Single $1
Original Blues, Rock & Country for the Soul
Song Info
Genre
Peak in subgenre #23
Author
Daines/Killington
Rights
Daines/Killington
Uploaded
April 21, 2006
Track Files
MP3
MP3 3.8 MB • 128 kbps • 2:45
Story behind the song
Here are some moving words about the work of this charity and the newsletter that told of Andrews' recent death.
A day in the sun for moon bears
by Lisa Owens-Viani
In a bamboo forest along the Pi River, Jill Robinson holds out a finger
dipped in honey. The sun peeks through the canopy, illuminating a rusty
cage. Tentatively, a tongue reaches through the bars. "Andrew," an
Asiatic black bear, also known as a "moon bear" for the crescent of
plush golden fur around his neck, licks the sweet substance from
Robinson's finger. It is his first taste of kindness in 20 years.
At a recent talk in San Anselmo, California, Robinson, a petite,
soft-spoken British woman, and the director of Animals Asia Foundation
(AAF), the non-profit she founded in 1998, told the story of Andrew.
Andrew now lives at the Moon Bear Rescue Center in southeastern China, a
sanctuary run by AAF. Like most moon bears, Andrew stands six feet tall
on his hind legs. But he lived most of his twenty years on a "bear
farm," lying on his belly in a three-foot-wide by three-foot-high by
six-foot-long cage. In it, he could neither change positions nor have
free access to water.
Like many of the bears AAF has rescued, Andrew was snared in the wild as
a cub. One of his legs was mangled in a trap; the farmer probably
chopped off what remained. Immediately after he was captured, Andrew was
taken to a grim concrete room filled with rows of tiny elevated iron
cages containing other moon bears. In this room he underwent an
operation in which a seven-inch catheter was inserted into his
gallbladder. Then, from beneath his cage, the bear farmers would "milk"
bile from his gallbladder twice a day in a crude and painful procedure.
In addition to being confined in tiny cages, bears are sometimes further
immobilized in metal jackets, torso-squeezing devices like corsets, or
in "crush" cages to keep them from protesting during the milking. In
addition to the hundreds of bear farms operating in China, there are
many more in North and South Vietnam and Korea.
The products of bear farms are dry bile powder and Chinese medicines
used to treat ailments like high fevers, hemorrhoids, liver problems,
and sore eyes. The amount of bile powder obtained from one bear per year
from 365 days of torture is only about two kilograms, the size of a
small bag of rice. Although bear bile has been used for thousands of
years in traditional Chinese medicine, the practice of "bear farming" is
a relatively recent phenomenon. Traditionally, moon bears and other
bears were killed for their gallbladders. But in the early 1980s,
North Korean scientists figured out a way to obtain the desirable
products of this organ without killing the animal. By taking cubs from
the wild and extracting their bile while keeping them alive, they could
produce a continual flow of liquid gold. A few years later, China began
bear farming, the government encouraging the practice in a misguided
attempt to conserve the wild population. By the early 1990s, there were
almost 500 bear farms operating in China, containing over 10,000 bears.
Meanwhile, illegal poaching of wild bears continued; today, the Chinese
government estimates that less than 15,000 moon bears remain in the wild.
In 1993, things began to look up somewhat for moon bears in China when
Robinson, who had been working there as a consultant for the
International Fund for Animal Welfare for over a decade, was taken to a
bear farm.
"I broke away from the group watching the breeding bears outside in a
pit and found some steps leading downstairs into a basement," she
recalled. "As my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I heard some
strange 'popping' vocalizations in the background. The closer I crept to
the noises, the louder and more frantic the sounds became. I realized
then with shame that the very first lesson I would learn from this
intelli
Lyrics
Andrew
Your spirit lives in our hearts
Oh Andrew
They tried to take you all apart
Oh Andrew
Oh the darkness of man
Is a stain on all humanity
But still you make us smile
Your sweet memory...
Your lovely picture on our wall
Oh Andrew
And from you we hear the call
Oh Andrew
If we could we'd make it right
Oh Andrew
Still for you the peaceful fight
Oh Andrew...
Your spirit lives in us all
Oh Andrew
And from you we hear the call
Oh Andrew
Oh Andrew
Oh Andrew...
Daines/Killington
All rights reserved
(mcps) ASCAP
April 2006
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