It's me again with another act from the circus of shame. At the time I was living in Malaysia working as a photographer for my journalist now ex-girlfriend.
She worked for the government issue news rag the Star where she ironically worked as an investigative environmental journalist. I won't go into the details of the Malaysian Government at that time, however they were not very climate friendly 😑
Natalie decided she would explore an old Ostrich farm in her hometown of Port Dickson. It was another one of those 'animal rescue centres', you know the best kinda, the ones that probably exploit their animals for money. Perhaps we were to be wrong and the place would be lovely. Oh boy, that it was not. You probably already guessed by the photograph of me chasing an Ostrich. The main issue with being undercover as you say, if the inability to say no.
When your asked if you want to 'race' an Ostrich, or race on Ostriches, one must find out if it was a serious offer...
As uncomfortable as it was, it was also clear our activities were a stress on the poor birds, but the best was yet to come.
I managed to avoid riding one of the birds but June wasn't so lucky. They told us the sock kept it calm, I know it's common for captive birds to wear hoods etc but this a sports sock. Wildly inappropriate.
Then can your usual array of close encounters, with no barriers, no rules, anything goes petting zoo mentality. The monkey was particularly disheartening. I do strongly believe the concept of confinement probably affects apes and primates the most.
And to top it all off we were giving Ostrich steaks for lunch. I am vegan these days but I was an avid carnivore back in the day. I had no issue with eating it however, rescue birds 😬, it was 100% or 10/10 on the inappropriate scale here at the carnival of shame.
So what was the outcome? The same as usual. Natalie would write up her article, her editor would twist it in favor of the governing political party and adjust anything that made Malaysia look bad, until it was a shell of what we felt. I knew this. I was never truly comfortable on her bizarre escapades, part of her enjoyed these experiences, deep down I didn't believe she was really an environmentalist, more of a sham, say one thing do both.
Anyway. If you ever get the cha ce to visit a Malaysian Ostrich Sanctuary, kindly decline 🙏
Cotton x