"Letter to the Editor" by Katie R Hinton

To the Editor of the Little Kingdom Reporter

After reading the recent article in this paper detailing the plans for the new city dragon-fighting arena, I was appalled to find that such activities are not only condoned, but actively supported by the otherwise sensible and compassionate people who run the Little Kingdom Reporter. Whereas this paper is normally a font of accurate and unbiased information, the management’s decision to provide funding for the arena project and the thorough distribution of pro-dragon-fighting propaganda within the pages of the last edition has brought light to the need for clarification on the other side of the issue. This is obviously an oversight the part of the management, and I am most certain that a newspaper with a reputation such as this one has for fair journalism and allowing all sides of the issue to be heard will allow this letter to be published. As a charter member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Mythological Animals and Other Assorted Critters (SPCMA-OAC) and registered Dragon Enthusiast/Researcher, I thus take it upon myself to write in and give voice to those facts that have so sadly been left out of the Little Kingdom Reporter’s coverage of this deeply important issue of our time.

Dragon fighting, or “drakeing”, to use the colloquial name, is one of the last vestigial barbarisms in our nation. While similar “sports” involving dogs, bulls, and roosters have long been outlawed or exiled from popular culture due to their inherent cruelty to the creatures involved, drakeing remains and continues to have a lasting, bloody effect upon both dragons as a species and the culture that allows such violent exploitation of these magnificent creatures. Drakeing in all its forms, be it forced combat between two dragons or the glorified slaughter that is the knight-against-dragon battle, is a festering cancer within our culture that needs must be stopped before its effects become irreversible.

Dragon fighting is defended in our society by those who would say that it is a “harmless bit of sport” that benefits all involved. While it is true that both the construction and the subsequent running of arenas such as the one described in the last edition of this paper bring much-welcomed amounts of money into the local economy, drakeing is far from being the wholesome national pastime that its proponents would have the population think. The commonly held idea that dragons are simply animals is purely the product of under-education of the populace, for it has been proven by carefully documented research that dragons are in themselves a sentient species just as we are. In response to the claim that drakeing benefits all involved, I simply pose the question; how would it benefit the dragon to be starved into blood-rage and forced to fight for its very life so that the masses of our society could be ever so fleetingly entertained?

It is a verifiable fact that dragons as a species are facing almost certain extinction within the next century, and their extinction is largely attributed by the most recent research to the sport of dragon fighting. As dragons do not breed in captivity, the individuals found fighting for their lives in the arena are without exception dragons born from wild-laid eggs that human dragon-keepers have taken from the nest before hatching. The poaching of dragon eggs has brought about the decline of the dragons, for unlike chickens and other birds who will replace a lost egg by laying another, female dragons are rarely able to lay more than two eggs in a single year. As no young dragons are then born to replace those killed in the arena, wild dragons are becoming ever rarer with each passing year.

In closing, I ask the kind-hearted readers of the Little Kingdom Reporter what their feelings were they in the dragon’s place would be. To be taken from their mothers before birth, to be raised for the single purpose of fighting to their death, to never know what it is like to be free, even to forgo finding a life-mate for the sake of children who will never be born, that those children might never have to know the life of captivity? Drakeing should be outlawed while there is still a chance for the survival of the species, while the cruelty can still be stopped. If those of us who see dragon-fighting as a cruel, needless, inhuman sport that no longer has a place in our culture do not stand up for what is right, if we continue to allow the exploitation of a sentient and magnificent species like the noble dragon to pass unprotected, then we are every bit as guilty as the people who run the arenas and the sport itself! Let us not sit idly by and allow this to continue, but instead let us boycott both the established regime of the dragon-fighting world and the businesses that fund the barbaric pastime.

Sincerely,

K.R. Hinton (concerned citizen and registered DE/R)