Waterworks

I feel like I've been really teary lately about certain subjects, to the point that just looking at an image or thinking about something brings the tears into my eyes. I don't start bawling or anything, but I feel like if I was alone and wanted a good cry, I could easily have one. Things that have prompted this recently (besides the starving New Orleans dog):

- The scene in About Schmidt where he passes the cows on their way to the slaughterhouse, and you see their big white-lashed eyes looking out of the slats in the trailer. I thought that was the saddest part in overall, a very sad movie.
- Runner-up: The final scene where he starts crying when he sees the picture his sponsored child has sent him. It was the way he was trying to smile and cry at the same time that got me. Weirdly, gestures of despair and compassion are equally likely to stir up the tears for me. That's why this scene is so poignant because it's the perfect combination.
- The idea of losing my parents.
- Illegal trafficking in wildlife - parrots especially, but other animals too.
- Not having been there when my cockatiel died. She was so sick and weak at that point, but I still thought she would pull through. I wish I'd been there with her to comfort her - instead I was running late that morning and just hurriedly kissed her goodbye before going off to work, and then I never got to see her again.
- In Winged Migration, the scene with the Canada geese in the pen trying to take off, and the way the wild flock circled overhead calling to them, before giving up and flying away.
- Last night at a zoo lecture on invertebrate diversity. Someone asked a question about conservation and the speaker said very passionately, "We are going to lose 90% of the species on earth by the year 2025. It is inevitable, it's going to be a consequence of our increasing population and conversion of land into agricultural uses. Every single being on earth has the exact same right to live as you or I. Every one deserves to exist."

Augh, so now that one has made me cry, writing about it. The presentation included slides of the beautiful insects, frogs, and other organisms the speaker had photographed all around the world, including a blue gecko from Madagascar. In the photo, the gecko was hissing at him with its mouth open in protest because he had been poking it to get it lined up for the picture. The idea of that beautiful little creature making such a brave gesture of defiance against an animal hundreds of times its size represents for me the helplessness of all the other species on earth that are in the path of our willful consumption. The extinction of other species is a crime for which future generations will not, and should not ever, forgive us.