I was hanging out w/some friends in the swamp and the topic came up. I don’t remember where it started or how it ended but the meat of the conversation is still fresh enough to recall. Fishing is a past time of many a swamp lakean. It’s free and provides both benefits of entertainment and the honing of the lakean’s survival skills. As the wife of one, I’ve spent many countless nights on a fishing pier. The atrocities I have seen committed in the name of catching the big one are unparallel and as I pointed out to my friends, if fish had fur then every fisherman would be serving life for animal cruelty. Ask one and they’ll tell you the best bait is live bait. That one of the surest ways to catch a shark is to cut the tail off a bait fish and send it alive on the hook back into the water. Can u picture it? Now replace that image with a warm blooded mammal and all of a sudden you’ve got a felony. How bout catch and release? Imagine a hunter wounding a deer enough to bring down but not enough to kill then letting it loose again. Completely unacceptable, right? Not for our scaly friends. So the next time you see a cute kid with a fishing pole remember if fish had fur this kid would be a felon.
 |
| Baby sand shark abducted then released |
Hmm, I reread my post today and realized what was supposed to be a light and funny thing (which is how the convo had went) turned into something dark & macabre, imagine that me being dark (sarcasm font used). I don't wanna give the wrong impression, i'm just as guilty of fish abuse. It's that the inequality of treatment betw the cute&cuddly to the scaly&smelly has always amazed me.
ReplyDelete