The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

    Think about people before animals

    Morgan Ledet's Headshot

    If you live in Louisiana and I say Mike the Tiger, you are going to know exactly who I am talking about. Mike VI is the beloved mascot of LSU. For a person like me who loves tigers, Mike is a beautiful animal. Recently, Mike was diagnosed with cancer. Just like humans, animals can get cancer too. Normally, when animals are sick, they go to veterinary hospitals. Guess what? Mike did not. Mike was sent to Mary Bird Perkins – Our Lady of the Lake Cancer Center to undergo his treatment. 

    Last time I checked, Mike was a tiger and Mary Bird Perkins is a hospital for people. Some people can’t afford treatment for their illnesses, but Mike is getting top of the line treatment at a people’s hospital. This makes me believe that society is starting to care more about animals than people. Don’t get me wrong, I think Mike should be getting treatment, but that is what veterinary hospitals are for. 

    This brings me to the newest topic in the news that is causing this giant uproar in our society, the killing of 17-year-old gorilla, Harambe. 

    I am talking about the child that fell into the gorilla enclosure at a Cincinnati Zoo. First, let us understand that this is a tragic event. You think society would be worried about the poor little boy who fell, but no, they are more concerned about the gorilla. On one hand, I agree that the killing of a gorilla is not okay, but there was a child’s life on the line. 

    My first thought about this was: “Wow, this woman let her kid fall into an enclosure, what in the world was she doing while he was falling?” Then, my second thought was kids are fast. I was talking with my mother about this topic and she always says how fast my sister was when she was that age. She could turn around and my sister would be nowhere in sight. This could have easily happened to this woman. She could have turned her head for two seconds, looked back and he would have already fallen in. Sometimes things happen so fast and that is out of our control. Another thought that came to my mind was: “What kind of enclosure do they have for the gorillas where that boy fell in?” In the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, the gorilla enclosure has three thick wooden logs as a gate, about a five-foot ledge that is the same height as the walkway on the outside of the gate and then a giant moat. So, maybe it is the zoo’s fault that he fell in and they need to do a better check of their gates on enclosures. Anyway, what is important is that the little boy came out with minor injuries, but to the rest of society, it is about the gorilla. 

    What is it about society and their new obsession with killing animals? Let’s think about this for a second. Ask yourself this question: Do you eat hamburgers? If your answer was yes, well news flash, that meat came from the killing of a cow. That’s an animal, by the way. The same thing about deer meat, bacon and literally any other meat you can think of. They come from dead animals, but dang, a gorilla gets killed to save the life of a child, and the whole world is in a frenzy. 

    Another killing of an animal that happened a year ago was a lion. A dentist killed a lion, and the whole world freaked out. 

    Why does society keep freaking out over the killings of animals while there are 125,000 babies who die everyday from abortions that no one cares about? People never seem to care about abortions. You are killing a baby no matter how many months you have carried the baby. This baby is a person and abortions are legal, but there are so many people who are not against abortion. They think it is okay to kill a baby, but when an animal dies, the whole world goes crazy. The same people who are probably for abortion are probably the people complaining about killing animals. Society needs to get its priorities together. This is why our world is falling apart, because we care more about animals than people sometimes. I understand that animals are an important part of our world. I love animals, and I love going to the zoo, but I think the world needs to understand that sometimes people need to be better taken care of than animals.

    Cartoon on gorilla shooting

     

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