At the end of World War II, nearly 90 percent of Americans lived on or near farms. Today, 90 percent of Americans live on or near the East or West coast.

One consequence of this is that most Americans know little or nothing about farm animals, they mostly experience animals as pets. And people with farm animals are often bewildered by how people treat their pets.

This is why so many people think it is cruel for a draft horse to pull a carriage in Central Park or that all elephants in a circus must be unhappy and abused.

Animals don’t benefit from this disconnection, it causes them much suffering and misunderstanding.

The way animals die is one measure of this increasingly unbridgeable chasm. On a farm, one learns to take some of the drama or emotionalizing out of death. Farms are complex, challenging and expensive environments. Animals are coming and going all the time.

I live on the boundary of animal life, I have farm animals and pets, I see the growing distance between the ways in which these animals are perceived.

If you treat your animals like people treat their pets, you won’t have your farm for long.

Pets die in ritualistic, emotionalized and expensive ways. People spend hundreds of dollars just to euthanize them or cremate or bury them. There is a tremendous amount of grieving and sympathy to be found on Facebook or Twitter. I think “so sorry for your loss” may be the most common phrase on all of social media.

Americans agree on very little these days, but everybody knows how painful it is to lose a pet.

That doesn’t work on a farm, and one reason is that farm animals die very differently than dogs or cats. I can see this happening with Zelda, our oldest sheep who is slated to be put down Wednesday afternoon.

Animals are not kind to sick and dying members of their species.

I see many stories of how sweet animals are to one another in death, but that is Rainbow Bridge kind of myth, not real life. One reason Zelda is always alone is that the other flock – the sheep she grazed, ate with, led for years – don’t want her near them. If she lies down in the Pole Barn, the other sheep butt her and challenge her until she gets up and leaves.

She is also preparing to die. Animals go off by themselves when they are preparing to die. They don’t wish to die among their species, it is dangerous.

The reasons for this are Darwinian, from what I have read.

Sick and dying animals attract predators. For the health of the flock, sick animals are driven away to fend for themselves and die alone. This is why Simon was so brutal to Rocky, the old, blind pony who posed no real threat to him.

Except that he did pose a threat.

Rocky was a predator magnet, out in the fields by himself, slow-moving and visibly weak. Predators like coyotes – or wolves for many thousands of years – would have had no trouble catching and killing Rocky.

Lots of people hated Simon for pushing Rocky away, but Simon was just doing his job, protecting Lulu and Fanny from danger.

I knew Zelda was close to death when I saw her spending so much time alone. When I saw the other sheep butting her and pushing her away, I was certain it was time.

The pet experience is quite different, as I can testify. When our dogs and cats are sick, we are drawn yo them, we don’t push them away. We get emotionally involved.

We take them to vets, buy them expensive medicines, get special beds, hover over them, worry and sometimes cry.

Hardly any pet dies alone, including mine.

Vets have told me many times that the most difficult thing for them is watching people torture and abuse their animals for months and years by keeping them alive because they can’t bear to lose them.

Lots of pets die in the arms of their humans. Few farm animals get to die like that. One woman suggested on my blog posts that perhaps Zelda was standing over her grave because she was curious. Perhaps.

Behaviorists know that most people need to see their dogs as empathetic and love, they often tell me how their dogs are wracked by grief when a member of the pack does. People so much want their much-loved pets to be like us, they sometimes see what they need to see.

I can testify is it very difficult to see them as alien beings with very different feelings and sensibilities.

Biologists will tell a somewhat different story than the Rainbow Bridge story  – many dogs are relieved when a sick dog is gone, instinctively, and like farm animals, sick animals close by can be a danger.

It isn’t that dogs are mean or uncaring, it’s just that they are animals. I love them, I think because they are not like us. They don’t sue each other, post nasy messages on social media, shout on cable news.

I celebrate this difference.

In the last weeks of Red’s life, Bud and Fate kept their distance from him. When Red was sick, Bud watched over him. When he was dying, he moved away.

That’s the way animals die, and the way they live. Animals endure, they survive, they adapt.

I think it’s Zelda’s time. Maria and I both see it.

Zelda senses it, the other sheep sense it, the dogs sense it – they keep clear of her. This often is seen as a sad thing, but to me, it is a ritual of acceptance and peace. A natural thing.

Zelda is very peaceful these days, very much at ease.

She is telling us in every way she can that it’s time to go, she has accepted it and is ready. Maria and I both see that in her, and we have known Zelda for a long time.

Someone told me they were sorry for this loss, but I am not really sorry for this loss. I am grateful to be able to help Zelda leave the world in peace and dignity.

She had a great life and I wish her good fortune in this next chapter.

I have learned so much from my animals, and one of the lessons is helping me to understand how I wish to die.

Curiously enough, I want to die like a sheep, knowing when it’s time, and accepting it as another part of life.