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Excerpt from Creative Writing Piece on Endangered Pangolins

by Adam Zhou | 03-11-2017 21:24 recommendations 0

They have caught in the past thousands of these scaly iguana-looking creatures, except bigger, golden, with the gait of the dinosaur. Sometimes, the animals reminded them of a dragon. The moon cast a well of light next to the pangolin-dug hole; a dozen or so of the creatures were hunched up in the form of a ball, keeping true to their Malay name  - pengguling - meaning something that rolls up. Their olive brown scales, believed to have medicinal value gleamed, but not before they were jostled into a sack, now bounded up with wire.

The men returned to their boat already heavy, slightly tipping from weight, with the Philippine Cockatoos, their pearl-like feathers pressed against the sides of plastic bottles, strewn all over the deck. There were trays that stacked up to waist height filled with Philippine Forest Turtles, each lay still, hidden in its shell, marred with scratches. Suddenly,  flashes of light emanated from unidentified sources, and when a rifle comes into perspective, the men?s eyes grew wide open. They raised their arms to surrender. The patrol guards took perfunctory glances at the unshelled pangolins arranged in shelves of a freezer, curled in a fetal position with the other collections.

There were a million dollar worth of illegally traded animals in the ship alone and there are about hundreds of thousands of pangolins caught each year - to be exact - 210,820. A kilogram of its meat in a restaurant in China or Vietnam would fetch 350 USD. Perhaps, another incident would have the clock reach its mark for the most illegally traded animal in the world. Tomorrow, a pit would be dug for the estimated four thousand dead pangolins removed from the clasps of greed and superstition - belief that keratin (from pangolin scales) - the same substance that make up our hair and nails - and protein from meat can heal terminal illnesses or revive the dying.

This disrupts our essential cycle of ecology. With the exponential growth of their population, such insects seek to look for other places to eat food, mainly amongst trees in natural environment. When larger trees protect plants are affected, these creatures go to smaller plants, thriving at the ground of the forests, and when they die, small animals that feed on them suffer the same consequence and later on, their predators. Those predators include us. Vegetarians, vegans, and omnivores alike will discover a limited amount of domestic product resources especially accentuated in the same population growth as that of the insects. People don?t seem to realize our interconnectedness between person to nature, but this is the gravity of the situation. To those who acknowledge this fact, and strive for the needs of others, they know that the world is a better place with these animals. Each deed, no matter how small stands not just for our benefit but also the pangolins. Each deed, no matter how small, carries a revolutionary impact.


 
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  • Dormant user Adam Zhou
 
 
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3 Comments

  • says :
    amazing
    Posted 30-01-2018 11:40

  • says :
    never seen earlier
    Posted 30-01-2018 11:40

  • says :
    Hi, Adam! Wow, your writing really got me immersed in the scene. I could vividly picture what illegal animal smuggling looks like, as if I was at the site myself. It's unacceptable that poaching and capturing of animals is still going on today. So many animals are losing their lives just to fulfill the greed of humans. Poor animals, such as the pangolins, are being unnecessarily killed just to fulfill superstitions, or to get the feeling of eating something special. Stronger regulations against poaching are needed in order to protect these animals. Thank you for your report!
    Posted 04-11-2017 14:48

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