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At the age of 12-13, I killed a snake.
Whether or not it was poisonous seems to have been irrelevant. Snakes were snakes and they were not a good thing. Such was my thinking at the time.
In my mind, whacking that snake was a brave thing to do and it was important to me to be brave.
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Perhaps it was all part of the same concept that English children didn’t cry.
It’s not something I ever discussed with children of my generation, so it’s only my opinion that it had to do with growing up after the war.
In London there was evidence everywhere of that awful time, when everyone had to be really brave. How could I ever measure up?
A feeble excuse for killing that poor snake, which proved nothing to anybody.
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Two years later when a snake spiralled toward me down my bedroom curtains, I yelled for my dad:
“What are you telling me for?” he asked.
That unfortunate creature was dispatched by the maid.
So much for being brave.
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After that time I was confronted with many things, but I never again had occasion to kill more than a mosquito and in more recent days, I have hesitated even to do that, having come to feel that I have no right to end life of any sort.
Killing those snakes weighs on my conscience, even now.
As a guardian to the many animals that came into my care, I have so often been faced with ending their lives to spare them suffering.
Surely it is the right thing to do? The kind thing? Wouldn’t we choose to end our suffering?
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The truth is, we cannot know for sure what any other creature would choose. We say they don’t understand death, yet they do know to be frightened.
It’s something I torment myself over.
A couple of weeks ago a possum turned up one evening, by the groundhog burrow in front of the kitchen window.
It turned out to be an elderly animal that was almost totally blind, just as Mrs Plod had been.
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Mrs Plod expressed a liking for oranges, so we cut some up for the old possum, but he seemed just as happy with carrots and peanuts.
As well as being blind, the old boy appeared to limp.
All in all, he wasn’t in the best of shape.
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The first day of the current heatwave, Grant came in to say that the old possum was up on the hill in the sun.
Grant felt the humane thing was to prevent the animal from suffering, as it was bound to.
Trapping a wild animal of that sort would cause it so much distress, so it was not an option.
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Following Grant back up the hill, I wanted to plead: “Don’t!”
Instead, I turned and walked away feeling terribly conflicted and very sad.
Mrs Plod must have met her end during the winter after her appearance.
Should we have helped her out too?
We can’t know that her end was more traumatic than it would have been if we had stepped in, or that she had any idea that she was suffering.
Animals don’t think as humans do.
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The first animal I cried over wasn’t even real.
Bambi was an awful film to take children to see.
It seems English children did cry sometimes.
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It is popularly believed than mankind has dominion over animals. That other species are less.
Yet with our vast intelligence, mankind cannot find a way to live in peace.
It’s hard for me to believe that we are superior.
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We are promised another severe thunderstorm this afternoon which will hopefully wash away the fug that seems to have overtaken my brain.
Thank you, Carolyn, for your interesting musing, but you are wrong when you write animals don’t think like humans, they do, and Darvin knew this a long time ago. I read his notes, and currently, scientists accept that animals feel and think just like we do. I will put a link to the BBC News website after my next post, and you will be able to read those findings and be astonished.
Joanna
What I mean is that they don’t sit around thinking in the same terms…”It’s cold in here, I think I’ll turn up the heat.” But, yes, it is my experience that animals are very sensitive to our feelings, our moods and they have their ways of expressing their own. By the way I am having WP problems and sometimes my comments on other blogs do not register although they appear to when I write the. It’s very frustrating and I don’t know the reason but I don’t want youto think I am not reading and appreciating your wonderful posts.
What a lot you’ve given us to think about. It is always a dilemma when choosing what to do for the best where animals are concerned (or humans for that matter), and who is to determine what is best? We do what we believe is the right thing based on our experience and our expectations. We can do no more!
Your photos of the groundhogs are beautiful – I especially like the one where the two sit inside the food bowl – why do they do that (that’s definitely another question you can add to your post today). Yes, so many questions, right? For which we don’t always have answers. How will we know what animals think … but having seen elephants from so close recently, I’m sure animals have emotions.
Animals certainly have emotions. I just think sometimes people attribute human thinking to them. The animals I have known all had their moods and responded to mine. Elephants are so amazing. I have always loved them deeply. They are special.
Did Grant shoot the old possum to ‘help it out’? I couldn’t have done that.
If you live somewhere that has deadly snakes that get into your house or garden, I think it is probably wise to spare yourself serious illness or death by killing that snake. It’s a ‘them or us’ thing. And there never seems to be a shortage of snakes.
Best wishes, Pete.
Grant grew up on a farm in South Africa. I believe he feels almost as if it his duty to dispatch an animal to end its suffering. He hates doing it and it messes with his head but he puts the bodies somewhere where other animals can feed from the carcass, except when the animal was rabid. We had baby raccoons one year that got infected. That was awful.