Save the alligator! (But screw all the non-newsworthy animals)

Imagine a Martian is given an assignment by his superiors: Go over to Earth, study the humans there, and determine how they feel about the other animals on their planet. My guess is the first lines of the resulting report would read as follows: "The humans on Earth revere the non-human animals. Also they despise them. Also they have no feelings at all about them. At any given moment the humans will passionately rally to save the life of an animal, and in the next moment will slaughter another one without mercy. They will find unremarkable a lifetime of human-imposed suffering by a million members of one species, while finding the nature-imposed suffering of a single member of another species to be a tragedy worthy of heroic measures. The only near-guarantees of survival for an individual animal on Earth are to be of a species deemed 'cute' in that particular geographic region or to fall into a novel predicament and receive media coverage."

From the AP (emphasis mine):

MILWAUKEE--A four-foot alligator chewed its way out of a shipping carton before a postal worker tossed it into a hamper and called animal control officers.

Employees were sorting mail Friday when they noticed the alligator chewing its way out of an Express Mail box, said JoAnne Blackburn, a Postal Service spokeswoman.

Workers tried to tape the box closed, but the alligator bit it open.

"The nose ... was sticking out with its teeth hanging out," said postal employee Jennifer Hejdak. She said a co-worker picked it up by its tail and threw it in a hamper.

The alligator will remain at a shelter for a week before being shipped to a northern Illinois sanctuary, said Len Selkurt, executive director of the Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control. The sanctuary owner will then take it to Florida, he said.

Obviously, the problem of having a live alligator on their hands could be solved very simply by the officials: Kill the alligator. Just shoot it (does nobody in Wisconsin own a gun?). Or smash its head quickly with a really big hammer. Or take it to a vet, pay a couple hundred dollars for euthanasia and disposal. Whatever. It isn't terribly hard to end an alligator's life. It happens all the time.

But no. Rather than solve the problem quickly and economically, government officials and animal-care professionals in three states are going to spend probably thousands of dollars (or the equivalent in labor and other resources) to house the thing and relocate it twice.

All of this expense and effort will be spent on one (1) alligator.

There is only one way that all of this effort could make logical sense to me: If every decision maker involved is a vegetarian. Going on the (probably safe) assumption that these decision makers (and those who agree that saving the alligator is the right thing to do) are not vegetarians, how to make sense of it? For example, in order to solve the minor problem of their own hunger tonight, these alligator-savers will likely elect to have, say, a chicken killed, when obviously they could have sated their hunger without killing any animals at all, if they truly believe that one shouldn't kill an animal to solve a problem.

Kill an alligator to avoid a major expense and hassle? No.

Kill a chicken to avoid eating something else that would work just as well? Why, yes. Of course.

To pile irony upon irony, that alligator will likely be fed at least one whole chicken during his week at the Milwaukee animal shelter, as that is a common food fed to alligators, and they eat about one big meal a week.

And it is almost a certainty that the chicken being consumed had lived a lifetime of suffering on a factory farm, being fed antibiotics to keep it alive, as the diseases it would normally develop in those conditions would kill it.

So...a chicken lived a lifetime of suffering, followed by slaughter, so that an alligator could live. This makes sense?

For the record, I am not a vegetarian. But after reading the New Yorker's profile of PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk a while back (article not online, bastards), I haven't been able to get animal rights issues out of my mind. If someone can explain how PETA's central philosophy--"animals are not ours to use for food, clothing, entertainment, or experimentation"--makes less sense than the behavior outlined above, I'd love to hear it.

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