Post by Ding Carpio on Jan 18, 2008 23:31:13 GMT
Raining this morning, too tanked up with coffee to go back to sleep, and too lazy to post process, so allow me to ramble on something that’s been on my mind but never found time to…er…ramble.
Some medalist sharpshooters were allegedly caught with the smoking gun (can’t resist the pun) and ducks necklaced round beaming heads. We all want to crucify them.
But I sort of understand their predicament: they may have not known it’s a bad thing to kill birds. Seriously.
I grew up in the fishing town of Malabon and my cousin-best-friend and I were like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer: climbing trees, swimming in fishponds, building treehouses and rafts, trapping fish, and, yes, slingshooting birds. My Mom prohibited slingshots (might poke someone’s eye) but my Dad, I know, secretly took pleasure knowing his first-born always snuck in his self-made-guava-wood-super-shooter. We loved it when we kill birds of different sizes and kinds. Later, as an adult, I would go to my friend’s farm in Bataan, borrow a rifle and shoot birds. My biggest trophy was a Yellow Bittern.
Now that I’m photographing birds, I gain a completely different perspective: Taking pleasure on the death of another creature just doesn’t sound right.
It’s all about education. I grew up being taught how wonderful nature is; heck it was all around me. But no one in my small barrio ever said killing birds was bad. In fact, it was just dandy. Morals are something we needed to be taught because, many times, they run counter to immediate pleasures that kids and even adults want to experience; e.g. killing animals. And no one ever taught me not to kill.
But where does it all stop? Where’s the line drawn? Snakes and bayawaks often stray into our garden and, to the horror of my family, I insist on not killing them, instead, I trap them and throw them into the forest. They always come back.
How about fishing? I enjoy that, too. But, now, do I have to rethink this because, seriously, even if we eat what we catch, that’s not really the point of fishing.
Even non-killing but potentially animal-disturbing acts, I now rethink. I thought I was clever telling the world about the Neon Rustle technique to open the Nightjar’s eyes. But, I learned from teLyd, that Mike Lu regarded it as pambubulabog (sorry, don’t know the English). And he’s probably right. But when Neon and I were shaking those branches, we were both just after getting a photo, oblivious to the potential consequence of driving away the bird from its habitat. We were just kids having a good time. Much like those sharpshooters were with those dead birds.
So this rambling message goes on. I don’t think I have a point. And I want to have one. Any thoughts?
Some medalist sharpshooters were allegedly caught with the smoking gun (can’t resist the pun) and ducks necklaced round beaming heads. We all want to crucify them.
But I sort of understand their predicament: they may have not known it’s a bad thing to kill birds. Seriously.
I grew up in the fishing town of Malabon and my cousin-best-friend and I were like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer: climbing trees, swimming in fishponds, building treehouses and rafts, trapping fish, and, yes, slingshooting birds. My Mom prohibited slingshots (might poke someone’s eye) but my Dad, I know, secretly took pleasure knowing his first-born always snuck in his self-made-guava-wood-super-shooter. We loved it when we kill birds of different sizes and kinds. Later, as an adult, I would go to my friend’s farm in Bataan, borrow a rifle and shoot birds. My biggest trophy was a Yellow Bittern.
Now that I’m photographing birds, I gain a completely different perspective: Taking pleasure on the death of another creature just doesn’t sound right.
It’s all about education. I grew up being taught how wonderful nature is; heck it was all around me. But no one in my small barrio ever said killing birds was bad. In fact, it was just dandy. Morals are something we needed to be taught because, many times, they run counter to immediate pleasures that kids and even adults want to experience; e.g. killing animals. And no one ever taught me not to kill.
But where does it all stop? Where’s the line drawn? Snakes and bayawaks often stray into our garden and, to the horror of my family, I insist on not killing them, instead, I trap them and throw them into the forest. They always come back.
How about fishing? I enjoy that, too. But, now, do I have to rethink this because, seriously, even if we eat what we catch, that’s not really the point of fishing.
Even non-killing but potentially animal-disturbing acts, I now rethink. I thought I was clever telling the world about the Neon Rustle technique to open the Nightjar’s eyes. But, I learned from teLyd, that Mike Lu regarded it as pambubulabog (sorry, don’t know the English). And he’s probably right. But when Neon and I were shaking those branches, we were both just after getting a photo, oblivious to the potential consequence of driving away the bird from its habitat. We were just kids having a good time. Much like those sharpshooters were with those dead birds.
So this rambling message goes on. I don’t think I have a point. And I want to have one. Any thoughts?
This is what I think for the moment. I am always eager to learn. telyd 