back to the cages, Buddy backed away from the door. But finally it was his door that opened, and Buddy slumped down just a little. “Come on you,” the man in the white overcoat said, and he picked Buddy up and carried him into the other room.
Buddy was normally happy and friendly, but he didn’t like the feeling he was getting as the man sat him on some scales to be weighed. Then he was picked up and put on a cold metal table. There, another man put a hand on Buddy’s face, and shone a bright light in his eyes, before lifting his ears and looking inside them, then he put his fingers in Buddy’s mouth and pried his mouth open before lifting Buddy’s tail putting something cold in his butt.
Buddy was really starting to wonder what these strange people were doing to him, when the second man grabbed a handful of skin on Buddy’s back and pulled it up. Just then Buddy felt a stick and tried to turn his head to see what it was, but the handler was holding his head, keeping him from being able to see what was hurting him. And then the sting started to burn and Buddy cried out in a yelp like the other dogs had made. And Buddy tried to get away. He tried to squirm, and wriggle, and push to free himself; but the man’s grip was too tight. And the man carried him back to his cage.
The place where he was stung on the back was really hurting and he reached back to check on it and lick it but he couldn’t quite reach it up between his shoulder blades. But pretty soon Buddy started to feel hot all over, and dizzy. So he sat down. And the longer he sat there, the more tired he became. His mouth started to water, and he got a little shaky, and he laid down. The longer he laid there the worse he felt, he ached all over, and his head throbbed, and he started to get a nasty metallic taste in his mouth, and his stomach started to hurt real bad. For the rest of the day Buddy lay there in terrible pain hoping Bobby was going to come get him, and all through the night he barely dozed off due to the pain.
Buddy felt like he was going to burn up, and the long, dark night seemed to drag on forever. Even when the people came back the next morning and turned on some lights, Buddy didn’t feel like getting up. Neither did the rest of the dogs. They were very quiet, even when the man came to check on their food and water. He didn’t need to give Buddy anymore food and water, because Buddy felt too sick to eat or drink. But, Buddy did manage to stand up on wobbly legs and scoot back in the cold, steel cage when the man came near.
In time the man started to take the dogs, one by one, back to the other room. And when it was Buddy’s turn, he mustered his strength and tried to run. But the man grabbed him hard by the scruff of the neck and slapped Buddy in the face, poking him in the eye. Buddy, ducked his head down, his eye blinking, and tried to pull away but the man was too strong and he just squeezed harder and started cussing at Buddy. After the second man examined Buddy on the steel table again, he pulled a syringe out of a drawer and stuck it in Buddy’s front leg. Ow! that felt a little like the thing that stung Buddy the day before. He instinctively tried to reach down and bite the stinger.
Wham! the man holding the stinger hit Buddy on the side of the head with his fist, bruising Buddy’s left eye. “Hold that dumb son-of-a-bitch still!” he yelled to the handler.
With that, the first man with the white overcoat picked Buddy up and shook him, and then slammed his head on the steel table. “Don’t move, you little bastard!” he threatened. And Buddy began screaming. He was scared, hurting and confused and all he knew to do was scream.
The second man grabbed some straps and threw them over Buddy and then cinched them down tight, holding Buddy pinned against the table. Buddy struggled, but the straps were too tight, and he was too weak to go anywhere. With the handler holding him, the second man inserted the needle in a vein in his leg and drew out some blood. But that didn’t burn like the day before. That was just a blood sample. It was the second syringe that the man picked up and inserted in Buddy’s back that contained the awful, burning chemical. Buddy was scared out of his mind and he started screaming for help again; but the man grabbed his face and squeezed his mouth shut, and Buddy couldn’t breathe.
With the shot complete, they took the straps off and put him back in the cage. In the cage it’s not clear how much shaking was from fear, and how much was due to the poison racking his body. He tried to stand up, but the poison was too strong and his body couldn’t fight it. He laid down in his own filth and started to heave. He felt so sick. He was heaving, but there wasn’t anything in his stomach to vomit. There was just some bitter stomach acid coming up, and diarrhea that came out the other end. Everything hurt, so much. He was burning up inside, but he shivered and felt so cold in the steel box. His head hurt, and that nasty metallic taste was only getting worse. Even his muscles and joints ached terribly.
That day Buddy didn’t get any better, he only got worse. He hurt so bad he couldn’t sleep that night. By the next day, he was too weak to even sit up. The handler in the white overcoat came and looked at the dogs, but he didn’t take any to the other room. “They won’t make it another day,” he announced. And he walked into the other room and sat down to read a newspaper.
The man that gave all the shots got up and walked toward the door. “I’m gonna go get some fresh air,” he said. “These little bastards make me sick.”
Buddy just laid there, trembling on occasion. But he was tough. He tried to be brave and he held on as long as he could. He watched the men leave at five o’clock. And he laid there. He laid there into the night; cold and shaking, with cramps in his stomach that felt like his intestines were being ripped out. He thought of Bobby and he moaned. Where are you Bobby? Bobby had always been there for him. Now Buddy was hurting more than one can imagine. It hurt so bad. He didn’t want the man to hit him again, he didn’t want another shot that burned, and he didn’t want to feel so sick anymore, he just wanted his best friend back.
