Someone posted a message on my Facebook Page this morning saying she loved all animals, and said I should not kill the fox who has been after my chickens. I get t a lot of messages like that. I love being in one of the oldest stories of the world – the farmer and fox – and once again, I was drawn to think about the very complex and diverse ways we love animals. Nowhere is this clearer, more touching or complicated than when it comes to killing them. There are many ways to view animals and death, and our culture is divided about it. In recent years, people who describe themselves as animal lovers have increasingly embraced the idea of the no-kill world for animals and equated this with loving them, as the Facebook poster did. What was she telling me? That because she loves animals, none of them can die? The fox can eat my hens? She might come to my farm and my woods for a day, and revise her ideas about love, death, animals and humanity. I would bet she doesn’t live in the country.
Living in a rural area and on the farm – and having farmers for friends and photographing them – has certainly focused and altered my own ideas about it, especially when I think of all the animals who have died on the farm – some of natural causes, some of illness and disease, some I have shot, strangled, killed by injection, sent others sent to slaughter. In the country, the idea of the no-kill world for animals is curious. Animals die all around us – mice, rabbits, birds, deer – felled by starvation and disease, by cars and trucks, development, predators, accidents, poisons. It is a rare walk in the woods or drive that doesn’t bring one to an animal carcass and there is not a farmer with chickens who does not have a worse and bloodier story to tell than mine. This is part of life here, and few people deny this most natural of realities. If the farmer can, he shoots the fox, and always has.
From my curious prism astride different cultures, I think about animals and death and write about it.
Often, I wonder whether animals can survive humans love for them. Is it really humane to trap a fox, drop him off in an alien land without his partner, most likely to die of confusion, starvation, or predation? Is it really human to leave a dog in a crate for years rather than putting him down? Is it humane to let a fox run free to kill other people’s hens and cats? Or to ask farmers to build predator-proof shelters they cannot afford and that cost more than hundreds of chickens?
In my lifetime, I have seen many more animals slaughtered by super highways and mall-builders and real-estate developers than hunters could possibly kill. And animals never return to malls and housing developments or water polluted by cars and acid rains. Animal lovers drive on thruways and shop in malls all the time, as I do. And they drive toxic cars, as I do. Lawns deprive countless species of food and shelter, and yet many animal lovers would argue for a fox to live but would hardly give up their lawn or fenced-in garden.
Some of my decisions have been controversial – killing Orson after he bit three people, sending Elvis the steer to slaughter after his legs began to give and I didn’t want to have to shoot him when he keeled over. Farmers complain that people simply do not understand what real life with real animals is like, one of the many divides in America. Steers are not cats. My ideas of love, animals and humanity are evolving.
I love animals too, very much, and live with a bunch. For me, loving animals means sometimes having to kill them. I would rather euthanize my dogs than have them live out their lives in crates, or see them suffer through endless surgeries and crippled. I would rather shoot a fox than see him kill my chickens and cats or those of other people. I would rather see Simon put down than see him hobble in pain all of his life. I would rather kill a lamb that see him or her turned into a house pet and disconnected freak of nature. I would – have – killed roosters who attacked people and hens. I believe Rocky would be better off dead than moved to a new home. So loving animals for me does not mean they will never die.
These, sadly, are the decisions of real people living with real animals.
And yes, my Facebook poster, I would surely kill the fox if he came back and I got a shot at him. Try watching one of the animals you live with be torn to bits and left in pieces while you sit by and watch. No animal I know who lives in the natural world lives a no-kill life. I respect their world.
These are my choices, and everyone has to make their own and live with them. The bottom line is, I think, that most of us love our animals, certainly including the people who have different views than I do. We just do the best we can in the world we live in.