Coco has no wish to pass judgement, and he hopes that there is no sense of that in the following, but the circumstances of the disappearance and subsequent demise of the squirrel afford an opportunity for a couple of comments.
It was that that “multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets” had been received by the Department for Environmental Conservation (DEC in the USA). The consequence for the squirrel was that it was taken from an allegedly unsafe house, which it appeared to be happy, to a safe house where it died.
The concern for the welfare of wildlife is not to be derogated, but it does lead one to wonder where the equivalent organisation is for people who live in ‘potentially unsafe housing’ and why they are not removed from such places though of course not with similar consequences as in the case of the squirrel.
The second comment follows from Coco’s first, though it requires a slight rephrasal of what had happened, for it speaks of events which take place frequently and against which a protest such as was made in favour of the squirrel are in some places illegal. Whilst we do not have an equivalent of the DEC, we do have the legalised removal of people from safe housing with the same consequences as for the squirrel.
They are people for whom their environment is perfectly suited to their development and growth, and yet they are torn out of it and are quietly euthanised. The womb should be the safest place on earth for a human being.
Job in his distress cried out: Why then have you brought me out of the womb? Oh, that I had perished and no eye had seen me! I would have been as though I had not been. I would have been carried from the womb to the grave Job 10:18-19.
Most of us would not cry out in such a way wishing for a still-birth. Perhaps the words of King David are better for you: For you formed my inward parts; you wove me [together] in my mother’s womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvellous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret, and skilfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed, and in your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them Psalm 139:13-16.
It is a big issue. It may make a difference on November the 5th 2024 in the USA.
A black man is allowed to say things that white men cannot.