Animals and Me

Yesterday I saw a post from a friend on my facebook timeline, it was a majority of peoples abject horror at a group of people supposedly in Trinidad posing and taking photos with Leatherback sea turtles. Animals are a touchy topic for the greater part of the population.

Then there’s me, I can watch animal planet, Nat geo or Discovery Channel all day and enjoy learning about the ways of nature. However I think peoples outrage at the turtle photos are a little over the top. The comments make it seem like the people were posing with machetes just having massacred every leatherback they could get their hands on. Some of you go too far, like those turtles are your immediate family. I don’t go out of my way to be cruel to animals (throwing my cat off my bed, kicking my cat off my leg maybe) but calm down of your crazy animal lover insanity.

The Zoo I notice some of you hate Zoo’s “ZOMG that animal is in a cage boohoo he should be free”. Seriously? Who cares…..It’s like food processing; no one wants to see the process a burger goes through to reach their plates but will eat 4 of them at your barbeque. A Zoo is a place where you can go to see animals you would otherwise be unable to see, Zoos spend a lot taking care of those animals and it’s not like they are keeping the whole species locked up. If you hate to see animals locked up here’s a tip, don’t go to the damn Zoo.

Whale Hunting/ Dolphins I hope the Japanese kill a whole group of those people from whale wars lemme just put that out there. If a species of whale is not endangered why shouldn’t the Japanese hunt them? Of course hunting an animal to extinction is foolish but if the animal is in abundance then by all means kill and eat. Dogs/Cats “If you were an animal” well guess what…..I’m not. People have this ridiculous notion where they love animals more than their fellow man. I’m no Christian but didn't God give the beasts of the earth for labor and for food? Animals are not on our level, they do not have or deserve rights.

It is man’s prerogative on how to treat an animal. I cannot treat my cat like I would treat another person, my cat tears up the trash trying to get at scraps AFTER I already fed him a full meal. The only reason we keep pets is 1. Pest control (rats, mice etc.) 2. Companionship – If you are lonely enough to have your dog or cat on a human level you need friends, seriously get friends. Many dogs have come through my life from infant to adult and I loved them all but surgical procedures, making an animal vegetarian, a separate house for your pet is just going too far.

Animal Experimentation New drugs generally go through many clinical trials and tests before they become mainstream. Would you rather we a. experiment on labrats or monkeys or b. experiment on living breathing human beings. I for 1 prefer animals to take that bullet. So while you protest outside like the pharmaceutical company is the umbrella corporation I’m happy at home knowing a tiny mouse melting into a pool of broken chemical bonds, mutating into a slightly bigger mouse or simply getting a tan is happening rather than the zombie apocalypse cause they were testing the T-Virus on humans first.

Game Analysis: Antigua & Barbuda (Benna Boyz) vs USA

In probably the most watched game ever by Antiguan standards the USA topped us 3-1 in our first world cup, Concacaf group A qualifier. Firstly as a former goal keeper myself I’ll start on Molvin James our 5’8 starting keeper. Positively, he saved us from maybe taking a 5 or 6-1 loss with a few brilliant reflexive saves, it is important you emphasize ‘reflexive’ because honestly his ability as a keeper is almost all quick reflex. Molvin had no real command of his box; many of those parried shots weren’t even strong efforts and should’ve been held onto. Also why wouldn’t he change his studs, he slipped at least 6 times that I counted on the wet pitch.

In the Antigua defence 3 out our 4 defenders IQ at marking a forward or midfielder was awful. Defending a player doesn’t mean constantly going to ground at his feet to tackle. Yes Donovan is a world class player, very quick and has lots of tricks but Antigua’s defensive players are not slow keeping a striker in front of you shouldn’t have been so difficult. Our defence was still relatively solid barring one factor, CLEARING! You have got to clear the ball from danger and take pressure off yourself better as a defender, heading the ball clear or kicking the ball far up the field was lacking in the defence and at least 2 goals were scored as a result of poor clearances. Midfield, this is where we are absolutely abysmal. Yes Antigua is small but out of our 86,000 we can’t find a midfielder who plays with his head? A midfielder who can hold up the ball and spot outlet passes to the wings or upfront to our forwards? Murtagh, Robinson and Leigterwood are clearly not it when it comes to passing in the midfield all that needs to be said is we had time since facing Haiti to resolve this problem of no midfield presence and nothing has been done. Besides the pass to Byers in which Byers did all the work himself to score.

I didn’t even notice Tamarley ‘Ziggy’ Thomas was even on the pitch. Randolph ‘Etty’ Burton on the other hand constantly looked overwhelmed by the moment, a bunch of nervous touches that resulted in miscontrolling the ball or over hit passes. Finally our forwards, Dexter Blackstock is not the answer for us upfront. I haven’t seen him much so I can only go on what I saw in this match, he’s not very fast, doesn’t really make great runs to move the defence, is not very strong physically on the ball and doesn’t have a strikers awareness. Peter Byers on the other hand is big, strong, fast and has the presence of a front man, also when he came on he singlehandedly raised the level of the entire team. All in all it was a proud day for Antigua and we were on ESPN so there’s that, but I feel like we could’ve won that game 1-0 because USA was sloppy and looked unfit and we gave away 3 soft goals.