A clash of cultures where animal treatment is concerned can, on occasions be a dangerous thing...
I trust this yarn won't derail the thread but it does have some relevance to the way people react to animal treatment..
In the mid 1960's I was AB in a Tramp ship at the port of Surigao, Mindanao, Philippines. Three of us went ashore, myself, the ship's First Apprentice named David, the son of an aristocratic shipping company owning family and my watch mate, Bobby Mac a 5 foot 4 inch Scotsman from what he called 'Oosterhoose' (Easterhouse) in the East end of Glasgow. Covered in tattoos and muscle he was one of the hardest people I'd ever met at that time, but a great ship mate and friend.
We wandered through the local street market and eventually found ourselves in the meat section..
David stopped dead and in his best Harrow voice said " Good Lord look at that!"
In front of us was a stall selling various types of meat. Hanging from the sunshade support was a small Jack Russell size dog it's forelegs bound together, a fruit tin with the bottom and top cut out acted as a steel muzzle. It was suspended by it's bound hind legs. Under the stall were two similar dogs in raffia baskets.
I had my seaman's knife ( a Green River)on my belt under my T shirt, I drew the knife and cut the raffia hanger and grabbed the little dog, David and Mac snatched the two baskets and we were off...
Screams and shouts and a growing number of people chasing us. Diving down different aisles of stalls, the little dog weeing down my side and wriggling under my arm and running for our lives as some of the pursuers were waving machetes...
We ran between stalls and found ourselves confronted by a derelict warehouse the door to which was plastic sheeting. We dived in and found ourselves blinking in the darkness after the bright sunlight, halfway down the warehouse low in the wall was a small rusty ventilation grill. Mac kicked it out and after I had cut the raffia bindings we 'posted' the three dogs through the hole and into the surrounding undergrowth.
The pursuing mob appeared in the doorway and jumping over broken crates, rotting Pineapples and pallets we ran to the other end of the warehouse where there was a steel shutter door and luckily a rickety pedestrian door which we practically ripped from it's hinges. Outside we found ourselves standing on a concrete loading platform about five feet from the ground, and a turning area adjoining a busy road. Someone burst through the door behind us and Mac dropped him with one punch, we jumped down and ran across the busy road into a side road where about fifty metres down, parked in the shade was a US Navy 4x4 truck. In the back sat four of the biggest Naval shore patrol men I've ever seen! White steel helmets, belts and gaiters and big varnished batons. We ran towards it as the engine started and as the truck began to pull away I was grabbed by a big black hand and literally heaved aboard. The few pursuers stopped, waving machetes and yelling as we drove away, the three of us in a heap in the back of the truck.
Once safely away the truck stopped and the young Officer said " OK guys, which ship?" ( There were two US Destroyers and a submarine depot ship anchored in Surigao Bay)
David answered in his cultured voice " Well we're from the MV Trevaylor actually"
Stunned silence..."Goddam you're Limeys!!!"
He obviously thought we were American Naval personnel on shore leave. We, rather David, recounted the whole story amid much laughter and friendly digs from the US shore patrolmen.
We were taken to safely near the dock gate ( against US Navy regs: to transport foreign civilians)
where we shook hands and thanked them.
We never returned to the market...
Looking back fifty years later, we were in the wrong. Don't interfere with local customs, it's their country, their way of life. We may not like it but that's the way of the world.
Having said that I'd still do the same thing again (and get caught because I can't run as fast now...)
