My name is Afam. I'm a baby boy, in a baby world, life's fantastic and there's very little plastic. As you may or may not have inferred from the first line, even though I am a human being who's very familiar with the practices of you earthlings, I am not from Earth. I live in the Dami Dimension. You mustn't look for it, because you'll never find it. It's where you'll go after you've ruined that beautiful beautiful planet that you've got. Don't feel bad about it because you'll never know what you've got till you don't have it anymore.
I'm writing this letter to you because believe it or not, your cries about one Cecil the lion reached me all the way in the D.D (that's short for the Dami Dimension) and my heart broke into twenty million different pieces. I know. I was shocked too. My heart didn't break when I learned that Bill Cosby is a serial sex offender, and it didn't break when white policemen were shooting all the black people from Earth to Pluto. It broke when I learned that one lion called Cecil died. I shall now leave several lines of this letter blank. This is the letter equivalent of a few moments of silence.
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Cecil and I shared an incredible bond. I didn't know him before he died, but as we all know, the bonds of friendship and love defy death and taxes. He now has a permanent place in my heart where he'll stay forever and ever. Even though I'm quite content with his newfound place in that achy breaky thing that pumps fire around my body, I was incredibly angered by the news of his passing. My angers are many and my feelings are strong. They're so strong that I fear that I'll be driven to insanity if I do not vent.
The first problem I have is his name, Cecil. I do not know why lions should be named. We don't own them. They aren't pets. Yet we've got this lion whose only connection to humanity is that he lived in a game reserve where he had to deal with people staring at him while he went about his business. And let's not forget that he was part of an Oxford study that I'm quite sure nobody asked him about. He didn't say, "Shoot me with that tranquilizer dart baby! It turns me the hell on." Cecil wasn't our friend. Cecil was an animal in the bush. Before I move on I should probably say that if Cecil had a choice, Cecil wouldn't have wanted to be called Cecil. Cecil is the name you give your son when you're so fascinated with the idea that you have a son, that you fail to think about his immediate future. When he's six some child that thinks its clever will call him Cecilia, and people will continue calling him Cecilia until he goes to university. Now, Cecil's probably weeping in animal heaven, screaming, "but my name isn't even Cecil. It's RRGGOOOAARRGGHHHYYYY."
But human beings are awesome. We call a lion Cecil and then we have the nerve to complain when another human being shoots him. Bad human beings. Bad. Who gave him that name? A majestic creature like that shouldn't have been called Cecil. If you didn't want to call him his birth name, RRGGOOOAARRGGHHHYYYY you should have given him a good name like Gbenga, Napoleon or George. I'm particularly fond of George. If you had called him George he wouldn't have died the way he died. You damned him and his descendants when you decided that his name was Cecil. Do you know that he was bullied by the other lions? They would walk up to him and say, "Oi Cecilia haven't you got anymore breast feeding to do." And this hurt Cecil's feelings very much. That's why he was lured out of the game reserve in the first place. He was feeling very depressed because the other lions had just bullied him. He needed to eat his feelings." If he'd been called George he would have been remembered that an antelope in the game reserve is infinitely better than a piece of meat on a stick.
The second problem I have is how all of you have become Cecil's best friend now that he's dead. Where were you when he was alive? Half of you didn't even know that there were lions in Zimbabwe, and all of a sudden you're weeping for Cecil? That's so low. It's too low. And the worst thing is, in a week you'll have forgotten that lions are worthy of your attention. You'll go back to watching Kim Kardashian's baby bump. The point I'm trying to make is, I'm tired of your fake outrage. If you care, do something about it. Get a turkey baster and baste every lioness that's of age. I'm sure the African Savannah will thank you for it. Some of you are shaking your head at all of this thinking, " the death of Cecil alerted us to the lion situation in Africa." Stop it. Stop it right there. Cecil shuldn't have had to die for you to suddenly feel annoyed that some people were going about paying hard cash to shoot lions and behead them. Do you know what the most annoying thing about hunting African big game is? The people killing them legally are doing more for them as a species than you are. A legally shot South African lion goes for about $30,000. That $30,000 pays for things like baby lion day care and counselling for the alpha lions. Can you imagine the sort of pressure they're under? Do you know what it feels like to walk the Savannah knowing that every other male lion is waiting for the chance to kill you and your kids? It's hard out there!
My third problem is the issue of sovereignty. Let lions be lions and men be men. Cecil's spirit was so strong that it managed to get in touch with one woman like that. He said the following to her, "Let not the actions of these few men defeat us or allow darkness to enter our hearts. If we do then we become one of them. Raise your vibration and allow this energy to move us forward. What happened does not need to be discussed as it is what it is. Take purity my child, I am finer than ever, grander than ever before as no one can take our purity, our truth or our soul. Ever. I am here. Be strong and speak for all the others who suffer needlessly to satisfy human greed. Bring light and love and we will rise above this."
We should listen to the spirit of Cecil and leave his killer alone. I won't write his killer's name here because before you know it some crazy person will start murdering lions in his quest of global notoriety. So please stop sending killer-san death threats, and please allow him to continue his dentistry in peace. If you can allow the guy that arrested Sandra Bland to remain a police officer then you can definitely refrain from threatening that poor sweet man with the serial killer smile.
My fourth problem is with hunting. I don't feel comfortable with the idea of killing for sport but as liberal as I am I find it difficult to fault it. You see, I'm very comfortable with men being with men and women being with women. I'm also very comfortable with men becoming women and women becoming men. If I say, let people be who they are as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else then should I not extend the same hand to hunters? They aren't killing people, and lions are not so rare that they cannot be redeemed. You may say that hunter-kun deprived the good tourists of the chance to feast their eyes on Cecil but when you consider that most of them can't really tell one lion from another the point becomes lost in an endless sea of emotional human platitudes.
My last point is perhaps the most important one and that's that there are several things that are more relevant to your humanity than Cecil the lion. There's ISIS and Boko Haram. There's Samuel Dubose, who was shot for driving while black. There's bleaching and Cancer (many of you will be killed by the latter in a manner so horrible that you'll pray for death by bow and arrow). There's the ebola vaccine and there's global warming. And there's the chance to actually do some good for the conservation effort. Please visit these websites: http://www.wwf.org.uk/ , http://www.bornfree.org.uk/
and lay off the internet terrorism.
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