The Editor’s Two Cents
by Animals Voice Founder & Editor Laura Moretti
On Companion Animals
Epitaph for a Friendship
Mouser died today. It had been 13 years since the black-and-white kitten had come into my life (we called her Mouser to make Dad happy about the mice in the barn). And I think she wanted to live up to her name as well; she was an aggressive mousing cat — except ...well... except she didn't seem to know a mouse from a dog...
My Soul and Inspiration
The police advised us to leave the city of Los Angeles and go home the day after the riots had erupted, and we heeded it. The surface streets were relatively deserted, but the freeways were nearly a parking lot — in both directions...
On Eating Animals
Hit by a Truck
I admit it. I enjoy the Backstreet Boys’ megahit song, “I Want It That Way.” There’s something about its harmony, its rhythm, that enables me, despite its literal translation, to escape the grim reality of our work long enough to actually feel good about being alive...
For They Know Not
The steel bin was loaded with meat hooks — giant, heavyweight, shiny, perfectly curved hooks. There must have been six dozen of them. They were clean, bloodless, and soaking in sterilized water in the outside hallway of the meat processing building...
The Light In Their Eyes
I see that now. I am reminded one more time. I’ve still got one more mind to open, yet another heart to change. No, two more. Wait...a hundred. But I am up for it. I have — yet again — seen the light... In their eyes...
Torn in Half
And so here he came: a little black calf, barely a month old, dragging himself along on his front hooves while stumps of hind legs attempted to keep up. Onto the auction block he went, where he was promptly bought by a meatpacking company....Enjoy your veal — er, meal — America...
Small Town Talk
I was asked three times today why I live in this little town. I’m always complaining about the restaurants, the rednecks, and the rain, and I’m sure that leaves my big-city friends and colleagues questioning my sanity. In all honesty, I often question it myself...
In the Leaving
The screaming of the butchered pig in its death throes triggered the incredibly deafening screams of the pigs in the holding pens. Pitch. Lull. Pitch. And again....I believe they knew. They could hear the dying inside the warehouse...
On Marine Life
A Whale of a Conversation
I spoke with an acquaintance recently who confessed that she had gone to Sea World in San Diego. She said she felt sad when she remembered some of the things I had told her about wild animals in captivity but she wanted to know where else people would learn about killer whales...
The Promise
Dolphins are messengers from beyond our own realm. They carry with them age-old truths, a wisdom at birth no human being experiences before death. They are masters of their universe. And they remind us of the splendor and preciousness of life, of time, of all that has been and is and is yet to be...
Liberating Moments
It was a gentle-sounding crash, as gentle as the giant that had made it. Fifty feet of humpback whale breached the quiet, calm ocean, forty tons of living flesh and sentience crashed onto the water’s surface with an explosion of spray and foam unlike anything I could ever have imagined...
On Animals & Nature
The Visitor
The new house I bought several years ago came complete with a barren dirt floor for a backyard. Nothing lived there. Nothing could. The ground was hard as rock. So I decided to do something about its forlornness, by opting to give back to the Earth what the house’s construction had taken...
Another Liberated Moment
It comes and it goes: violence, peace, hatred, love. I can and I can’t live without it, the television news, I mean. I shut it off and I feel alienated from the outside world, from all those things I can do something about to make this place better than the way I’ve found it...
Don't Tell Me They Don't Know
I lifted back my head, welcomed the cool downpour into my eyes and face and reveled in this unexpected connection to Nature. Until I remembered the elk. When I lowered my head to meet their gaze, their unalarmed curiosity reminded me how far away I was still...
The Ties That Bind
If we cannot relinquish our rights to animal ownership, animals will continue to suffer immeasurably — as did African slaves in the grip of human bondage — because their suffering will never be weighed for what it is, but only for what it costs their legal “owners” in terms of “property” damages...
On Human Nature
In Their Heart of Hearts
And then the car swerved out of its lane in order to avoid running over the tiny mashed carcass of some unrecognizable species of animal....And I got to thinking...
The Escape
Humans are fascinated by animals. Carousels and posters and images on tee-shirts, stuffed animals and statuettes, feeding pigeons and sea lions, buying books and toys, puzzles and games, all filled with animals, real and imagined...
The Blood of Innocence
An ethnic group in Senegal practices a seemingly unusual ritual to heal mental illness. Though they appear to be civilized — they drive cars, wear glasses, read and write — I can’t help but feel the entire community, not just the patients, are in need of serious help...
