Innocence

Dictionary.com defines innocence:

1. the quality or state of being innocent; freedom from sin or moral wrong.
2. freedom from legal or specific wrong; guiltlessness: The prisoner proved his innocence.
3. simplicity; absence of guile or cunning; naiveté.
4. lack of knowledge or understanding.
5. harmlessness; innocuousness.

This is Darby.

Darby (5-6 months old...estimated)

She embodies a living example of innocence. She even wears a white coat. Someone dumped innocence at a drop box at an animal shelter. She was anywhere from 2 to 4 months old. She came to Heartland very very frightened. She was skittish and jumpy and scared. She ran away from humans when she could but if she was held and head-rubbed you could see that she was a baby who wanted to be comforted.

I'm writing about her because these past few days have seen a transformation. Darby has turned a corner and now instead of being dominated by fear and anxiety around human animals....she bubbles. She eagerly looks them in the face, she seeks touches, head-rubs...she runs toward humans instead of away from them. She especially likes having her shoulders gently massaged, if you touch her there she usually drops to the floor waiting for a rubbing.



She isn't crippled by terror now. There are few things (maybe no things) in this old world better than seeing a baby recover her smiles, her joy of living, her happy, her feeling that life is good.

She didn't have to recover her innocence, she never lost that. She didn't cause human animals to behave like they do...she didn't cause the predator animals, who stalk and kill her relatives for food, to act the way they do. She didn't cause her hair to be white, humans did, so they could better hurt her in laboratories and other places of terror and pain. But her white hair is accurate as an indicator of Darby's state of being...she is innocent.

Thanks for being who you are Darby, thanks for giving humans some trust again. Heartland Rabbit Rescue (and me) will do everything possible to make sure you never ever have any reason to distrust or fear human animals.

That's my hand in the second photo. Look at your hands. Do your hands represent the the destruction and disregard of innocence? Look at the hands of human beings the next time you're out around other people. If those human animals aren't living as vegans...you're looking at hands that destroy innocence, that terrorize and kill babies, that don't care about innocence. If hands told the truth of their doing with their color...the hands of a human being not living vegan would be stained red with blood. That's ugly.

If you don't want to have ugly hands, if you don't want to be someone who destroys innocence, who terrorizes babies, who hurts those who haven't harmed you, who adds to the misery of living on planet Earth...then you have to live vegan.

There's no in-between. Either you hurt babies like Darby or you don't. You can smile and laugh and joke and sing and run and play and be happy all you want...but if you aren't living vegan you're terrorizing babies and killing innocence.

I hurt and terrified babies for years and years, and I'm sorrowful that I did. I'm trying to make up for it. Darby has gifted me with her trust...with her innocence. I will honor her trust with my gratitude and my awe...and by living vegan.

I hope you will step away from being a human being who frightens and hurts the Darbys of this most beautiful planet. She deserves to enjoy her life...and you can do much better. Someone observed that living vegan is hard if you're focusing on yourself but living vegan is easy if you're thinking about who you aren't hurting anymore. Think about Darby...because she makes it easy to live vegan.