Okay, uglybeech, here is what I am saying. When the original post started, the disaster was less than twenty-four hours old. We had an estimated death count of 70,000 (which turned out to be overinflated, thank god). We had reports of newborn infants dying by the hundreds because their mothers couldn’t be evacuated fast enough, serial rapes, mass murder.
So then someone, in the midst of all this tragedy, comes in and says “won’t someone think of the puppies?” If it had come later in the disaster, say after we knew the true (human) death count, or had gotten the majority of the trapped people out (at this point, there were still thousands of people stuck in the city, on their roofs, in their attics… some are still there but it is not as critical), there would not have been the same response, at least not from me. If a “save the animals” thread had been posted TODAY, after the situation has been more or less stabilized, I would have either not posted to the thread or posted words of encouragement. But is was posted less than twenty-four hours after the hurricane struck land. At that point, I had just read the estimated death count of 70,000, and I’m sorry, but to worry about animals when SO MANY people, an entire cityful, might be dead seems inappropriate and crass.
So then people come in talking about all the ways they’d like to torture the pittee, and saying those of us who are thinking about that supposed 70,000 are loveless ice queens and kings, and then people started getting really off topic and talking about chimp DNA or whatever, and it’s just really frustrating. Because when this thread was posted, we all thought the worst about what had happened to the city, and some people’s first priority was the pets. We were facing a disaster that dwarfed (and probably still dwarfs) 9/11, one that some of us thought would approach the tsunami, and people are talking about pets. And now you, and others, are coming in and trying to codify a set of rules based on something I said when I thought there were thousands upon thousands of dead people floating down the Mississippi, try to make me seem ridiculous and unemotional when in fact my response to the thread WAS an emotional one, fueled by the emotion of thinking there were 70,000 dead people out there, and seeing people think about the animals first.
But this isn’t an apology for something said in haste, because I meant everything I said. At the time I thought there were 70,000 dead and so did probably a few other people on this board. Do you know how high a number that is? Of course, I know they’re just dumb Southern coloreds, not real people like you and me, but they look enough like us that, I don’t know, I got a little teary-eyed. Oh but wait, I’m a Vulcan, I have no emotions because I can see a rational reason why a little boy wouldn’t be allowed to take his dog on a rescue bus.
Are you saying you’ve never met a crazy dog lady, the inverse of the cat lady, someone who has one little lap dog and spends thousands of dollars on designer clothes for it and forsakes time with her children to play with the dog then leaves the dog her fortune in her will? I envy you. Okay, maybe it’s not a very common phenomenon, but it happens.
