It Angers Me!

Just a brief word here about something that angers me.
Actually, “angers me” is not the whole thing. “Makes me sick” is more like it. Also, saddens me. It sort of starts with anger though, so let’s stick with anger.
After work I am walking through the bookstore and I just happen to pick up the latest National Geographic off the rack and I leaf through it. (I am still in the store writing this, hence, I am not using the past tense). I am still looking at the picture that angers me and makes me sick and sad.
On my bookshelves I have a couple of miles of Geographics, all in the burgundy slipcases and everything. Since the early 1980’s. It is only a few years ago that I let my subscription lapse (I know... blasphemy!)... and I only did so because I found that even though I love the magazine, I was not actually reading it consistently enough to justify the cost of subscribing. (I am far too rational, I know). I figured if I really want to read it, I can read it occasionally in the store... like I am doing today.
If someone were to ask me what I think is the finest magazine in the world, I would probably say NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC.
So I am leafing through this latest issue, which features Africa. All manner of articles about the Wild Continent. The cover says “Whatever you thought, think again.”
Amazing pictures throughout the thing.... right up until I flip to the very last page, to that “Flashback” piece they always have. Usually a picture from the Archives, and a little explanatory blurb about it. So here is this picture, and I find it sort of nauseating (add that to my list of current ailments and psychological discomforts).
It shows a dead rhinoceros, laying there as it had fallen forward on its front knees, and behind it stands a goofy-hatted, bushy mustachioed, spectacled, Teddy Roosevelt. The butt of his rifle is jabbed into the rhino’s shoulder, and the barrel is pointing to heaven. Underneath this photo, it says “Teddy Roosevelt poses with a rhino he took down during one of the biggest trophy-hunting safaris ever mounted.”

Then the blurb:
Soon after leaving the U.S. Presidency in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt left for Africa. He’d pledged a “fine collection” of wildlife trophies to the Smithsonian Institution. Though his request for funding noted, “I am not in the least a game butcher,” thousands of animals were killed on his expedition. T.R. described his conquests in the January 1911 GEOGRAPHIC, where this rhino photo ran. “While a rhinoceros’s short suit is brains,” he wrote, “his long suit is courage. He is a particularly exasperating creature to deal with.” – Margaret G. Zackowitz, writing for GEOGRAPHIC –

The thing that angers me is that this majestic animal (and how many of them?) was shot and killed for sport. I mean, I am not sure what the point was, that GEOGRAPHIC (the January, 1911 issue) was making, with the publication of the story and the picture. Were they advocating sport-hunting? I don’t understand. I thought GEOGRAPHIC was against this sort of thing. In the world today, all five rhinoceros species are endangered, with three of these regarded as critically so.
Back in 1911, was rhino-murder considered to be OK?
I am going to find out. My friend has the entire GEOGRAPHIC on CD-Rom, and the next time I visit, I am going to locate this 1911 article. What did Teddy Roosevelt think he was doing?
No disrespect to the Roosevelts or whatever.... but looking at this picture makes me wish that this rhino would lurch onto its feet, stomp the gun to smithereens, and start chasing Mr. Roosevelt across the savanna in his soiled breeches!
If I had written the caption under this photo, I would have said:
Bravo, powerful human man with gun! Well done, big brave manly hunter!

Rhinoceroses are not even carnivorous! They eat leaves, twigs, grass, and stuff!
A robin eats more meat than a rhino!
Somehow this fact makes T.R. look even more ridiculous and pathetic, standing behind this murdered creature.

Can you imagine if the merely wounded rhino had chased T.R. down.... and afterward spoke of the adventure, in glowing terms, to all of his rhino buddies....
“While a de-gunned hunter’s short suit is courage, his long suit is speed. He is an exasperating creature to catch up to.”
_____________