Informant38

I was visisting my mom. she gets books from the bookmobile, sometimes good ones, other times...She had this book called, 'Crocodile Hunter' I've become suspicious of anything with a package like the AOL/Microsoft/CNN candy-info. and it seemed like that, too bright and accessible. but reading is a necessity in the hours before sleep so... I read the whole thing. Went back over parts I skimmed at first. went back through the pictures twice. Steve and Terri Irwin and their daughter and their friends and their co-workers.
They have a tortoise named Harriet. Harriet is documented. The record is established. Harriet was taken from the Galapagos Islands by Charles Darwin, naturalist on the HMS Beagle, in 1835. Harriet is older than me by a long shot.
Steve and Terri Irwin live for the conservation and protection of wildlife, which is so vague now as a term but it means tears and blood and sweat and a couple of times in the book Steve says he's willing to die for this, which is much more than a crocodile or two. Something at the heart of life here, that's what he's willing to die for, what his parents lived for, what they taught him to live for, what his wife was doing when they met.
OK. So I have this thing where my praise impugns its object. Like Kaczinsky and the environmental movement in the states. Kind of. In a way. So the whole way over here and even most of the time I was out walking today, I'm debating to say this for fear it brings a curse with it. But you know sometimes you just dive in eh? Splash. Well here I am. I love these guys. And I would die for them as humans worth protecting. If I was brought before some extraterrestrial throne or judgement seat I would point to them as why even if I myself wasn't worth anything, as to why humanity had something worth keeping, worth redeeming, worth fighting for.
Not because they're nice to snakes and crocodiles, though that has a lot to do with it, but because of why they are. It's the love they feel that makes them lovable. It's life they love, real life. And with real love. And for me that makes a kind of focal point for all the rest of this. Start there. Spread out from that center. Keep going. It's big. And it's happening. Now.