Buddy didn’t know why any of this was happening. He didn’t know why he couldn’t just be happy with his best friend in the whole world. He didn’t know why they couldn’t wake up together and go walk the trail, or why mom couldn’t make them breakfast and play ball with them. He didn’t know why Bobby didn’t come to get him. But it was too late. He was getting sicker and the terrible pain was more intense than ever. And finally, through that night and into the dark hours of morning he got away from the pain. As he lay there convulsing with muscle spasms, the agonizing pain in his head started to fade away, and finally his heart stopped beating, and a while later the spasms and gasps for breath ceased too, and Buddy was gone.
The next morning the man with the white overcoat walked over to the cages and looked inside. “We’ve got some wringers,” he said, as he opened Buddy’s door. “Get the knives out.”
And he grabbed Buddy and pulled his limp body from the cage, and held him by the scruff of the neck as he carried him in and dropped him on the cold, steel table. “Slice and dice time,” the handler quipped with a smile.
And the man that gave the shots took a scalpel and made some deep incisions high inside Buddy’s back legs to drain Buddy’s blood before setting the knife down and picking up a small spoon from a tray and resting his hand on Buddy’s head. Then he put the spoon on Buddy’s eye and guided it to a corner and worked it under an eyelid, and then forced it down inside the eye socket with a little squish.
The handler in the white overcoat held his hand out. “Let me have that one.”
Without saying a word the dissector pried Buddy’s eye out with the spoon. The eye socket made a little slurping sound as the eyeball came out. And the dissector pulled the eye out, stretching the optic nerve and blood vessels until they snapped. “Here,” he said, handing Buddy’s eye to the cage keeper.
“How do you like me now?” he asked the eye. Holding it up in front of his own face.
“Take a good look, because it’s the last thing you’re going to see.” After passing Buddy’s eye over his own lifeless body on the table, the cage keeper dropped it on the floor and slowly stepped on it, until it popped and squirted fluid across the floor.
The dissector laughed. “You’re cleaning that shit up,” he commented.
“Oh, well. There’s plenty more where that came from,” the handler replied.
Then the dissector removed Buddy’s other eye before picking up a scalpel and cutting off one of Buddy’s ears. And then he cut Buddy’s belly open and started to remove the internal organs. With every piece the evil monster cut from Buddy, Bobby died a little more inside. Finally, the dissector cut the top of Buddy’s skull off and removed his brain, setting it in a chest with the internal organs. Then the cage keeper picked Buddy’s mutilated body up and shoved it in a trash bag, before going to get the next dog.
It couldn’t get any worse for Buddy, the men took a happy boy that shared all the love in the world, and they tortured and mutilated him and stuck what was left of him in a trash bag. But what makes the tragedy even worse, if that’s even possible, is that Buddy was killed for no reason – the chemical he was injected with has been known as a deadly poison for more than a century. But that’s just a cost of doing business for the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other institutions. For the lab it was a little more profit, and for the arrogant demons in lab coats it was just another day and another dollar.
Animal testing is a huge business of torturing and murdering fellow earthlings as if they have no feelings and no fears and no hopes at all, and ranks among the most egregious demonstration of man’s selfish immaturity. While man’s pyramid of technical knowledge has grown volumes, true wisdom has stagnated like a sickly weed in the shadows of selfish brutality. As Mahatma Gandhi said “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” And America has been setting a terrible example.
Throughout history evil barbarity has been a constant companion of mankind. For instance, animals have always suffered in man’s wars. Horses forced to serve in the armies of men have had hard lives. Many times they were beaten by their riders, and pushed to the point of collapse, suffering untold heart attacks and broken legs before the enemy even began to attack them. And the aforementioned Mongols were like all the other soldiers trying to shoot horses out from under enemy combatants. Every horse ever forced into a cavalry charge was a target for swordsmen, javelin throwers, archers, riflemen and other warriors. All the while, the men behind all the misery and devastation were hiding behind their horses, pack mules, camels, and even elephants. And when food got scarce soldiers slaughtered their own trusting, enslaved servants.
In fact, the wanton destruction of war has been particularly hard on animals. Armies of warriors and civilians alike shoot, hack and slaughter every animal they can get in their sights in war, sometimes when they’re not even hungry. No animal’s safe in the presence of a hungry army, and quite often, animals were killed just to keep them out of enemy hands. Almost no place on Earth is more desolate of animal life than an active war zone; especially with the advent of modern weaponry. Those animals not directly targeted have no place to hide from saturation carpet bombing, random shell and rocket strikes, napalm fireballs, machine gun strafing, and so many more implements of death.
