Читать книгу Random Acts of Kindness by Animals - Stephanie LaLand - Страница 8

This book is a collection of true stories about animals who have displayed the sort of love and humanity we humans aspire to achieve. Dogs are well known to have put aside their own safety in order to save a fellow animal's life or aid an injured human. But in this book, you will discover the compassion, heroism, and incredible caring, not only of dogs, but also of many other animals, including cats, monkeys, geese, turtles, fish, and even a wild seagull! Some animals have dedicated their whole lives to helping others. In addition to the well-known Seeing Eye and hearing dogs, there are also handi-dogs who help paraplegics.

That animals can act with courage, love, devotion, and compassion is dramatically demonstrated in these stories from around the world. Often animal acts of kindness have a unique poignancy to them—like that of an English cat, who, when barred from the funeral chamber where her beloved mistress was being mourned, laid a dead bird outside the door—the only gift of farewell she knew how to give.

Even if it is not a dramatic rescue, contact with animals can heal the body and nourish the soul. Studies have shown that having a pet enables people to live longer, to recover more frequently from heart attacks, and gives prisoners and juvenile delinquents a way to reconnect with society. From gorillas who speak to us through sign language to pets who communicate so much love throughout a lifetime, without ever saying a word, animals bring joy to our lives and comfort to our spirits.

Four years of research have gone into this book. These stories have made me laugh, made me cry, amazed and surprised me. Finding each one was like discovering a delicate little treasure more precious than gold or jewels, because each spoke to me of the virtues common to all life. When we discover a little more goodness in others, we somehow discover more of it in ourselves as well.

Never again will I settle for the phrase “only an animal” to describe one of my fellow creatures. The animals, themselves, through their loyalty, bravery, commitment, and love, have stated, more eloquently than any words might say, that we are all sentient and conscious beings, each holding within us that little spark of the divine.

By now everyone has heard of the incident that took place at a zoo near Chicago, an unexpected rescue that captured the attention of the whole world and caused people to rethink the way they looked at animals. During the summer of 1996, spectators at the Brookfield Zoo were shocked to witness a three-year-old boy fall twenty-four feet into the gorilla compound, striking his head on the concrete. The boy lay unconscious, at the mercy of the seven huge gorillas in the compound.

As the crowd watched anxiously, one of the gorillas approached the boy. It was Binti-Jua, a mother gorilla, carrying her own infant on her back. The helpless spectators tensed as the gorilla came closer and closer to the unconscious boy. They were too far away to separate them if she chose to do him harm. As Binti-Jua picked up the boy in her hairy arms, the boy's mother screamed out, “A gorilla's got my baby!”

Rather than harming him, the gorilla cradled him in her arms. Keeping the other gorillas away, she carefully carried him to a door at the side of the compound which she had seen humans use many times and where the zookeeper could reclaim him.

Binti-Jua (Swahili for “daughter of sunshine”) became a national hero, thanks to a videotape made by visitor Bill Lambert that captured the entire event. Audiences around the world watched a zoo animal rescue a human boy with obvious tenderness. Zoo attendance rose dramatically and gifts of money and bananas flooded in from around the world.

Critics who said that Binti-Jua was merely acting from maternal instinct (as if all mothers don't) were silenced when a videotape was broadcast of a similar incident that happened ten years before. On that occasion, a child who had fallen into a gorilla compound was approached by a male gorilla. Instead of hurting the child, the very large and potentially dangerous male gorilla could be seen gently stroking the fallen child's head.

Why should we be so surprised? Anyone lucky enough to be raised with a dog or cat knows that animals are fellow beings with personalities and a tremendous capacity for love and devotion. You can look into their eyes and sense another soul in there looking back at you. We all love to share stories of our own animals' antics or heroism.

The fact that wild animals are also capable of compassion and understanding should not be too difficult to accept. Yet, when we witness wild animals demonstrating remarkable acts of kindness and courage, we are taken aback. Such cases make us uneasy, impel us to reach, like Binti-Jua's critics, for rationalizations that let us believe animals are mere soulless automatons.

When animals display extraordinary humanity, it is hard for us to continue to treat them “like animals.” And yet, in the animal kingdom there are many examples of compassion taking precedence over “survival of the fittest.”

Indeed, the naturalist Petr Kropotkin, a Russian prince and contemporary of Charles Darwin, noticed such behavior and developed a very different theory from Darwin. Darwin purported the theory of “survival of the fittest,” a dispassionate theory that describes life on earth as a desperate contest to kill or be killed—to eat or be eaten. In contrast, Kropotkin's theory championed “survival of the most cooperative.”

Why such different views of animals? Darwin developed his theories predominantly on an island where the air was warm, food was abundant, and animals were at risk from overpopulation. Petr Kropotkin, however, went north to Russian Siberia to learn about animal behavior. There, he realized that when the environment is more adversarial, animals must learn to work together for survival. Animals such as wolves, which have had to face biting cold and snow, learn to hunt together and build supportive social structures. Kropotkin's research indicated that cooperation, communal living, and mutual assistance are just as important to life on earth as sharper teeth, longer claws, or bigger muscles.

Even in warmer climates there are many examples of animal cooperation if you look for them, such as beavers working together to build a dam to stop a river's flow. Since we know that what we look for affects what we see, we must guard against the prejudicial veils of theory and look afresh at the animal kingdom.

That's the purpose of this book—to open our eyes to the compassionate and cooperative nature of the animals with whom we share this earth. It includes stories not only of love and heroism, but also of works of great beauty that animals have created. And sprinkled throughout the book are suggested acts of kindness we can offer to the animals in our lives in appreciation of all of their devotion and care.

This book began to take shape over ten years ago, although I didn't know it at the time. A woman called me on the telephone to tell me about an incident that took place on her childhood farm many years before. She had gotten my name from an article I had written about animals and had taken the time to call me up. As she shared her story of love and compassion, I was overwhelmed by the sweetness, loyalty, and self-sacrificing love that passed between two dogs—one her's, the other her neighbor's. At the end of the conversation, we were both crying. She thanked me for listening and then added, “I've waited thirty years to tell someone this story.” And so I have included the story of Brownie and Spotty here, the first of a series of stories that have gently refocused my life.

—Stephanie Laland, Spring 1997