Does anybody remember watching The Wild Thornberry’s as a kid? I loved that show! I always wanted to be just like Eliza, traveling around the world and talking to animals. Yet for all my love for this character, others hate her. Why? Well for one it always seems like she puts animal’s needs before her and her families’. In one episode, entitled, Have Yourself a Thornberry Christmas, Eliza and her family are celebrating Christmas. She runs into some trouble when she sees animals in distress and tries to help. She comes across and ostrich trying to keep her eggs warm, so Eliza gives the animal her parents’ Christmas present to use, a camera warmer. She also gives Christmas lights to a zebra to keep it safe from a group of Jackals. I guess one argument against her is that she should not interfere in the lives of animals and should just leave them alone. I agree that sometimes it’s best to not get involved but, I mean, come on, she’s a kid, wouldn’t you want to lend a hand to a animal in need? And to keep her and her primate friend, Darwin, from getting eaten by a lion, she gives her families’ Christmas goose dinner to it. But this is legit, she was going to get eaten by a lion, I would have done the same! And also being able to talk to both humans and animals, she probably can’t help coming to the rescue because she is a part of both words.
Also in another episode, Eliza gives all her families’ food supply to a group of monkeys because she believes they are starving. There are plenty of episodes where Eliza put herself at risk for the sake of animals, and I also agree that she can be extreme when it comes to seeing animals suffer, but sometimes you just got leave it alone and move on.
Unruly Bodies 
I think this brings up a really cool point about how empathy is so often based on a capability of language. It’s interesting to see what’s given ‘a voice’, nature / animals / ecology are cast in this ‘endlessly communicating if you find out how to listen’ way pretty often it seems like. There are definitely some interesting lessons being taught about navigating + caring for ‘the other’ (I used to watch this show a lot).
This use to be my show when I was younger and although i don’t remember the episodes that you mentioned I do remember how she was always enthused to help out different animals even if she was well aware that she was not only putting herself in danger but, also her family at times. I think that she was right in certain situations in which she would give some of her families food supply to the animals that were hungry but, sometimes when it means that your own family will be without food then she should have just let them be because the animals would have found some source of food in their natural habitat. I always thought that if her family could also speak to the animals then they would probably understand why Eliza did what she did sometimes.