Animals in SPACE

by Rose David


I woke up this morning feeling really sad about Laika, the Russian space-dog… although now that I've actually typed that out and seen the awesomeness of that sentence, I feel a little less bad.

Anyway, Laika was a Russian dog that they put into a rocket in the 50s to see whether space travel was safe. The good news: Laika didn't immediately explode upon reaching the Earth's orbit. The bad news: the capsule hadn't been designed for retrieval. So... Yeah.

The thought of a dog dying in the middle of space, having no concept of why nobody was telling her she was good anymore, really messes me up.

Which I guess is kind of silly on a certain level, since I eat meat and dairy and eggs, so I can't be totally into making animals happy and comfortable.

There's a difference, though, between eating the meat of an animal you've never met (and probably wouldn't like that much anyway) and being cool with sending a cute terrier into space to get suffocated to death.

What if Laika survived and somehow had puppies and they took over a planet, like sort of how they did Planet of the Apes, but it's Planet of the Dogs? Are cats a marginalized population there? And how do the doggy overlords regard humans? Do they believe in us, or are we simply myth to them?

What if I crash-landed there and they captured me, but they didn't know I could talk and stuff?

Honestly, I'm just wondering why they never sent up animals that weren't as charming. For example, bunnies are cute, but they don't really have much of a personality and word is that they don't even really like cuddles.

I'd even settle for a cat, but not just any cat. Some of them have awesome personalities. I'd like for them to have sent up a cat with a history of violence and a true, overwhelming, incredible disdain for humanity. And perhaps even life itself.

Or maybe like… a frog. For no other reason than they are scary to me.

Or a parrot! Yes, absolutely a parrot. Strap that fucker in and shoot him off into space.

And since I'm feeling at least a little bit guilty, maybe we could replace the animals with that waiter who flirted with me incessantly, and then stood me up a few years ago. Yeah. Shoot that bastard into the moon. I hope he lands on the Planet of the Dogs.