But while wars among men have come and gone. Man’s war on animals has been viciously constant. Even now, militaries around the world are burning, drowning, poisoning, electrocuting, shooting, and slicing innocent animals at a frenzied, barbarous pace. And among the worst offenders is the United States Department of Defense. Is that the kind of power America wants? The power to brutalize innocent babies? How long shall America continue to be a land of such tremendous dishonor and still have the audacity to proclaim freedom, liberty and justice?
In 1945 America dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities. Many of the people that were scorched and poisoned by the radioactive blasts deserved what they got, however, many animals likewise killed or injured did not. Still, in the context, the use of atomic weapons wasn’t a mistake, in that more would likely have been killed had the war continued in conventional fashion.
But, shortly thereafter the Japanese surrendered and America subsequently occupied Japan, having unprecedented opportunity to witness firsthand the horrid effects of nuclear explosions. The center and extent of the blast zone was well known, and effects to all life in the vicinity were obvious. Japanese civilians would be treated for burns and radiation poisoning for many years to come, and the effects of radiation they suffered was available for extensive study. Yet, for no obvious benefit, and secret from the American public, in 1946 the U.S. military loaded 4,000 sheep, goats and other animals onto a boat they called the Atomic Ark in the pacific ocean and exploded a nuclear bomb overhead, killing and severely burning all on board.
For such a warmongering species, man has surely been cowardly. People are strong enough to subjugate fellow earthlings, but not brave enough to take responsibility for their own health. Because of that cowardice, man wasn’t even the first earthling in space. The United States and Russia launched a mouse, numerous monkeys, dogs and even fruit flies into space before the Russian Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. Since then many different species have been sent into space; some as no more than elementary school projects.
Monkeys had electrodes implanted under their skin to monitor their vital signs during flight, and a chimp was trained by painful electric shocks to operate levers while in space, not levers to perform a necessary procedure of course, just levers to demonstrate a chimp could pull levers in space. And that’s a tiny sample of tests monkeys were subjected to in order to demonstrate the already known effects of all kinds of injury. Donald Barnes was a U.S. Air Force officer that described the fate of some rhesus monkeys trained to keep a platform level by painful 12,000 volt electric shocks from metal plates under their feet.
The little monkeys didn’t know why they were being shocked or what would stop the pain. They struggled but couldn’t escape the electric chairs, and some monkeys died of heart attacks from being shocked repeatedly. Others happened to react in a certain way that got the shocking to stop. In time over a thousand would die in the same useless experiments.
One of those monkeys that endured many months of shock training, called Susie, was described as being very nervous when she was taken to a strange room one day and secured on a shock platform with only one arm free to operate the control joystick. For ten months she had been trained not to let the platform tilt or she would receive the painful shocks. But strange noises made it difficult for her to concentrate on her task. A large cylinder rose from the floor near Susie and startled her, causing her to lose control of the platform until the painful electric jolts pulsing through her body caused her to get the platform level again.
An unseen man counted down from ten to “pulse,” and the cylinder emitted a pulse of radiation so powerful it lit up the room. The intense radiation instantly caused her head to hurt and made her sick. The cylinder sank back into the floor and Susie vomited. Fright and wooziness caused her to lose control of the platform. And the more it wobbled, the more she was shocked and the harder she tried to hold it still. But the radiation damage was too great for her to keep the platform level and, in terror, all she could do was hold on tight like she was riding an electric chair on a roller coaster. The shocks kept coming until she lost consciousness and slumped forward.
Sadly, Susie died a terrible death combining radiation and electric shocks, but the result was already known because the Air Force had conducted the same tests for years. The operators knew Susie wouldn’t be able to withstand that amount of radiation, just like they knew it would fry her internal organs and make her sick. But did they show any decency whatsoever? No, they just carried her away, cleaned up the vomit, and locked the next victim in the chair.
To the imbeciles in lab coats that like to call themselves scientists Susie was just a number and means to a paycheck, like Buddy and millions more each and every year in the U.S. alone. The more monkeys the airmen could kill, the more money their department stood to receive to kill even more monkeys the following year. And when money’s involved, the U.S. military’s an equal opportunity abuser. For decades it’s been infected with devils testing all manner of weapons on sheep, dogs, goats and pigs. And they don’t just blow up groups of pigs with new bombs and shoot German shepherds with new guns and redesigned bullets. They create new excuses to satisfy a seemingly insatiable appetite for shooting animals.
They even get colleges in on the action. Michael Carey of Louisiana State University convinced officials to pay him to shoot cats in the head to model human injuries. Of course, it’d be nice if people weren’t being shot and there were no human gunshot injuries to observe. Unfortunately, with persistent warfare and violent crime, there’s no shortage of gunshot victims. Nonetheless, Carey’s team received military money, and had 700 kills in it’s war on cats before public outrage got the plug pulled on that tax-funded cruelty.
The military doesn’t just demonstrate the killing and maiming power of new weapons. They torture animals to test defensive equipment as well, like when they blow up goats wearing bullet proof vests. There really aren’t many tortures the U.S. military hasn’t tried on animals. They may not be particularly efficient or effective, but they can dip rats in boiling water and set others on fire without recompense or