Long time, no blog!

Long time no blog indeed! Life is hectic, my apologies! Also, I felt I didn't have much to write about, but I think enough time has gone by to fill my well of rants and random stories.

First off, today I saved a baby snake from the road, in return it peed on me but I loved it none the less!

In two days time I will be on the island playing with larger snakes, the kind that could kill me with one bite, so this little guy was good practice!

Speaking of which, this blog is hopefully going to get a lot more interesting. We ship out early Tuesday morning, assuming I finally take the time to pack up my junk, which so far is spread out all over the floor but none of it has found its way into the suitcase...

Anyways, today I wanted to rant a little about the stupidity of the general public when it comes to primates, in some cases many other animals. Seeing as how they play a huge role in our daily existence, I think it's time to be blunt about how blind we are to the fact that we have animals to thank for our lives, primates especially. First though, a video from Youtube popped back into my life today. Here's a fun story: last year I came across a video of a ringtailed lemur that was kept as a pet. The owner had named it and put a bow around its neck, and was feeding it chili from a can. This made me really mad. I mean, it was just about the cutest thing I've ever seen, there isn't much cuter in the world than a baby lemur, but it's the concept that pissed me off. That person probably didn't know how that lemur came to her possession, and if they did then I can say with certainty that they have no soul. Baby primates come with a hefty price tag on the pet market, but they also come with an ethical dilemma: to remove a baby primate from its mother, you have to kill the mother. Then the baby is transported illegally to the proud owner who might dress it up in human clothes and feed it improperly, and ultimately it will have a shorter meaningless life than its wild cousins. I got side tracked here, my story was that in my rage I started posting horrible comments to every video I could find of ignorant people with pet primates. Where as I didn't say anything violent to them, nor did I use any obscene language, my account was suspended because I was "harassing" people. Naturally, I just made a new account and kept doing what I was doing because I feel it's important for people to know the truth about the subject. As I was saying, one video popped back into my life today and guess what? The comment I left was still there, and it was the highest rated! 26 other people read what I had to say and understood that keeping a primate as a pet is wrong, and they pressed the "like" button in support! This makes me really happy and gives me hope for the future! Here's the video if anyone is interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vnXxXFYMsQ

Now that my rant about primates as pets is over, I would like to acknowledge how every day we probably do something that wouldn't be possible without the sacrifice of an animal, in some cases a primate. Did you brush your teeth today? Did you put on deodorant? Did you wash dishes? Or take any type of medication? If you did, and you weren't using a product that said "No Animal Testing" then you have an animal to thank! I'm not going to type on and on about the ethics of animal tests, but I will take this time to point out that there are a lot of lives out there being wasted for stupid things. Do we really need perfume and cologne that was tested on animals? Do we really need shaving cream or eye shadow or laundry soap that put something alive through months of torture? I think the answer is no, especially because there are alternatives. I am proud to say that my make up is animal testing free, as is my deodorant, dish soap, household cleaner, and virtually everything else that I can control. However, this morning like several other women, I took a birth control pill. I'm sorry sheep, rabbits, cats, dogs, and chimps, I really really am, but what can I do? I can acknowledge the fact that I supported lab tests and I can be thankful for the lives that were sacrificed to ensure that I don't have any babies. I feel guilty about this every day, and in the future I will do my part to stop the continued use of animals in testing. For now, I just wanted to bring attention to how we can reduce our support of this vicious field, and by that I mean that we should try to support the companies that do not test on animals when we can instead of turning a blind eye to the cruelty we choose to support. Think about it like this: every time you swipe your card and buy some floor cleaner, that's another rabbit with bleach dripping into its eyes and you just paid for that to happen. BUT! If you swipe your card to pay for a bottle of floor cleaner that wasn't tested on animals, you supported the fact that life is not a commodity, yay!

Well this has been a depressing blog with lots of text and pretty well no pictures. I'll leave you with some cute lemurs and a really neat tree frog!