
Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau and Tilikum, the orca that killed her.
A six-ton killer whale at Orlando’s Sea World theme park killed a trainer this week. Minutes earlier, trainer Dawn Brancheau and Tilikum had been putting on a show for the tourists who keep Sea World’s doors open.
In the 31 years I’ve lived in the Tampa Bay area, I’ve never visited Sea World. The thought of watching sea animals jumping through hoops for someone’s amusement makes me ill. Avoiding the dolphin and bird shows at Busch Gardens means more time riding rollercoasters, my real passion. (No animals are harmed when you soar upside down on the awesome Montu coaster.)
I’m not an animal-rights activist per se, but animals are not our toys. They share our planet and deserve to live in their natural surroundings as God made them to do.
Circuses, zoos and exotic animals as house pets are nature inverted for man’s pleasure.
The orca dragged the trainer by the hair and drowned her, just as it had killed two other humans during what could only have been a miserable life. A killer whale is a large animal made to live on the open seas, not to spend its existence cooped up in a small tank.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) condems shows like Sea World’s and it’s easy to dismiss the group because of the stunts they pull to get their message across. In this case, they’re right.
Now Sea World is facing a public relations disaster and a young woman who loved animals is dead–all because an animal acted like an animal instead of like a human. An aerial shot of Tilikum’s tank illustrates just how small a space this 12,000 lb. animal had as living quarters.
If we kept a human in a cell of the same proportions and then pulled him or her out to tap dance several times a day, we couldn’t expect that human not to lose a semblance of humanity. In Tilikum’s case, an animal acted like an animal and a family has lost its daughter.
In recent weeks, a chimp at a primate sanctuary near our home attacked a young woman who was cleaning cages. Shawn, a chimp born in captivity, mauled and bit the volunteer because the animal reasoned that the human was invading her turf. Once again, an animal acted like an animal and someone got hurt.
Our son had been volunteering at the same primate sanctuary until recently because he finds chimps interesting. He wants one as a pet, he told us. (Fat chance of that in my house, but there’ll come a time when our son will move out. I shudder to think of what a chimp and my son in the same house would mean.)
My husband and I have told our son that chimps aren’t pets. These intelligent, active animals weren’t meant to perform for us, to wear children’s clothing or to be kept in cages. Chimps and killer whales were created to live in their natural surroundings as animals and not to become our toys.
Some of the primates where our son volunteered ended up at the sanctuary because they became someone’s unwanted pet. Some had their teeth pulled or were castrated to make them more docile household pets. If that isn’t a sin against nature itself, I don’t know what is.
Orcas and chimps were meant to be undomesticated. They enrich our planet and we can learn from them without paying admission to have them amuse us in cages.
Free Willy? Free Tilikum and Shawn and all creatures, great and small, as in Cecil Frances Alexander’s poem, All Things Bright:
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures, great and small
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.
Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings;
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
The purple-headed mountain,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning,
That brightens up the sky;
The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden
He made them every one.
The tall trees in the greenwood,
The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water
We gather every day,
He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.