No Apology
But would it matter? Would they care? If they could see what I have seen, hear what I have heard, feel the pain I have felt in others, would it change their perspective? Would there be, at least, an apology for the cruelties and the unnecessary-ness of it all? ...
On Being an Activist
Another Death in the Family
It’s an unending, relentless grief. And its triggers come in very obvious, sometimes subtle, sometimes out-of-the-blue ways. Literally. They leave me with a bottomless depth of crippling sadness. You know the one I mean...
The Confessions of an Animal Rights Activist
I heard it again last night, on the television news. A report on federal legislation to ban canned hunting stirred up the old defensive rhetoric. “If you ban this sport, then where does it end? Do you want hunting to be outlawed?”...Um. Okay, I confess; yes...
Conversations With No One
She could have been my mother; she looked rather like her. A few years over 60, nicely dressed, sitting a table or two away from where I was dining. And when our gaze met, it was as if my mother had just laid eyes on me...
Home is a Wounded Heart
The world is ailing. Every morning when we awaken, there is a whale thrashing, a monkey screaming, a lone wolf howling, in the back of our minds. There is no escape from enlightenment, from truth, no escape from what lies beyond the morning sparrow’s song — not for us, those of us who work for the lives of others...
Just Doing My Job
“You know what they say about chicken,” I added, holding everyone’s attention. “They’ve got more room in this icebox than they had when they were alive”....Now I’m not saying a shrimp is any less deserving of a chicken, but I did note more of them, and fewer bird parts, were eaten that night....Me? I was just doing my job...
The Change
She nodded suredly. “All animals dream,” she said. “And they are afraid of nightmares, too.” And those were the facts as she saw them. Five years old and she believed animals dream, that they have feelings, much like the feelings she herself has...
Hoof-Free Marshmallows; Life Imitates Art
“Genuine synthetic leather.” Honest, that’s what it said, engraved neatly on the inside of a plastic fashion belt. Times are a-changing....Recently, however, while at an animal rights conference, I happened to glance across to the neighboring table and spied–you guessed it–bags of marshmallows for sale! ...
Hopeless Romantics
I called him “Dusty” because he was found among the debris in a slaughterhouse yard, so weak from starvation and disease, he could barely stand without locking his hindlegs together for balance...
Taking Inventory
A vacation in Washington, D.C. is paradise for me. I know, there are other, more romantic, places in the world to go: Venice, Bali, the Bahamas. But I’m a D.C. fan. Having lived in other countries as a child...
I'm A Believer
I saw God today. And not being a believer in any traditional God, that says a lot. But I did see God today....I had joined the director of the Wild Horse Sanctuary this past weekend on long, seemingly endless and barren desert highways in Arizona...
On Animal Rights Activists
Fearing For Your Sanity
Animal rights is the single greatest calling facing the human race. Our movement tackles nearly every aspect of so-called civilized society — and consists of human beings, not animals. And there are billions of them, weaved so firmly into our daily fabric we ourselves who care about them don’t often see them...
In the Saying Goodbye
Most of my work has been about images. Pictures with words. That’s where I seem to do my best, for some reason (I guess because I figure a picture says so much). Images. A man wielding a club over the head of an infant seal — that’s a powerful image. It needs no words...
Reflections on the Normal Majority
I’m at the brunt of activists’ wrath sometimes myself. “Is that leather?” someone will ask, fondling my shoe. And even I get righteously indignant. “Leather? Do you have to ask?” They do. They’re relentless — excuse me, rabid...
Of Violence and Popcorn
The release of several major motion pictures has given me serious pause for reflection. They’re not movies I’d generally pay to see, but they reflect blatant and hidden messages representative of our times, the times we, as activists, are creating...
Regarding Animals
Animals have voices: they speak. Some sing, others whinny; whales produce sounds so inaudible to the human ear that only other whales — sometimes 500 miles away — can hear them. Animals talk...
Investigative Reports
The Texas Massacres: Horse Slaughter in America
There has been no rest for the incredibly, terribly weary. They arrive utterly exhausted, frantically falling over themselves as they dangerously slip on the feces- and urine-slicked floors of the two-tier cattle truck that has brought them here...
Mestengo. Mustang. Misfit. America’s Disappearing Wild Horses
Fifty million years ago, a small dog-like creature called Eohippus evolved on the North American continent. In fact, this forerunner to the modern horse was traced to the Tennessee Valley...
To learn more about Laura
Moretti, visit her web site. |
