In a hillside neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona--up where the streets become windy and the houses become architect's dreams and the dry cactusy desert is starting to be a more significant part of the landscape--we found a very unusual institution: The International Wildlife Museum--open to the public for a small fee.
You leave a nice parking lot--cross a pedestrian bridge over a trickling desert stream (with duck pond) and arrive at the museum--A crenelated Pasha's palace from a Hollywood movie.
Inside, the ground-plan consists of three large regular hexagons filled with stuffed animals and birds--mainly one trophy hunter's brag from a life-long and gaudily successful serial safari.
Patronizing it is.
We discover that: "We humans have disrupted the balance of natural systems. Now we have to step in and carefully manage our wildlife and other natural resources such as forests, soil and water."
We?
This shooter, a man who got rich selling floor coverings in post-war Los Angeles and so had the leisure to slaughter wild life all over the world, tells us WE must: "step in and Carefully Manage OUR wildlife. Oh, bother!
Megalomania it is.
We live on this living planet with a lot of other living things and we are ALL
wildlife.
But now that the shooting is over and the damage done--these life-like stuffed birds and animals DO hold perfectly still for us human wildlife to study--meanwhile the rich white hunter has gone on to his final "happy hunting ground".
...
No comments:
Post a Comment