On 30 July, 2013, 45 students of 4th grade of Calibre Academy International School, Chennai came over to the Blue Cross premises at Velachery, Chennai for a visit. Having read of the dancing bears and of other animal cruelties in their school books, the visit was arranged by the teachers to sensitise the young minds to the animals around us and the cruelties that they suffer at the hands of humans.
I took the children around the premises, who trotted along armed with their tiny note pads, pens and sanitizer bottles. They stopped at the kittens section and wondered if the kittens would grow up to become tigers. They pondered over what kind of people could abandon their beautiful dogs at the pedigree dog section. They just couldn't get enough of the lovely donkeys at the cattle section. While the donkeys and the goats let the children pet them, the turkeys and bulls came closer wondering what the commotion was all about. In the aviary section, a few of the enterprising ones tried to teach a parakeet to talk while the others stood watching the cute rabbits and guinea pigs dreaming of being allowed to cuddle them. The most fun though, they had interacting with the puppies, it was difficult to tell who was having a better time, the kids or the puppies.
Along with all the fun of seeing and interacting with so many animals, the day also brought home a lot of realities of the animal world. As I told them stories of how the various animals had ended up at Blue Cross, the pain was reflected in the faces of the little ones. The plight of the 'hardly able to stand' fighter cock, the lab rescued rabbits and guinea pigs, the abandoned pedigree dogs, the rescued cattle touched them, more so as they had just met all these animals. They further understood that one should not have birds for pets, that elephants have no business in a temple, that bears and monkeys are separated from their mothers as babies and forced to learn to dance and that animals are not at human beings mercy for finding their food - All this set them thinking and asking me loads of questions.
As they heard that dogs on the street live there, cause its their home and how water and shade for the birds and street animals would go a long way in keeping them happy as animals too feel the same hunger, thirst and pain as the children feel, it made them think of animals as individuals with feelings. At the end of the talk, many of them wanted to adopt puppies and kittens. Whether they do adopt animals or not, they definitely adopted the reality of cruelty around them and the message of compassion.
