At 03:43 AM 6/18/99 EDT, you wrote:
>In a message dated 6/17/99 11:07:18 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
>
>I agreed with every word you said on the last post of yours Diana.
>I felt compelled only to respond to the above lines.
>
> I personally would prefer
>the company of animals over people any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
>They are pure, they never lie, cheat or steal with maliciousness. They do not
>murder for sport ( hunting to eat is not sport).  They take responsibility
for
>their young and carry themselves in the world.

[snip]

OK, this is getting off topic, but for an alternative view of animal
"virtues" consider:

"Unless forcibly reminded of nature's cruelty, people tend to romanticize
wildlife, seeing benevolence, and overlooking viciousness.  ... Crimes at
least equivalent in their effects (if not their motives) to murder, rape,
cannibalism, infanticide, deception, theft, torture, and genocie are not
just committed by animals, but are almost ways of life.  Ground squirrels
routinely eat baby ground squirrels, mallard drakes routinely drown ducks
suring gang rape; parasitic wasps routinely eat their victims alive the
inside; chimpanzees -- our nearest relatives 00 routinely pursue gang
warfare.  Yet, as supposedly objective television programmes about nature
demonstrate, human beings just do not want to know these facts."  (p. 215,
"Ecology as Religion" in _The Origins of Virtue"  Human Insticts and the
Evolution of Cooperation_ by Matt Ridley)