Epiphany

I am a hindu Mormon. (And no, that's not the epiphany.)

I went through a period of life as a vegetarian, a moral decision fueled mainly by Disney movies that led me to believe that all species of the animal kingdom including earthworms and paramecia experience a full range of emotion and comprehension. I am no longer a vegetarian, but I still fall subject to this delusion, like when I admitted to my brother Sean that while I know that insects lack a central nervous system and can't feel pain, I still wanted his medical opinion on whether I should let the wasp who I had just removed from a puddle of syrup dry off or if I should just put him out of his misery. Tyler screams for me when he sees a spider, not because he's afraid of them as some friends have mistakenly believed, but because I need to gently and humanely remove it from the house. Sometimes I make it a little bed out of a matchbox and cottonballs and tuck it in for the night.

My tender little heart breaks the most when nature is allowed to run its course. I struggle when a group of animals singles out the weak among it and tries to peck/trample/gnaw it to death. I have been known to run after a gaggle of geese clapping my hands and yelling to get them to leave the goose with the short leg alone, when I know very well that when I leave the park the lame goose is going down.

I brought all of these emotions to the zoo last winter when I observed two Aldabra Giant Tortoises. One was significantly larger than the other, maybe four feet long while the other was only two and a half. There they both were, enjoying their breakfast when suddenly the smaller tortoise shot off across the display. Hogle Zoo describes these reptiles as "slow-moving," and baby, that tortoise was booking it. Looking menacing, the great big bully tortoise came lumbering after the poor defenseless little (comparatively) tortoise. When the big tortoise climbed on top of the poor small tortoise and stretched out his neck to peck the little tortoise on the head (who, incidentally, tried to defend itself by trying to retreat into its shell) I looked around for a zookeeper to alert. It was then that the on-top large tortoise, in the words of the exhibit label I noted today, "[emitted] a deep groan that [could] be heard from a considerable distance."

Ohhhh. I get it.

All in all it was an educational experience.