RUSH: Snerdley brought in a little bird. He has pet birds, and this is a parrotlet, the tiniest parrot that there is, and he’s named the bird Stumpy. It’s the cutest little thing in there, and apparently he has two other birds, and he mated the two other birds, and Stumpy got caught in the nesting material, and the two other birds, to save Stumpy’s life, they amputated his right leg, it looks like. So Stumpy’s running around with one leg. Well, he’s hopping around with one leg. Snerdley brought him in today because it’s bleeding a little bit and he wanted to watch him and he’s got him in this little cage and I was in there looking at this little bird, and Snerdley started talking about how amazing it is to watch these animals do everything they can to live, and it got me to thinking. I have my little cat Punkin, but I had another cat that was a blue Abyssinian, and that cat’s name was Bonnie, and Bonnie was born not healthy. She had all kinds of problems, and eventually died at age five of a stroke. Her hip wouldn’t stay in joint and she didn’t have a tear duct in her right eye so it was always draining and so forth.
I remember one day I took the cat to the vet to have the hip joint looked at and the vet said, ‘Look, you gotta keep the cat quiet. The cat can’t go up and down the stairs, just keep the cat quiet.’ So I got one of these little baby things that you block the stairs so little kids can’t fall down. And the vet said, ‘Now, give this cat this pill, little Valium, cat Valium, because we gotta keep her quiet.’ So we did and the cat fought it like crazy. It was the most amazing thing to see. The cat would jump off the bed, I’d say, ‘Oh, no, you’re supposed to stay on the bed,’ and it would just look at me and start weaving like it was drunk, trying to get to where I was, just fighting the effects of this thing. It just exhibited a 100% will to live, which is, of course, what life is. Life exists to live, in whatever form that it takes place, be it animal, a human being, a plant, or what have you. That’s the great thing or the mystery about life is how its whole purpose is to sustain itself. We humans, we get to have fun in the process of doing that, sometimes, but the animals, of course, they’re just following instinct or whatever.
Every time I’m looking at Snerdley’s little bird in there — and you could put it in the palm of your hand, it is that tiny — but that bird, it doesn’t know anything other than it’s trying to live. Every living organism has this. It has this innate will to live. And when you see that, either in an animal or human or what have you, and then you contrast that to the whole abortion movement, which it really is, the people who are suggesting that some people shouldn’t live because of the circumstances they’re going to be born to and so forth, you look at these little animals, and, especially pets, they’re just the essence of innocence like little babies are. You can learn a whole lot about nature and instinct if you just watch. I’m sure those of you who have little animals that have been hurt and so forth know exactly what I’m talking about, same thing with little babies. So just a little observation here. I’m like Snerdley. I marvel every time I see these kinds of things right in front of my eyes.
When you see an animal give birth or a bird hatch from an egg and you watch the miracle of life actually happen right before your very eyes, how you cannot have a profound, almost sanctified respect for it is beyond me. It’s sort of like I heard the other day some scientists — and for the sake of the story, we’ll accept that what they discovered was true — they said the edge of the universe, which, of course, is strange because the universe is everything, how can it have an edge? But, nevertheless, the farthest star in the universe from us eight-something-billion light years away. Now, that’s a size that we humans cannot comprehend. And how anybody can hear that, go outside at night and look at the stars in the sky, how can anybody believe it’s just coincidence or an accident is beyond me. I have the same reaction when I look at Snerdley’s little bird in there. In fact, when I first saw Snerdley it was during the break. I walked in there and he had Stumpy in the palm of his hand and Stumpy was just clinging to his shirt and so forth. Just the cutest little bird, my heart melts, folks, it just does, especially since the bird’s hurt in there, and Snerdley says he hopes he lives. You really don’t have any doubt he’s going to live, do you? You do? Yeah, well, I told Snerdley I’d love to get some birds but Punkin would just go absolutely berserk. Can you say dinnertime? (laughing)
In fact, my grandparents, when I was like six or seven years old, we had a little dachshund named Dodi, and my grandparents had this parakeet named Pepper. Somehow Pepper got out of the cage, and the dachshund found the bird and it was just over. We see this at six or seven and I remember my little cousin, who’s two years younger, running around the house, ‘Dodi’s eating Pepper!’ It was so sad. But that’s animal rights, instinct was just being followed.