Saturday, March 5, 2011

Fire at Will!

I was shooting hoops in our front yard a couple o' hours ago and there was this rather big kind of rare (at least I think so as it was the first time I saw it) bird. that flew out of our Indian mango tree to another tree. I've seen a lot of birds in our compound before, mostly mayas (sparrows) and the occasional tamsi, kingfisher (there are a lot of fishponds on the streets next to ours), pigeons and runaway lovebirds. But this bird (I do not know the name, sorry) with black feathers and about as big as a mature pigeon was something new. And as I thought about it, I remember the "Fire-at-Will" mentality of Pinoys.
Me and my classmates have joked about it before, but right now it doesn't seem funny. Filipinos have a strange habit of killing a creature that is unusual to their eyes. We've probably seen it all. When people see a huge snake they usually smack it with something hard to kill it. I remembered watching on the news that a strange unknown creature was found somewhere in LaPaz. Fearing it was some syokoy, the locals killed it! This is the same fate of a sunfish that was beached in Tigbauan(?).
In other countries, when people find something strange or unusual, they immediately call the authorities to have it inspected. Here, that strange creature is dead meat if found by people. It's sad because the creatures are called unusual for a reason -- they do not occur or show up most of the time. It could be a once in a lifetime happening. And if they keep on murdering every creature that shows up once in a lifetime, how can we study what it really is? It could prove to be useful, maybe even find cures to AIDS, cancer and a whole lot of other sickness.
I just wish there would be ways to raise the level of awareness of these people. I'm sure we are doing just that in our own little way, but sometimes that is not enough. There has to be collective action done in order to change something that's already there for a long time.
I hope this could help.

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