The memory of what happened five years ago still torments me to this day. I remember that sunny day when my mother went away to get more bananas. Shortly after she left, I was trapped in what I learned is called a net. Before I knew it I was stabbed with a shiny hard and cold shiny and from that moment on, I lost my sense of consciousness and my life changed forever. When I awoke, I found myself in a strange environment. Definitely not the kind of atmosphere I was used to, or the environment that I liked.
This environment was so different, cold, unattractive, and uncomfortable. I glanced around looking for my mother because I had hope that perhaps she had taken me to a better place while I was asleep. I also tried to convince myself that the stabbing was just one of those bugs my mother always told me to eat before they bit me. I turned up, down, and all around only to be disappointed when I failed to find my mother.
After a few glances I learned that this was not where I wanted to be. I found myself trapped in a hard and cold shiny box with gaps like the rest of the monkeys there. A hideous smell filled the air and it was difficult to breathe. I thought to myself, this is not how the jungle smells like and definitely not how it looks. There were no beautiful trees filled with bananas here or clean oxygen air to breathe. Even though all of these things seemed essential to me, what worried me the most was not finding
my mother.
[1] Obviously my first instinct was to look for a way to get out of the hard and cold shiny box. I pushed it, jumped around it, screamed, and nothing I did opened the box. Then I thought that maybe the other monkeys knew how to get out. I asked them and none of them knew how. We all shared the same opinions about that place and none of us could escape from the box. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a greater sense of desperation in my life.
I wanted my mother more than ever and she wasn’t there to help me. All I wanted was to go back to my ordinary life. I wanted my mom fed me great bananas, cuddle with me, and tell me stories. I wanted to be taken care of and babied by my mother. I also wanted to have enough space to jump and a tree to climb. I was not prepared to go out on my own and find my soul mate. I was definitely not ready to live in a place like this with strangers who I couldn’t even communicate physically with.
As I thought about how miserable I felt, a noise interrupted my thoughts. An animal entered the closed place and starred at me. To be honest, this animal was not very attractive. His body was quite hairless; except for his head. He was wrapped in a strange fabric that seemed unnecessary. Now that I think about it, maybe the purpose of the fabric was to make up for his lack of fur. The unknown creature, let’s call him human, put his finger, which was quite similar to mine, inside the box where I was trapped in and wiggled it around. Curiously, I reached to touch it, but he took it out before I had a grasp of it.
[2] Days passed and more and more of these creatures entered and left the place. What I didn’t see coming was the decrease of monkeys that were with me. I saw the humans take them in the box, but most of the time they wouldn’t come back. At first I made myself believe that the monkeys were returned to their jungle with their mothers, but one day a monkey returned to the place and he was hurt. The monkey looked weak and unconscious. I didn’t want to think that the humans were bad because they fed us everyday, but who else could’ve hurt him? After we all asked him, he told us that the humans had maltreated him and made him do things against his will. Back then I was naïve about the cruelties that some animals can make, but I learned better than that, the hard way.
[3][4] After that day, more and more monkeys came back injured. In fact, some of them never came back. I highly doubt that there was a good reason behind that too. Sometimes the humans would even do terrible painful things to my monkey peers in front of us. There were times when they poked their eyes with those shiny pointy objects and other times they connected them to devices that hurt them and wouldn’t allow them to move. After watching all this I found it impossible to find a motive for these humans to hurt us so much.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had never seen any animal maltreat another this way. This was unethical and unfair. I had seen animals kill each other to survive in the jungle, but never before had I seen an animal hurt another simply because they could. I didn’t know what to think or do in the situation in which I found myself. I couldn’t escape and I knew that my death was coming closer and closer. By this point, being killed sounded like a better option because I didn’t want to be hurt pointlessly. I always thought that when I died I’d want it happen because I was old or because I was giving life to another animal by allowing them to eat me, but never to be experimented on and played with by animals who thought they were dominant.
I sat in the box replaying the last memories that I had with my mother, over and over and again. I did this for days to keep myself distracted and lose conscious of what was happening to the all the monkeys. I didn’t want to be next because I didn’t want to have a terrifying decease. I knew that the day of my death was approaching and I was afraid. In a way, I wanted to get it over with, but I also wanted to go back to the jungle and be free. Even though I knew that the second option wasn’t realistic, I still had hope. That hope kept me alive and encouraged me to eat the bananas even though they had a nasty taste to them.
