Today came the story of the little Koala given water and a comforting paw hold by a volunteer firefighter in Australia. They are having the most terrible forest fires at the moment, many people have died and obviously the animals are suffering too. Forest fires are a natural hazard in Australia, in fact a lot of its plants and trees need the heat of fire to trigger their seed growth, however it would seem that this year fires have been added to by arsonists.
I know I should be sad over the deaths of the people but it just doesn't affect me the way harm to animals does. The often spouted line that people that put animals first are only doing so because they can't get love anywhere else and that animals return love unconditionally, may be true, who knows. I am very loved so I certainly don't believe that my love of animals is anything to do with that. And in my experience you don't get unconditional love from animals, you have to earn their love and they can be very demanding and hard work. Whatever the reason is I do put animals before people and this is for a very simple reason. Animals often end up hurt because of us humans, they don't ask for the pain that is inflicted on them and they don't understand why they are being hurt. If you hit a stranger in the street with an iron bar you will be punished because the person will report you to the police (providing you haven't killed them), if you do the same to an animal, if no one saw you then nothing happens, animals have no voice. Or rather animals do have a voice but most humans choose not to hear. People, hit animals, they starve animals, they poison animals, they torture animals. Humans do this to animals because they can, they can no longer do it to each other (yes, yes, I know about war etc. etc but go with this a minute), they aggression inside humans is so close to the surface that it constantly boils over, those that mistreat animals have a lower threshold than most, they hurt animals because they are smaller than them, they are help less and powerless against a human and those that cannot control themselves are happy to pick on defenseless animals rather than the person in the street because it means that they will not be punished for it and they can act out their aggression without retribution. Yes all this happens to people too and that is awful but people understand (to a greater or lesser extent) what is happening to them, animals do not.
All I could think of when I saw the Koala, frightened, thirsty and looking up at the firefighter for help was that she didn't understand what had happened to her, her home had gone, the other animals had gone, she hurt very badly and she was thirsty. No one could ever explain to her about forest fires, about arson, about firefighters putting the fires out, no one could stop her being afraid by being rational and trying to make her understand what had happened. The only way to stop her being frightened was to give her water, hold her paw and take her to somewhere that was safe.
Anyway, enough of all this, the story of the Koala was a sweet one. The firefighter found her frightened and burnt and gave her water from a water bottle, while he did this she reached out and held his hand. OK she was probably only holding onto him to steady herself while she drank but the scene was so sweet and was filmed on a camera phone so that within a short space of time it went round the world and everyone wanted to know what had happened to the little Koala. It turned out that she was taken to a rescue centre where some very kind people had been helping other animals caught in the fire, they have called her Sam, she has a lot of burns and it will take about eight months for her to get well but in the meanwhile she has found a boyfriend in a Koala called Bob and they are hugging each other a lot and getting the treatment they need.
Maybe Sam is a relative of my other Koala, the Koala having blood taken from him. If they are related I hope they get to meet up one day so they can tell each other about the kind humans that helped them.
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