Animal Bondage (11/21/96)

I was in a trolley car with alot of strangers, and the car we were in was actually the walk-in cooler from the veterinary diagnostic lab where I work--the animal carcasses are put there before incineration! There was blood on the floor, so people were complaining and feeling squeamish. I told them not to worry, because I disinfected that floor every day, and there were no diseases present that they could catch. I said that I even put bunkbeds in there and slept in there sometimes! I was in a car with my parents, looking for a place to park near their house; but the police were putting up road blocks on all the streets so that a parade could pass. I didn't want to walk very far because I had bare feet and it was cold outside. But then we were in the countryside, driving by a large castle with farmlands and sheds and barns all around it. My dad was no longer in the car. I saw some ostriches with their huge eggs in the sheds. Then my mom and I were walking through the barns. There were box stalls with ostriches and their eggs again. The next barn had turkeys with their eggs beside them, and their necks stretched out through the slats on the front of the cage-- but the turkeys' heads were cut off! The next barn was even worse! There were thousands and thousands of monkeys of every type and size, crowded into boxes in a supine position (like sardines in a can), bound with leather straps and blindfolded and they were screaming! It was horrible! There were other types of mammals and birds, but I don't remember now which. At the end of the barns was a gift shop! It had t-shirts for sale (along with other junk) that said, "Set the animals FREE!" and "Steal an animal and let it go! This is an atrocity!" All the visitors there had been thinking about setting the animals free while they had been walking through, but we were all afraid of the police! I walked around the gift shop and saw an upper level with beautiful hand made guitars. I climbed up to this level and looked at the acoustic guitars, and saw that there was a recessed office out of sight from the lower level. Inside, behind a desk, was the owner of the whole place. I said, "How could you make such beautiful guitars, and also torture all these animals?" He was very sad, and told me he wanted to let them go, but there were too many, and he had invested too much money in them. I convinced him that it was better for his soul to set the animals free and be poor! So he announced, "Set all the animals free!" And all the visitors joyfully unstrapped and cut loose the animals!