Truth in art's absurdity
India, May 10 -- Two American millionaires have been killed in the space of eight months while big-game hunting in Africa. Asher Watkins was gored to death by a Cape buffalo in South Africa in August 2025. Last month, it was the turn of Ernie Dosio (75), owner of a California vineyard company managing 12,000 acres.
Dosio was trampled by a herd of five female elephants protecting a calf in Gabon, a country often described as the 'Last Eden' of Africa. Ironically, Dosio was out hunting antelope when ambushed by the "mean mums".
The death sparked an acrimonious debate between advocates of "conservation culling or hunting" and animal rights activists. The wealthy American hunting lobby (Dosio was on a $40,000 safari hunt to Gabon) is backed, among others, by President Donald Trump and his hunter sons.
Dosio was "outgunned" as he faced the brunt of the most brutal maternal instincts. Female elephants are known to protect and nurture a calf like the proverbial "maasis" (mother's sisters) and display intelligence, social instincts, memory and emotional articulation.
Ultimately, Dosio fell prey to his targets. Dosio was hunted down when the boot was on the other (elephant) foot. Was it karma or just nature's brutal reality? A hunter's martyrdom? Or a cosmic throw of dice in the game of random chance? While words have been exchanged like poisoned arrows over hunter graves, it was left to an artist to give animals a voice of equity and articulate the old saying: "Revenge is a wild justice."
Dosio left behind, in his California home, walls nailed with trophies of elephants, lions, rhinos, moose, elk, reindeer, etc. But in a cartoonist's rival imagination, a trophy had been nailed to the wall in an 'elephants only' safari club....
इस लेख के रीप्रिंट को खरीदने या इस प्रकाशन का पूरा फ़ीड प्राप्त करने के लिए, कृपया
हमे संपर्क करें.