Long time ago there were many kinds of animals living together in the woodlands.  Some were meat eaters and wild hunters. Most of them ate grass, nuts, fruits and all kind of green plants. The sky was our father, the earth was our mother, the wild flowers were our sisters, the bear, the buffalo and the river were our brothers. Even though we had great differences, there was never a war in the forest.

          Then one day, a strange creature moved into the woods.

          He brought axes and saws to cut the trees,

          He dug up the ground to built huge farms houses and to plant new seeds . 

          He dared to divide the forest with fences and claimed the land as his property.

          We all called him "Man",  and he was a mystery to us.

          An animal which had a strange idea to own the land and the sky.  But how can anyone do that?   We always believed that neither the earth nor the sky could be own by anyone; we belong to the forest, but the forest does not belong to us.

          At first, the man seemed friendly,

          We thought that he was another hunter like us, but we never imagined the type of damage that he would do.

          He had many guns and laid hundreds of  metal traps wired all over the woods.

          Soon, we noticed that many animals and even the trees started to  disappear;  my cousin the tiger, the mountain lion, the buffalo, the raccoon and my own little brother wolf was also lost.  Many of the birds migrated away or no longer flew the friendly sky.

One night, I sneaked inside the farm house and I saw the big, bad man.  He was working with many other men; they all had butcher knifes and puffed big cigars.

I was horrified and traumatized for life for I saw how they killed the animals and ripped the skins off their bodies. Then they divided  their furs and feathers, eat their meat and polished their bones.

They used my friends to make hats, wallets, fancy coats; belts, chairs, combs, shoes, sandals and gloves.

          Tears flooded my eyes and my heart pumped with pain when I saw how the man killed them all, with no mercy and no remorse.

          He destroyed them for something he called "Money" which for him gave a sense of power,  but for us it meant certain "Death".

          My whole body was trembling, and for the first time in my wild life I howled; I howled with rage, pain and despair, begging for help, searching for my friends  in the darkness of the night.

          The eagle heard my howls and landed near me and said:

"Oh great wolf, I feel just like you… how extreme and disastrous, this business of hunting can be."

          “I am also a hunter”, I conceded. “But  we abide by the law of the wild that ‘what you kill you must eat’.  In that sense, I am better than these people; you must agreed"

          And the eagle said:

          "Man is cruel!.. He is not hungry!, He does not need to kill all of us to eat! Why can't he stop doing the troubled things  which from above the land I see?

          The man’s farm had a wooden fence and I remembered that many of our friends were trapped within its walls.

          The eagle sounded the alarm; I ran from cage to cage telling everyone of the danger and then, the buffalo rammed the door.

           Many animals which escaped with us from the slaughter house thought they were free, but the men came after us with their enslaved horses, trained dogs, ropes, knives and guns. They even  set part of the woods on fire to encircle us.

Some members of the group, who could not run fast enough, hid under rocks,  in hollow trees or in the caves of mother Earth. My friend the eagle, guided me from above the rising clouds of smoke and I ran North, ahead of the fire. Howling and screeching as hard as we could, hundreds of creatures, big and small, roused up and joined the freedom stampede.  

          Our cry even woke up the great God of the rains in the heavens and the water fell upon the burning forest.  But the men still chased us. Some animals were captured  and many others died.

          The rain stopped the fire, the night became darker and the men returned to their houses taking with them some of the pigs, mos of the cows,  few chickens and all the sheep.

          The eagle flew high and higher into the dark  sky and I continued to run and haul through the twilight.  After that frightful night, man and I could not longer be friends because;

          He tried to burn my forest home,

          He wished the rain could drawn me,

          He aimed his gun to blow the eagle away,

          But he did not succeed,

          For he could not fly like the eagle

   And he could not outrun me.

          There is still plenty of space for all of us in the woods, but since that awful night, the eagle flies far and higher than anyone. I prefer to live deep into the northern forest away from people like you . In  this way, the big man and his friends can only hear my hauls but by not seeing me, he can not longer harm me.

           Did someone else told you that I was bad, ferocious, mysterious, terrible, scary, evil or malicious? 

          “They lied!”

          “Those are gossips and false rumors for they don't know nothing about me. The fact is that most people have never seen a wolf like me. A healthy wolf have never killed any human being as vicious as the  hunter man had killed members of my family and my friends.         

          It is a law of mother Earth that some of us have to hunt in order to survive. It is the same for me and others like the lion, the alligator and the fox; the tiger, the hyena and the wild dog.

          But you also must know  by now that hundreds of alligators, foxes, buffaloes, lions, bears, raccoons and even the big whales have been killed by men, not only for food, but to make souvenirs and a variety of  silly things .

          The Hunting man has no respect for us, he hunts out of control to destroy us for fun and to spoil nature. In their blind quest for pleasure and money they are set to destroy the very forest which sustain us all. We feel helpless and can not protect ourselves against him because he is here, there and everywhere.

We believe that it is he, the big bad man, the terminator,  the predator of all kinds of life, the worst living plague which inhabit the  face of the Earth.

He has divided the forest among his gang of thieves, plundered the fish from the rivers and shut down the birds from the sky.

More than once I have seen him march in merciless armies of war against his people and kill his own brothers. In every act of brutal aggression, He declared himself as master of all creatures. He is arrogant, ignorant and destructive... Indeed, He is dangerous to himself and to all other. 

          If I were to choose to live near such a man, I would rather suffer alone and die in the waste land.

          Certainly, I am an animal with a tainted reputation, but deep inside, I have more dignity than the bad hunting man who forgets that in the web of life, every thing that he is doing to us, he is also doing to himself;

          For  life on earth is like a song,

          It is sang by a bird in the forest.

          If you destroy the forest; you kill the bird.

          If you kill the bird; you stop the song.

          If you do not hear the song;

   You will soon be dead.   

          Every day I raise with the sun to hear the sound of this wonderful song of life; just like you and millions of animals in the woods.  I play with my little pups jumping, wiggling and running with their mother wolf.  I protect them from danger as your parents protect you, and when they are hungry, I go hunting, hunting for food.

          I am not bad or vicious, not evil nor malicious.  I am just one of the hundred of animals who struggle for the right to survive in the woods. You see, I am also capable of caring, be gentle and playful. In many ways,  I am just like you...