A Bunny's A Bunny, No Matter How Small

For my picture book, I would love to do an "expansion" or "separate way of looking at" the quote from Horton Hears A Who, "A person's a person, no matter how small."
You know, when I hear this quote, I think of people. I think of the fact that all people should be treated fairly, equally. But what else comes to my mind are animals. Yes, we all know that animals get abused. They go to shelters, and make wonderful pets to adopt and love, you care for them, they care for you.
The two probably most common pets are cats and dogs. Maybe that why they're included in the expression "It's raining cats and dogs", and not exotic pets that are kept worldwide. Maybe if we did, the expression would be, "Hey! It's raining monkeys and hedgehogs!"
When people see ads or campaigns or fundraiser signs for animal shelters or animal protection organizations, they see cats and dogs. On a pet shop ad: cats and dogs. Cats and dogs are seen everywhere. Why? They're such common pets. The thing is, some people don't think about the smaller or more exotic animals that get abused or put in shelters or euthanized each day.

"According to the ASPCA, companion rabbits are the third most frequently euthanized animals at shelters, behind cats and dogs. While many shelter rabbits come from feed stores, flea markets, or laboratories, in reality, most rabbits facing euthanasia were once family companions or classroom pets who were bought at pets stores or breeders and surrendered to shelters when the novelty wore off or at the conclusion of a school year. Many people mistakenly assume that rabbits are low-maintenance or good starter pets for children, rather than physically fragile, yet spirited and opinionated animals..."
(http://saveabunny.org/about#need)

Some people don't know that small animals like rabbits or birds or ferrets or reptiles are abused so much each year. I didn't even know how much either, until I took the time to research it, and I learned so much.

I went to SaveABunny.org, (a link is listed above), and found out how many rabbits were abused each year, and even read up on some real-life rabbit-abuse cases and their trials. It's astounding how rabbits can be mistreated. While some can be living in horrible, cramped, and filthy conditions, others can be outright abused, through torture or other kinds of beatings. The white and gray rabbit to the left was even set on fire. (Phoenix - This brave & loving bunny was tortured and set on fire. He came to SaveABunny for treatment of his physical & emotional wounds.)

Since this whole entire project is for social awareness, I want to raise social awareness on how many small animals -not just bunnies- get abused each year. Because after all, a bunny's a bunny, no matter how small.

A Bird Cries, A Damsel Sighs...

When Art Spiegelman wrote the life-changing graphic novel, MAUS, he wrote about anything but a fairy tale. Portraying the characters as different animals, Spiegelman tells the story of his father's experience in the Holocaust.
Right away, I saw a connection between this book and Terrible Things. Not only are they both stories of the Holocaust, but both show the characters as animals, but I think that they both did so for different reasons. Eve Bunting, the author of Terrible Things, had different animals being discriminated against to show the reader the ridiculous things that people in real life discriminate against, and how differences don't matter.
In MAUS, I think that Spiegelman did something very clever with which people from the Holocaust he put as each animal. Spiegelman, his father, his family, and all the rest of the Jews are drawn as mice. Later when he draws the Nazis, if you look closely, you'll notice that they're cats. This says a lot about what happened in the Holocaust. The Nazis and Jews were just like cats and mice: cats hunt mice, and unlike in Tom & Jerry, the cats win the fight in real life. They mice are their prey, small, weak, and helpless. But cats seem like lovable, friendly creatures, a companion, a pet. But to most people, mice, rats, or just all rodents in general, are rabid, nasty, garbage hoarding, dirty, foul beasts, and that's exactly what the real Nazis in the Holocaust thought about the Jews, although the Jews were innocent victims of their power. But the real-life version is the cat is the exact opposite of what the Jews thought of the Nazis. To the Jews, Nazis were killers, liars, men to be feared.
The fact that sometimes animals like mice or rats, playing a human role or not, can be misunderstood, relates back to an entry way back on this blog. This particular entry was about Templeton. Remember him? The rat from Charlotte's Web? I don't think that I'll ever let the idea that he's the real victim of discrimination in Charlotte's Web leave my cerebrum. Throughout the whole book he was described as a nasty, mean and dirty. I find that not only were the animals in the barn discriminatory toward Templeton, but also E.B. White!

¹rat noun \ˈrat\

1

a : any of numerous rodents (Rattus and related genera) differing from the related mice especially by considerably larger size

¹mouse noun \ˈmau̇s

: any of numerous small rodents (as of the genus Mus) with pointed snout, rather small ears, elongated body, and slender tail

I wonder why people think that rats or mice are such abd creatures. Is it because they've had to adapt to be dirty or live in subways because of what us humans have done to the world? Modernization, construction, pollution....what could have made the difference?

Social Awareness Journal - Days 1 and 2

Day 1
Friday, October 22nd, 2010
Gay Suicides - The Pressure that Society Puts on People Who are Gay

Recently, whether you read it in a newspaper or heard it on the news, you've probably heard about Tyler Clementi's suicide. Tyler Clementi was an 18-year-old gay freshman at Rutger's University, who committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge on September 22nd. Clementi committed suicide after some of his classmates posted footage of him having a sexual encounter with another man. People were shocked, and still are, by his suicide. What some people aren't aware of though, is that Clementi's suicide is just one of many that have been committed over past few months. On September 9th, 15-year-old Billy Lucas hanged himself "[after] what classmates reportedly called a constant stream of invective against him at school."
Then, just a little less than 2 weeks later, 13-year-old Asher Brown shot himself after he told people that he was gay. And, around a month ago, another 13-year-old named Seth Walsh hanged himself, after being "apparently unable to bear a relentless barrage of taunting, bullying and other abuse at the hands of his peers."

My reaction to this? What has the human race become? Who are we to make fun of, and put down, other people because of their sexual orientation? What's the motivation? Or satisfaction? Why do people think that it's okay to push people's emotional limits, so much, and so far, that they commit suicide? That they take their own life, because they're not "socially acceptable"? Think about that.

Day 2
Saturday, October 23rd, 2010
Injustice: What it Means To Be Small, Be Susceptible, Be an Animal

Have you ever seen commercials on television about how many animals are abused each year? What about the ones that tell you how many animals are put in shelters, how many are used for fur, or how many are used for testing make up products or drugs ? In case you haven't, or you've forgotten the number, I'll tell you. Millions of animals are abused each year. Approximately 6-8 million dogs and cats in the United States are put in animal shelters, and of those 6-8 million, approximately 3-4 million are euthanized. In 2006, more than 350,000 baby seals were killed for fur, including more than 30 million mink, foxes, chinchillas, and other animals that are killed on fur farms each year, by electrocution and poisoning, as well as approximately 2 million dogs and cats worth of fur that's exported from places worldwide, and mostly labeled as fake here in the United States, also unaware that some of these 2 million are skinned alive.
In animal testing, approximately 25 million vertebrate animals are tested in the United States every year. If you include invertebrate, the number goes up to 100 million.

The thing that disturbs me the most about how many animals are abused or put in shelters every year, just in the United States, is that so few people actually know about it. Yes, we all know that animals are abused and put in shelters, and that some are killed for fur or testing, but people never really tend to look at the number. I can compare it to an ordinary person: they find a fatty snack that they really like, but never bother to look at the nutrition facts, and eat it almost every day. Over time, they get more and more obese, but they never notice. Then, one day, bam! They look at the scale, and their whole situation just blows up in their face. It's the same this. People never really look between the lines so see the facts that they're missing, and then, all of a sudden, they realize what's wrong, just when it's too late. What's going to happen when the animals that humans hunt become extinct? Or shelters are overridden with animals? Or, no animals are even left?