Free from Humans

I did not witness the construction of the nest which had the size of a man’s fist. It would be a great experience since my university course in animal architecture was a source of marvel at how different birds collect different materials to weave, in different fashions, out different forms of nests. I noticed it when one day, as I walked along the straight corridor towards my apartment, something softly fluttering sped across my view. He or she was a little bird rushing into the open air away from this corridor ten-storey above the ground. I turned to where he or she should have come from. Hanging from a thin branch of a tall potted plant scattered with some leaves was this egg-shaped nest with a hole. Tiny twigs and some feathers were used to weave this simple but adequate home. Probably, he or she had plucked some of his or her feathers. That could be painful, I thought. I wondered why this bird had chosen this unattractive thin plant which belonged to a withdrawn neighbor three doors away from my apartment. More importantly, staying on a plant that was incapable of concealing it and staying at a height easily reachable by humans was unwise at all. “Did the footsteps from my hard executive shoes frighten it?” From then on, everyday, I walked past the plant with the slightest sound. At night, as I came back home and passed the plant, I would, taking care not to startle the faint animal, steal a glance at the hole where his or her beak rested.



My respect for animals is as natural as animals are beautiful. I can’t comprehend how any human with all its gift in reasoning could inflict pain upon or even kill other animals when it knows well that it doesn’t like pain. An ex-colleague, Diane, which was then a fresh Biology graduate, ate the same rice and meat everyday like a one-dimensionally programmed machine without being equipped with sophisticated taste buds to receive tastes and feel textures, not to say being installed with the brain to unify them...