Streeta Puppya!!

I know the title is a headscratcher for sure!
Back in school we had a smart mouthed kid one grade above me, who, when asked for the scientific name of the dog came up with this wisecrack!!
Anyway,remember how I talk about people accruing bad karma all the time with their thoughtlessness? Well, I found a bunch of the said species at the beach this weekend.How does this relate to canis lupus familiaris? Okay, Okay, I did a google check, but in my defense I only missed out the lupus part-but that gets me thinking, can people come off as smart by doing a google search before posting, commenting, speaking.......But why three terms-it is binomial nomenclature right?This I remembered from zoology in school-really!
Back to the bad karma thing-have you noticed how people dress their dogs in sweaters in the winter months?Well I think it is human fault that the dogs feel the cold at all.If we hadn't domesticated them,they would have been perfectly fine where they were and evolution would have taken care of their weather related needs.But we had to go and tame them to keep them as pets and then come up with this really mean idea that they need to be protected from nature's elements and bingo!The sweater.And the themes-oh gosh! It keeps with the season.Yule tide brings out the red and green and autumn, the fall colored ones and ...My point is,the dog probably is extremely embarrassed and mortified at being kitted out in such attire and plotting twenty different ways to get back at the owners that probably involve the carpet and bodily functions. I wouldn't blame the dog.
I was reading a book by this very famous self-taught anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. Her perspective on animals and also nomadic tribes that she has extensively studied in Africa for years was fascinating - the book I read was her autobiography, she has written quite a few books about her experience in Africa as well as her about her observation of various animals and their habits-she even came to the Washington Park Zoo here in Portland to study elephants.
She talks about humans as being just a little more advanced than the mammal one rung below on the evolutionary ladder and also  about how our sense of superiority has actually desensitized us to what is considered animal speak. She mentions how all mammals, with the exception of humans, understand the instincts of other mammals.
And that got me thinking. Animals have a sense of fairness which is really very revealing of how having a sixth sense is actually a disadvantage. Animals never kill for the thrill, never eat or drink more than they need unless they need to hibernate, they never steal food from another animal unless it means life or death, there is no war among species unless it is for survival, they never bully, taunt, horde, waste and most importantly, pontificate on their superiority!!And note this, they do not need the constant carrot and stick shtick that we call religion to keep them on the straight and narrow. I wonder if animals believe in the after life and the terror it holds for those who get off the predetermined moral path. Atleast the human perception is that animals are not capable of that high a level of thinking. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas talks about a deer killed close to her farm,and the process of consumption that followed-the whole food chain was on display. No hauling off to the meat market, where half the animals ends up in the trash. The deer left behind some young fawn that the author worried about, but later noticed, were herded by an older sister who saw them to safety and food. Considering the number of orphanages and a thriving foster care system we witness, we cannot boast of such survival appropriate behavior!!
The only thing they seem to lack is social graces-but what is the point of social graces if you do not use it for good? Saying please and thank you, and not peeing in public is well and good, but sharing, unselfishness, fairness, lack of greed-all these are far more important than being socially adept isn't it? I know enough number of people with impeccable social behavior who are much wanting in their values and ethics and who would do well to swap one for the other.
We even have a diagnosis for people who have difficulty in social situations, but it makes me wonder why that is an issue, while bullying is not considered a diagnosable disorder. After all, lack of social awareness can lead to awkwardness, but bullying has far more severe and disastrous consequences as we all have been witnessing for a while now. In fact, lack of social graces is almost a throwback to our ancestors-the ones who hunted and gathered? They were far more closer to the  mammal family we see in the zoo than anything-and most importantly, they survived and got us here. But we turn right around, smugly disdain their inability to do this or that and declare ourselves civilized, when becoming civilized has only given a veneer of decency to what we are selfishly doing-plundering the earth for all its resources without any thought of all the other species we share it with, and also the generations to come .
And to top it all, we dress up our dogs in unbecoming costumes!!If there is divine retribution for all this,we will definitely be at the receiving end of it!
Putting up with some reality stars and some pop tartlets and all their shenanigans is only the beginning!!