Days passed by and I continued to eat the bananas. I also continued to be alive and that was something that surprised me. One day, I looked around and I noticed that there were only two of us left. The monkeys had been disappearing or coming back injured two at a time. What did this mean? It meant that that day was my day. It was my turn to be killed or seriously injured by those humans and I was afraid. That day was also the day I lost hope, but the humans never went to the place where we were at. We got lucky that day, but I knew that they would be back the next day and that my life would be over soon.
The day after I avoided not being mistreated, the most unexpected
thing happened. While I was taking one of my many daily naps I was saved by a human. Yes, I know, right? I suppose that not all humans are the same. Anyways, the human walked towards the box and this frightened me because I didn’t see my changes of being saved this time. Luckily, my predictions were wrong because the human freed me.
At first I didn’t know what to do, but once I gained confidence I stepped out. After I was completely out of the box, the human put me inside a box of fabric and passed by a lot of humans. I know they were humans because I could smell them and oh boy do they stink. Before I knew it I was put in a moving device that made me dizzy, but by this time I trusted the human. I knew that he was my friend because he had saved my life by taking me out of that terrible place. Before I knew it I was in taken out of the moving device and I was back in the jungle.
[5] When I returned to the jungle I felt tremendously happy to be there. I never thought that I’d return to being free again, but I misjudged the humans. I learned that if not all monkeys are grumpy, not all creatures are bad either. At first I didn’t know what to do. I knew that I was free, but I didn’t know where to find my mother. The jungle is big and I didn’t know where to begin my search. First I ran to a tree and climbed it. Then, I jumped from tree to tree feeling the breeze of nature.
The breeze of what I called home and what I missed so much. Finally, I ate natural tasting bananas and began my search. I asked several monkeys and they directed me. After months and months of looking for my mother, I found her. That day was the happiest day of my life and will probably always be. Even though it’s been great to be back and free, I have to admit that it was difficult to adapt to this environment again. While I was trapped in that place, I developed nervousness that I still sometimes can’t control. My mother said that it will ease up eventually, but I’m still waiting. Even thought I’d love to forget about this experience, what I want the most in the world is for all the monkeys in the world to be free.
Word Count: 1,655
[1] http://gallery.photo.net/photo/6244992-md.jpg[2] http://www.all-creatures.org/anex/monkey-cage-01.jpg[3]http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Animal%20Testing/Vivisection/baby_monkey_injection.jpg[4] http://farm1.static.flickr.com/83/249427008_3e5f0e05fb_m.jpg[5] http://media.photobucket.com/image/monkey%20crying/heathhav/bush_monkey.jpg
This painting is part of Francisco Jose De Goya’s series Los Caprichos. Goya was a Spanish artist in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. His paintings inspired many artists in the 1900’s to draw about themes that were difficult to the public. Back in those days, people were extremely conservative and they wouldn’t dare to criticize the government or religion. Many of Goya’s paintings included themes like war and ethical corruption. I read about Goya in my Spanish literature class last year and I learned to admire him because I think it takes courage to question people’s ethics. It is even harder to imply new ethical beliefs. Goya is important to our class because ethics is one of the major topics that we’ve covered. However, I think that it is easier now to express our ethics and try to encourage others to think like us than it was before. This is simply because we now have freedom of speech and people are more liberal, especially here in Austin. 
Walk the Walk was interesting because we talked about the factors that make good people make bad decisions which is something I wrote about earlier. Before going to this workshop I thought that people did unethical things because they were bad people who were being selfish, but I learned that there are reasons for good people to do bad things. Some factors that might influence people to do bad things are when people think that they can defensively say that they’re boss made them do it. I realized that many employees might allow unethical things to happen in the companies the work at because their boss approves of them and because they don’t wan to lose their job. 
Some other people might convince themselves that everybody does these things and that nobody is harmed by their actions, but it only takes some critical thinking to figure out that many people are affected by a simple unethical and selfish decision. Dr. Drumwright also talked about moral muteness which is when people don’t discuss ethics enough that they become unaware that they are doing unethical things or they don’t even question their own morality. We also discussed moral myopia which means that people choose not our ambition to be rich or be successful can blind us and we may do things that we wouldn’t normally do.
Links?
I think that it was very brave of the makes of this this documentary to release all this information to the public. Since this country is known for doing the “right things” and Americans like to think of themselves as caring and fair, Earthlings shows the opposite. After watching Earthlings I asked myself “How free is this country?” I mean, people are free to express themselves and do whatever they want as long as they don’t break the law, but what about animals? If cruelty against animals is being practiced everyday in such terrible ways, the U.S. is not a free country. Maybe it is true that “freedom isn’t free?”
