Killing an Innocent life

His stomach rumbled begging for food. He hadn't eaten for days, he realized forlornly. He was near the villages now. Creeping through the trees trying to keep a low profile, he popped up his head from time to time to make sure that he hadn't been
spotted.

Suddenly, something tightened around his neck. He gave a piercing shriek. It echoed around hauntingly. He struggled. After awhile, tired out, he stopped.

Dawn was breaking. A man came and stared at him and then ran away in panic. Hours passed. People surrounded him, watching him silently. Fear gripped his heart. He started to struggle again, his heart squeezed into a tiny ball of panic. The thing around his neck tightened. He stopped struggling, tired. A few more hours passed. More people filled around him, He became more and more panicky with every passing second. Desperately, he started to struggle even more violently. He started to pant in his efforts to break free. He was having difficulty in breathing.

He felt confused. The light was fading and he could only see bright red dots dancing in front of his eyes. He slowly sank down to the ground. "What's happening to me?" he wondered. He felt confused. He knew that he was hungry but he couldn't seem to grab on to the reason as to why he was hungry. The last thing he saw was that the people were pointing at him, before he closed his eyes forever.

A few months back, a huge, but only half grown, male leopard died, just as the above story indicates. The hungry leopard was heading to the village in search of food, in Gampola. Supposedly, one of the villagers had set a noose to catch animals like wild pigs, that eat all the plants they've grown. When he came see if anything was caught, he found the leopard. Lots of people came to see this. The leopard started to struggle some more but he only succeeded in tightening the noose. Some people had gone to tell this to the police. But, after many hours, when help came, it was too late. The leopard had died.

After examination, it was found that the leopard had not had food for three days. According to the doctor who examined him, when animals get exceedingly scared, and struggle too much, they get a disease called "Capture Myopathy." This was the reason why the beautiful leopard, with a will to survive, died.

Why wasn't anyone able to save the leopard? Who's to be blamed? The villager who had set the trap or the people who were supposed to have saved the animal? Who's ever fault it was, he or she had committed murder. They had destroyed life. Of course, they would remember this and carry the burden of having destroyed a life throughout their life (hopefully), but a life of an endangered species of our country was destroyed (not that it's okay to kill any animal; you'd still be destroying a life.)

Think about what happened to this poor leopard that had a will to survive, having survived for 3 days without food, dying, just because of a stupid thing done by us humans. What if you had been in the leopard's shoes when he was dying? How would you have felt? You were hungry and scared, and surrounded by humans, creatures you fear most.

So if you ever think of trapping an animal, or even just scaring it for that matter, put yourself in the animal's shoes and think about what you'd feel if you were going to be trapped or scared out of your life. How frightened would you be if you were trapped somewhere, and you were about to be burned to death or something? That's exactly how the animal you're about to kill or scare is going to feel, like he is going to die a slow, painful death. Even scaring it might kill the animal, because it can get that disease called "Capture Myopathy." Remember that if you leave the animals alone, they'll leave you alone. Don't destroy the little bit of food left for them to eat. Just let them be.

Let us all join hands and protect our forests and love the innocent wild animals who love to live, just like us.