Two animal stories

Number one: Lost baby hippo meets 100 year old tortoise, magical bond of friendship is formed. It's not the plot for the best children's book, it's real!! It's nice to read this sort of news in a war-torn and disaster-stricken world.

Number two: in response to my recent Good and Evil post, Grant asked "what’s so wrong with eating beef?" which is a good question. My answer doesn't have anything to do with clogged arteries, carcinogens or how cuddly cows are, although these may all be valid points. But from my point of view, here’s what’s wrong with it: it is probably the most wasteful thing you can put in your body. Of course, all meat is more wasteful than other foods, but beef is by far the worst.
Eating a pound of beef uses at least five pounds of grain, 2,400 gallons of water, a gallon of gasoline and erodes five pounds of topsoil, over half of it in land that used to be forests. It will get you 100 grams of protein. Of course, eating a pound of cheese will get you 125 grams of protein and a pound of soybeans will get you up to 170.
The world’s livestock, occupy nearly a full quarter of the land on this planet, use on third of its grain. In the United States, they use 70-80% of the grain grown in this country, take up half of our agricultural land and account for half of the water we consume. They also produce 20 times more excrement than the humans in this country do.
If we all became vegetarians we would have more than enough food (and room!) for everyone on this hungry and crowded planet. I’m not necessarily suggesting that’s what we should do, but when a child dies of starvation every two seconds, we absolutely need to think about what we eat, and to eat responsibly. I spent a lot of time complaining about this, but never did anything for a long time and finally decided to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and drastically cut down on my consumption of beef. It hasn’t been easy (since I was staying with a host family who prepared all of my meals in Spain I decided to eat whatever they set on the table, meat or otherwise), and it may not be enough. But it’s something. I urge you all to do whatever you think is necessary to make a difference.
Backslash politics!