True Life Stories: Compassion for the Devil

I stepped into the trashy house and the wretched smell of blood and bleach. The walls were bathed in red light, reflecting off the glass terrariums housing 22 snakes in total, including a couple pythons and boas. The red lamps cast their ghastly glow on a 3rd reich SS flag proudly pinned high on the wall. I walked into the kitchen and the smell intensified. There was blood all over the floor and some on the walls. I handed over the towels I had brought and asked if the dogs were OK. Then I stepped out of hell into the clean air of the night.

My ex-girlfriend, B, had befriended two brothers out of concern for their dogs. I hung out with them a couple times only because B wanted to. They were the antithesis of me, metal heads in a band, dog abusers, racists, and domineering.

They had accepted B's offer to walk the dogs daily. When she left a door open by mistake their pit-bulls met in the kitchen and fought. The next day, B anonymously called the SPCA and they took away the female. As far as I know, she was not terminated which was a relief but I was doubtful they could find someone with the expertise needed to rehabilitate such a damaged and aggressive dog. They were good dogs but sad, afraid, overweight, and abused from day one, stored like Satan's minions in separate rooms void of daylight, smelling of mould, feces, and hate.

One of the brothers had snakes. Many snakes.

One day he decided to feed his boa constrictor with a live rat from his supply. He held the rat by the tail over the tank. It didn't fight. He dropped it in as the boa coiled in preparation. Then in one motion it struck and wrapped around the helpless creature. It let out a brief scream and struggled despairingly. The guy enjoyed it, running his hands through his coarse, matted hair as if he got high from the sacrifice. The snake tightened its coil with each exhale the rat made, slowly suffocating it. I saw it die and I hid my grief. It was sustenance for the snake. I'm not naive. I know what nature is like and it was fascinating to watch, but painful.

He had no imagination or didn't want to feel the rat die. Neither brother put themselves in their dog's bodies to empathize. They probably believe compassion is weakness. How wrong they would be to think that. Compassion is the highest form of logic. It is intelligence, a force of nature, as strong as a mountain but flowing and alive. It would be easy to hate those brothers. How they treated their dogs was terrible but if I look closely at them I see myself. They act based on memory, their conditioning, their self, and the suffering that comes with that is common to us all. If you look close enough at anyone you can see yourself in them. Having compassion for the devil is the only way to defeat him. I don't have to agree with him or stand by and let him wreak havoc but hating the devil perpetuates him in ourselves.