from The Animals' Agenda - March 1990
found at www.AnimalConcerns.org
Near the beginning of July [1990] there was an article
in a Halifax newspaper about a 61-year-old Nova Scotia fisherman who
bludgeoned an endangered leatherback turtle caught in his mackerel net.
The animal was struck 6 times on the head with a hammer and paddle and
dragged to shore, where he was cut loose and swam back to sea, badly
injured. "I didn't know you weren't supposed to kill it," was what the
fisherman was quoted as saying in his defense.
People like the fisherman abound in this world. It
causes me to wonder how they grow up from infancy and childhood, when
affection and empathy for animals is greatest, to an adulthood in which
killing is the first or only answer when faced with a conflict with an
animal. As soon as a child is born, someone will inevitably pop a brand
new stuffed animal into the bassinet to welcome the new arrival. Often
these stuffed animals are not just toys to the child -- they're friends
who provide protection and good
counsel. Added to the animal toys are the unlimited children's stories
with animals as central characters -- animals who teach children right
from wrong along with manners, kindness, and fairness.
Then one day the child comes home and asks if it's true
what the teacher said, that hamburger comes from cows who are killed and
that the red stuff you always said was "just part of the meat" is really
blood. And he is told not to worry about it; that's what the animal was
born for. And one day he spends the afternoon on the back step confused
because his parents just scolded him for throwing a rock at the
neighbor's dog -- yet he knows Daddy poisoned the raccoon who used to
come around, and he knows
there's a bird in the house who can't use her wings because she's kept
in a small but pretty cage, and he knows that Mommy has something
looking very much like the neighbor's dog hanging on a padded hanger in
her closet. Then on another day, Mommy puts away his stuffed animals, or
throws them out, and his uncle drops by and puts a gun in his small
12-year-old hand and tells him he'll teach him what people do to real
bears. And suddenly at school the hamsters, mice and rabbits he
remembers
scuffling softly in hay in kindergarten and first grade are floating in
jars of formaldehyde on the shelves in his biology class, and the
teacher is instructing him in the correct way to kill the frog before he
cuts it into pieces to learn about the marvels of life.
And before that child becomes a man, he has learned that
real animals are germy, stinky, dangerous, and undeserving of respect.
He has learned that animals are here for his gratification, and that the
valuable lessons they taught him in his childhood are applicable to
humans only. And he becomes the 61-year-old fisherman who was so
flabbergasted when a creature who shared the sea with mackerel came up
in his net that the only solution was to bash its head open. And all
that his parents, his teachers, his society, and his religion taught him
in all his years of living and maturing can by summed up in 9 words:
"I didn't know you weren't supposed to kill it."
Go on to SHARK's Tiger
Truck
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