A great take on hunting

While browsing weblogs this afternoon, I ran into one I enjoyed very much written by Retrieverman.  I wanted to share a quote with you from his post and a link to his weblog so you can read the full post yourself.

"The Darwinian world that is nature is not a pretty place. No one would ever want to build a society based upon those principles (at least not within the mainstream body politic). Predation is one of the factors that keeps nature what it is. Because nature requires predation to keep things in balance, I have often thought this to be the best argument against intelligent design.

If I were an intelligent designer, I’d make so that predation never happens and is never necessary.

But that isn’t reality.

And for those who do not understand that humans are actually part of the guild of predators, all I can say is that you’ve not really looked at your evolutionary history. You are an organism on this planet. Your ancestors were once totally controlled by the forces of natural selection. In the end, we still are. One of the most dangerous delusions of the modern world is for us to think we are forever separated from nature because we have all this nice technology.

In reality, nature still casts a shadow onto our condition, whether we like that shadow or not.

The moral thing is to accept it and to use it for purposes that uplift our species and the whole of animate creation."

Very well said Retrieverman!  Very well said.

Animal Rights

The people in the animal rights crowd know very little about animals or rights.  The idea that animals have "rights" is absolutely ridiculous.  Just talking to one for about 5 minutes reveals how little they really know about what they're talking about.

Sierra Cat Haven

On Saturday, 10/24/09, My wife and I rode out to Dunlap, CA to check out the Cat Haven. Ewa took beautiful photos of the magnificent cats (all photos in this post were taken by Ewa. She's an amazing photographer).

The ride to Dunlap was wonderful. It was only about 40 miles from Fresno, toward Kings Canyon National Park. The weather was gorgeous (sunny, 70 degrees F). On the way, we stopped at several fruit stands and an art gallery. The art gallery was kind of out of place, but was really cool.

The Cat Haven was interesting. They had about 8 or 10 cats on display including leopards, Lions, Tigers, etc. They even had a snow leopard.

I was a little disappointed the lions wouldn't move around or make any sounds (I was hoping the male lion would roar really loud). While most of them were really sleepy and lazy, some of the animals put on a nice show for us. The black leopard pounced at the tour guide. I was impressed with the grace and power that animal has. I was also impressed with how effortlessly a leopard jumped from the ground into a tree stand that was at least 20 feet high. We enjoyed watching the bob cat play with the tour guide. They were hiding from each other and the bob cat played with a toy on a string. Looked like a really big house cat....

It cost us $9 per person to get in, and I would say it was worth it, although the stuff in the gift shop was over priced.

We had lunch at a little restaurant called Gena's Place. The place was so small, the owner was our waitress. I enjoyed my cheese burger and Ewa had a mushroom sandwich.

We had a real nice day. I do recommend both Cat Haven and Gena's Place.