Endangered Eliot Schrefer Quotes

... we didn't have the day-in, day-out knowledge of each other that most mothers and daughters have. It's not like she was a stranger; we had too much history for that. But at the same time, I couldn't say I knew her well. Or at least well enough to see her thoughts.

You have to learn when to ignore suffering so that you're strong enough to fight it when the time is right.

... a recent study showed they were our closest relatives, sharing 98.7% of our DNA.

As I finished the bed, thinking it looked surprisingly comfortable, a terrible black feeling came over me and I shuddered, aching at the sudden loneliness. I missed my new family.

I have to tell you how nice that sound is. I haven't heard laughter in weeks.

Concrete can rot. It turns green and black before crumbling away. Maybe only people from Congo know that.

But it had always been my mom's philosophy that the way we treat animals goes hand in hand with the way we treat people, and so she would dedicate her life to stopping men like this one, bushmeat traders hoping for sale

I knew at least Banalia was dead; that had happened right in front of my eyes. They would either eat her now or smoke her body to sell the meat. It made my stomach turn--the DNA in that meat was almost 99 percent the same as human DNA; it was nearly cannibalism. But the men were hungry.

Superstition, she said. Soup with a bonobo finger in it is supposed to make a pregnant woman give birth to a strong baby. Putting another finger in the bathwater keeps the baby strong. "I hope the stupid polio", I said, and surprised myself by even sort of meaning it. I kissed the top of the bonobo's head. I imagined him in his crate, crying against the bars, someone lifting him out only to chop off a finger. Plunging him back into the crate, then pulling him out a few days later to take another....

I don't think caring is a limited resource. I think the sum of care in the world can be increased. In fact, I think care for animals leads to greater care for humans, too, since we all share the natural world, and the same systems of power that endanger animals also endanger humans.

He's extremely dehydrated and we'll need to get fluids into him as soon as possible if he's to have a hope of surviving

On average, twelve hundred Congolese had been killed every day since 1998. Five point four million. And it wasn't nearly over yet.

Saving myself would mean destroying him.

My feet hurt, I was light-headed with stress and bad meals, and the idea of perhaps eating real food and sitting in a chair-- or even sleeping in a bed!-- sounded like bliss.

He murped, then went to the edge of the overgrowth and stood there agitatedly, waiting for me to follow, glaring at me like I was an idiot who didn't know how to take a hint.

The smell coming off my flesh had gone from simple stinkiness to something weird and almost appetizing, close to sour-cream-and-onion potato chips.

Since the bigger gorillas leave chimps only a fraction of the quantity of food bonobos get, each chimp must fight ferociously to survive, including killing other chimpanzees

Everyone here constantly laughed at tragedy, as if insulting misfortune would keep it at bay.