Constitutional Rights?

Last Friday evening my husband turned on the news in the middle of a segment about the private ownership of exotic animals. Having turned the TV on in the middle of the story, we didn't know the exact context, but I assume the story was presented in regards to the recent killing of a 2-year-old Florida girl by the family's "pet" Burmese python, and the resulting controversy over the wisdom of importing exotic animals to be kept as pets. As many Floridians know, there are some 150,000 non-native pythons now roaming in the already fragile Everglades, competing with the native wildlife for space and food. This problem began with the release of "pets" that proved to be too independent and too dangerous to control.

There are so many aspects of this story about which I could probably write an entire book, but one comment from an exotic pet owner really struck me. He claimed that he has a constitutional right to own these animals because the constitution protects his right to the pursuit of happiness, and owning these animals makes him happy. This statement reminds me of what the seventh-grade bully who use to taunt my niece at school said: "I do it because it's fun." Perhaps it was fun for her, but it was not fun for my niece. Do we not also have the right to be free from the pursuits of others that make us miserable?

Like it or not, our constitutional rights do not grant us unlimited leave to do as we please. There are limits to what our rights allow us to do, and those limits present themselves via the rights of others. In other words, our rights end where the rights of others begin. My right to pursue happiness does not include the right to curtail the happiness of others. Proclaiming that my right to pursue happiness gives me the right to cage a wild animal for my own amusement makes about as much sense as proclaiming that I should be able to force someone who doesn't love me into marriage because it is the only thing that will make me "happy."

There are really three main issues involved in this man's statement: the definition of rights, the definition of happiness, and the question of exactly who enjoys the benefits of these things we claim to hold dear. The critics of "animal rights" activists have been traditionally quick to point out that animals do not have "rights," mostly because they cannot vote. (Well, no, they can't, can they?) This is, of course, another lame attempt to make the question of protecting animals seem silly and irrelevant. Perhaps animals do not have "rights," but they do, however, have INTERESTS, and the inability to vote does not render their interests invalid; likewise, their interests cannot simply be dismissed by the constitutional right of a human to pursue happiness.

For the most part, the interests of wild animals are not that different than the interests of people. If they could vote, they would probably vote in favor of anything that gives them enough space to be who they are. It is reasonable to assume that few of them would agree that a cage in a backyard or a room in a basement is sufficient for this purpose. Few humans would agree to these terms; why do we believe it is acceptable to impose such limits upon those who don't have a say in the matter? Perhaps it is because, as Henry Beston stated so well, we erringly "patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves."*

Perhaps we just cannot admit to ourselves that it is WE who feel incomplete, and must therefore justify the imprisonment of magnificent beings by invoking the rights handed down by a document that they did not and could not have had a hand in creating, nor could they have created the emptiness that we fruitlessly try to sate by turning them into just one more of our possessions. A "right" is nothing more than the protection of an interest, and a wild animal, say, a tiger, is interested in being a tiger, a predator, a hunter, a wanderer of the forest, not in being my pet. Because wild animals do not typically wander into our homes of their own accord (unless we foolishly lure them) it is safe to assume that being "pets" does not make them happy.

We call on the constitution to protect OUR happiness, not theirs. In the appallingly short time that anyone is given to speak in a news segment, Scott Lope of Big Cat Rescue pointed out that anyone who really loves a wild animal would not willingly put it in a cage and feed it processed food from the grocery store. Why? Because we realize that while it might make US happy, it infringes upon the inherent interest of the animal to be who it is, whether it be a hunter, a runner, a flier, or a swimmer. They ask for so little, really - to find their own food, to find their own mates, and to explore their world. If we really care for them, then protecting their interests is the only thing that can make us truly happy.

The exotic pet trade usually spells misery for captive animals, frustration and sadness for those who quickly find out that it was NOT a good idea to keep them as pets, and an increase of problems in the already complicated situations facing native wildlife still living in the wild. It's time to graduate from the reasoning of the seventh-grade bully. There is nothing fun about impeding the freedom of others - not with ridicule, not with taunting, and not with cages in the backyard. The constitution protects our right to pursue happiness, not to pursue others. Real happiness comes from growing up enough to understand that we don't now, nor did we ever really, own them. They simply do not belong to us. They are not ours to buy, sell, trade, or borrow. They are not objects but whole beings, "gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear."* Is it really too much to ask to give them enough space to follow where those voices lead?

Protect animals. Protect people. Protect innocent children. Protect native wildlife. Support a ban on the importation of dangerous exotic animals for the pet trade.

Sharyn Beach

*Beston, Henry. The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. 1928. New York, Doubleday.