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Bottled Water Testing Station
Summary
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After I rescued Rodent from a trash pile, he lived in the aquarium I had found him in.
I gradually added more plastic tunnels and modules to extend his domain.
Finally, after about a year, I completed construction of The Bottled Water Testing Station,
and joined it to his tunnel system, so he could begin his mission to compare bottled waters,
reveal an animal's instinctive response to the various brands, and call
attention to the global disparity of water availability, and the U.N.'s millennium goal of reducing by half the
number of people without regular water supplies by 2015.
It took a few days before he discovered the new entrance in his tunnel system, and then he cautiously made brief forages to examine the new territory. He readily began to gather the food he found there, but I never observed him trying the waters. He seemed to prefer the original bottle of NYC tap water in his aquarium, from which he was accustomed to drink. After about a week in The Bottled Water Testing Station, he contracted diarrhea, and despite my efforts to save him, died. I never expected this outcome. I can't say for certain that the contents of one of the bottled waters caused his demise. He'd contracted diarrhea a couple of times in the year before he encountered the bottled waters, but in each previous case, he'd survived. He may have been nearly two years old at the time of his death, which would be old age for a hamster, perhaps making him more susceptable to disease. I have been acussed of animal cruelty for subjecting a rodent to the dangers of bottled waters. I will have to live with whatever guilt I bear for subjecting him to this experiment. I have to ask, if it is animal cruelty to give a rodent bottled water, how can we justify selling these bottles to humans? I can only hope Rodent didn't die in vain. |
Intoduction to The Bottled Water Testing Station
Details about The Bottled Water Testing Station
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