Killing animals, how do you feel?

How do you feel about killing animals?

(a chicken for lunch)

My very earliest memories of killing were when I was a child living at 10 Oliver Road, Amalinda, East London in the 1960's. My Dad used to raise chickens in a "hok" ( a large wired in coop). I cannot remember the dimensions but to me it was huge. There was even mesh covering the top of the coop. As kids we used to pull the earthworms out the ground and throw them into the coop. The poor worms would dangle down between the wires while hungry chickens waited below. The worm would fall to a grisly doom as the chickens gobbled the worm up. Then on the occasional Saturday my Dad would take a chicken out the coop for Sunday lunch. I would have to hold the chicken and my Dad held the chicken's head over a wooden chopping block and chopped its head off. I must have been about six years old and I was very squeamish. At first I would let the headless creature go and it would run around the yard, blood spouting out of its neck. Our family's neighbour was an Afrikaner who had a pig pen. It was even more gruesome to me, the pig would be slaughtered in the back yard with much squealing from the dying creature. Now days I wonder what the law is for slaughtering animals in a suburban neighbourhood. Is it still legal here in South Africa?

(I love eggs and chicken, but this way?)

Going to the butcher seemed a much more civilized process to me as a child. Nice neatly sliced blocks of beef wrapped in brown paper. In those days quite a few of our family friends were farmers, so I was not so sheltered from the reality of where the meat came from. Yet I always felt sad when I saw the livestock trucks travelling to the abattoir, I wondered what the creatures must be thinking.

I am certainly a meat eater yet I feel squeamish when I see the consequences of my carnivorous appetite. I am compelled to admit that the vast commercial enterprises of giving us things such as milk, bacon, eggs and other meats seems to be a process that has no regard for any suffering of the animals involved. What about the wool, the leather used for shoes and belts for example. Everyone is up in arms about fur, or using animals for medical test trials. Yet what is the alternative for some of these processes? To those of us who are parents, yes, we want a more humane way to conduct science, but if you had to choose between some monkeys and the life of your child, who would you choose? I certainly would choose the life of my child. But is there no other way to learn?

In the past two centuries, black people were just used as porters, in World War One, for example, over one million men were "used" and about two hundred thousand of them died. In the Boer War, much ado was made about nearly thirty thousand white people dying in the British concentration camps, yet very little fuss was made about the fatalities and suffering of the Black people in their own British concentration camps. Germany was not innocent either in the colonial days of South West Africa where they also practiced developing their own version of concentration camps on the Ovambo people. From those terrible crimes, Western societies have evolved into being more caring about the lives of Black people. Although the lives of ordinary people in the war torn countries such as Syria, don't seem to matter too much in these times. Now too, more societies seem to be more caring about animals. Yet there are those societies where the lives of Black people matter very little, the worst culprits are mostly found in the Middle East. They hire desperately poor people as domestic servants. The crime is that the employed domestics have their Identity Documents confiscated and their cell phones taken away. Quite often they do not pay the workers their wages as promised and keep these women in virtual slavery. Every month, there are dozens who commit suicide or fall to their deaths trying to escape. These victims leave families behind in their native lands. So in the Middle East we find a society that has very little regard for the lives of Black women. So some societies do not seem to evolve in terms of their humanity. I am pretty certain that the lives of animals matter very little either.

Are our societies are evolving due to the efforts of animal activists, making the public aware of cruelty by the big companies? Today we can buy eggs that are "free range", rather than "battery" eggs.

So society has evolved from practicing slavery, discrimination and animal cruelty (in general), obviously the "more" evolved a society becomes the greater the concern for the defenseless. Certain forms of hunting have become very unpopular in society.

So I am not comfortable with killing animals yet I am comfortable with eating meat, using leather and so on. A strange contradiction, is it not? I remember driving the car with my family and a rabbit suddenly ran in front of our car. We heard the bump when the car killed it and I felt sick, the girls were all very upset. Yet none of us would think anything of having a juicy hamburger.

My boss was riding his bicycle over the past weekend and accidentally rode over a rabbit, breaking its back. He stopped and took the suffering rabbit and snapped its neck, putting the poor creature out of its misery. He gave the rabbit to some grateful farm labourers. He did not suffer any qualms about it as he is a hunter. He has shot many animals. I find that people who kill animals find it quite easy to kill more animals. It has even become pleasurable to them. I am not like that, I don't get a thrill out of seeking to kill animals. I am bothered about if the animal is raising young, I know that is why there is a hunting season, yet I still wonder. I know that hunting takes place all the time.

Some people hunt to survive, to get something for their families to live. Yet they operate as poachers, they just hack the horn of a rhino, leaving the animal to suffer and die. I have seen pictures of a dead mother rhino and its calf next to her. Yes the poacher is wrong but the wealthy man in the Far East is the real criminal. The stupid and foolish tradition to think that the powder of a rhino horn will aid the virility of an aging man! Laughable. They might as well use the filings from their own fingernails (I better be careful or they might start a new trade).

(for lust and superstition)

I am aware of the game trade industry that has developed in South Africa. How they breed buck and other animals for overseas hunters. The security of these species is ensured, but still? The impact on a human being when killing another living creature? I am fully aware of the need to manage the numbers of wild animals. Here in Southern Africa in some regions there are too many elephant, they have turned the veldt into a desert where nothing can survive, let alone the elephant itself. In Zambia in some of their rivers, there are too many hippo and nothing seems to be happening in resolving the issue. So culling must take place, even among animals that are sentient and highly intelligent. Yet there must be a respect for life but if we can't even care for each other, what chance do animals have?

The only shooting I will ever do is with my camera.

(see how the elephant was sliding into the water when I took the shot?)