Alone They Stand, Spiritless They Fall
I sit there, shivering, peering through the bars that take away my freedom and my life. The cold, wire-cage floor beneath my feet feels strange, but I cannot quite place why. My eyes burn, my head feels heavy, and the raw patch on my back is terribly painful. I cannot seem to run away from the hurt. I don't know where it comes from.
Cold hands reach in to touch me, and I become excited at the introduction of company. A person came in yesterday, carrying a strange scent. Suddenly I was taken back, I could feel the sun on my back as I played in the tree tops, swinging wildly with my brother while my family watched protectively over us. I was happy. It was gone almost as soon as I noticed it and my life returned to the monotonous, painful existence it is.
Groups of humans come regularly to stare at me. Devoid of company, I get very excited and chatter nervously to myself. Then I chatter loudly to them, asking where I am and why I hurt so much. I ask them if I could have a mate and some straw to lie on. They do not answer. They make loud noises and bang the cage. I get scared and retreat to the back of my cage, shivering, alone, uneasy.
They leave. I see, though, that one lingers a little longer than the others, allowing me to catch a feeling, an expression that I have never sensed or noticed before. It was strange. My hand reaches out to her as she leaves and I grip the cold bars as I see that her expression once more softens. My finger pokes through the cage wanting physical contact, craving reassurance from her that she will return and perhaps offer me a source of happiness and companionship. She is gone.
Loneliness surrounds me. I have no family, no friends, no company, I am trapped. My cage is a constant reminder that humans can offer me no peace and no happiness. My thoughts return to the young female I saw looking at me, lingering, expressions on her face that I cannot place. It was then I felt an emotion other than hurt and desperation. I felt that through her eyes she was reaching out to me, searching for some sign that I feel and experience all the emotions a human can. Can she see that I am scared and lonely? Can she make a difference to my life? Will she return?
Today is different. I felt it as soon as the humans entered the room. She is not among those white cloaked figures that are noisily occupying the space outside my cage and I am sad. Rushing busily, the humans are confusing me. I begin to feel scared and chatter nervously to myself. A sense of desperation comes over me as a large machine is brought into the room. I huddle, shivering, chattering, to the far left corner of my prison. My senses are alive and my instinct for danger is alerting me, telling me to run, to hide. But I have nowhere to run to, and nothing to hide in. I begin to panic and chatter loudly now. Scampering around my cage I make a lot of noise. I climb up the walls of my cage, my hands and feet gripping firmly to the unrelenting bars of my prison. I bang my hands and my head against the bars. I jump down from the walls and slam my whole body into the sides of my cage. A hand reaches into my cage, I bite it, I am scared.
Another hand, this time wrapped heavily in protective clothing. It grips me. I am scared. Terrified I bite it again and then experience a blinding pain throughout my entire body. I am still. Lifted out of my cage I offer no resistance. I am lifeless, hopeless. Slung over the shoulders of a human I catch a glimpse of the door and see it open. She is there. Despite great pain and with desperation I lift my hand out to her, fingers outstretched. She does not see. I screech, loud and full of hurt, anger and fear. I screech, and screech, and screech....
- Epilogue -
The last glimpse I was allowed of my monkey friend before I was forcibly removed from the laboratory convinced me that animals do feel pain and are like humans in the way they are able to experience a variety of emotions. And so, alas, another loving animal has been killed at the hand of humankind. One of many, I realise, whose life was destroyed and spirit killed, whose natural existence was denied and replaced with torture, physical, emotional and psychological.
The most personally depressing part of the pain and suffering I had a hand in making my monkey friend endure was that his life was of no importance to those humans around him. He died alone, frightened and spiritless.
How is it that we boast of equality, the right to life, when these rules are broken every painful second of the day. In Britain an animal dies in laboratory testing every six seconds, in North America three animals die every second. A God-sent escape from a life of torment and torture.
The hardest thing for me to admit was that this was not an isolated case. We still have animals being put through the same torture in our laboratory, and in many other institutions also. Every year millions of animals are battered, blinded, addicted to drugs, mutilated, violated in every possible way and eventually killed in experiments performed by humans. Countless others face their last hours of life in abattoirs, traps, nets, at the end of a gun, savaged by dogs, or neglected by ignorant people. The horror story of animal suffering seems endless.
I have come to realise that animals are powerless in the face of human domination, they have no voice in our world. A world so alien and barbaric that it is totally beyond their comprehension. Animals have no means to fight back, they have no voice to tell humans when they are in pain; they are alone. But I can fight back. I do have a voice to tell humans when they are in pain.
They are alone no longer.
Willow Ross, year 12, Unley SA
This poem comes from an unpublished collection of entries to our 1994 Poem and Story competition.
Animal Liberation SA holds the copyright to this work. Permission is granted to teachers to make copies for their own students.