Call for Contributions: Mourning Animals

Call for Contributions

Edited book by Margo DeMello

Working title: Mourning Animals: Rituals and Practices Surrounding Animal Death

 

Contributions sought for an edited collection on the topic of how humans deal with animal death. While there are a great many books and articles on how people can cope on an individual level with the death of their companion animal, and there is more recent work on how animals mourn the deaths of other animals, I am interested in the cultural practices that have emerged surrounding this issue. When did they begin? Are they limited to companion animals? What scope and form do they take? What role do cultural beliefs play in shaping them?

 

The proposed book proposes to address the issue from a variety of perspectives, and will be cross-cultural in scope. My hope is that it will include chapters on:

 

• Pet cemeteries
• Pet taxidermy
• Shrines for animals
• Animal memorials
• Animal funerals
• Virtual mourning
• The extinction of species and how that is mourned
• The concept of an afterlife for animals
• How non-pet animals are mourned, and under what circumstances

 

My own chapter will focus on people’s belief in whether animals have an afterlife, the Rainbow Bridge in particular, and which animals get to go there and why. Please email me at margo@animalsandsociety.org or margo@rabbit.org  if you are interested in contributing to this book. Once I have all of the proposed chapters lined up, I will put together a more formal proposal and shop it around. I am working with a tentative September 2014 deadline for receipt of all chapters.

 

Please crosspost.

Banning Books; Banning Emotions

Marc Bekoff recently wrote on his blog that his 2000 book The Smile of a Dolphin: Remarkable Accounts of Animal Emotions is now banned in a number of schools and libraries in Texas.

Bekoff speculates on his blog that it may have been banned because it contains sex and violence (although of the animal sort), two of the issues that Texas school board officials tend to find problematic in books that their students read, although clearly, as Bekoff points out, one issue is that it gives an evolutionary argument for animal emotions. (Other issues that they don't want students reading about include religion, race, and politics, which explains why To Kill a Mockingbird is among those restricted to many Texas students.)

For me, the book is problematic in a state like Texas because of its claim-apparently still controversial to many-that animals do in fact have emotions.   Until recently (or apparently, even today), if a scientist like Bekoff attempted to describe the behavior of an animal with terms like "sadness," "jealousy," "grief" or "joy," they would quickly be accused of that most dreaded (and unscientific) of terms: anthropomorphism.

It is true that no human can ever truly get inside the mind or heart of an animal-without dissecting it-and animals have a difficult time answering our questions if we ask them how they feel, which forces us to interpret their behaviors. But the belief that animals have no emotions, or that emotions are "human" capacities that we can only inscribe to animals, has certainly-and this is no coincidence-benefited those who exploit animals. As Jeffrey Masson wrote in his 1995 book When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals, granting animals the ability to think, to reason and-perhaps most importantly of all-to feel, opens up a Pandora's box of issues regarding how we, as a society, should treat animals:

The professional and financial interests in continuing animal experimentation help to explain at least some resistance to the notion that animals have a complex emotional life and are capable of experiencing not only pain but the higher emotions such as love, compassion, altruism, disappointment and nostalgia. To acknowledge such a possibility implies certain moral obligations. If chimpanzees can experience loneliness and mental anguish, it is obviously wrong to use them for experiments in which they are isolated and anticipate daily pain. At the very least, this poises a matter for serious debate-a debate that has scarcely begun (page xx).

In Susan Davis and my 2003 book, Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature, we outlined many of the ways in which the rabbits with whom we shared (and still share) our homes expressed their emotions:

Most house rabbit people have seen their rabbits "binky" or dance as an expression of joy, as well as execute a not-very-graceful "flop," in which they fall to their sides in a gesture of deep contentment. When Margo first introduced her rabbit Helga to Chester, he would leap, hop and skip when she was first placed (angrily) into the living room every day. Never mind that she was repelled by him; he was so thrilled to have a potential new playmate that he could not contain his joy. For weeks, Chester would lie as close to Helga as he could, staring amorously at her; once she finally agreed to let him touch her, he began to spend as much time as possible scrunched up against her.

Puddles and Muddles, Margo's angora rabbits, also binky, but for a different reason. Every morning, Margo opens their gate so they can come out to exercise, but one of the first things they do is go to the living room to eat Chester's food and mess up his things. Upon catching them in the act, Margo chases them back out of the living room and watches as they race, skipping and jumping across the house, back into their room. These rabbits seem overjoyed at the fact they once again got away with something funny. Their actions, in fact, look much like a full-body laugh.

Many rabbits will lick their paws or wash their faces when they are complimented, as if they are very pleased or slightly embarrassed. House Rabbit Society founder Marinell Harriman's first rabbit, Herman, also once saved a mouse. When Herman found a cat torturing the mouse, she thumped her foot in protest. When that failed to deter the cat, she attacked her, allowing the mouse to escape (Harriman 1991). Other rabbits show an amazing amount of compassion towards members of their own species, such as the examples we have cited of healthy rabbits acting as support (both physical and emotional) for their disabled friends.

Many rabbits, demonstrate an amazing spirit when confronting adversity. We have already written about rabbits like Hopper, Pippin and Mrs. Bean-all injured by people and left without the ability to walk. Both Pippin and Mrs. Bean learned to use a custom-built cart to get around, and their personalities blossomed. Mrs. Bean savored her new freedom, using the cart to create a new, independent life for herself, while Pippin used his to get attention and to interact with people.

Even before using the cart, Pippin seemed happy to join Margo's household after what he had been through, executing a flop on his first day without the use of his rear legs. Hopper never did learn to use the cart well, but like the others, he adapted to his altered condition with grace and dignity, and charmed everyone who met him with his peaceful, gentle, and loving personality.

Some rabbits who have suffered abuse, injury or illness have responded to human kindness and care with what can only be described as gratitude. Many of our own rabbits have lost their aggressive or terrified tendencies after being nursed through serious illnesses or injuries and given kind, consistent treatment. Mr. Bop, for instance, was so ill and so depressed when Susan first brought him home that he barely hopped-he would follow her around the house by taking a few steps and then lying down and staring up at her. After about a month of good food, plenty of water, medication, and many kind words and pats, his depression lifted, only to reveal an alarmingly spastic skittishness. Bop would dive under the bed or behind a chair whenever someone walked into the room; loud noises sent him nearly to the ceiling. It was only after six months that his fearfulness-no doubt a product of his having been attacked by some kind of predator while a stray on the streets of San Francisco-eased. Today, he can pop binkys and spin wheelies with the best of them. He can doze through through the roar of a vacuum cleaner, the shriek of a smoke detector and the wails of a baby. He once even sprawled out on his belly, with his hind legs stretched out behind him, smack dab in the middle of a party of shrieking four-year-old girls dressed like princesses. That's confidence (pp. 343-346).

Why does it matter that rabbits-or any of the hundreds or thousands of other species of animals-possess, and demonstrate, such emotions? Or maybe the more important question, in light of the banning of The Smile of a Dolphin is why is it deemed so dangerous that our students find out this information?

Simple.

If we knew about their ability to feel love, joy, sorrow and pain, we could not bear to treat them the way that we do now. So it's simply better to live in ignorance, and to force our school children to do so as well.

If God Made Dogs, Why Would People Harm Them?

I’m not a religious person, but I recently discovered this video, titled “God Made a Dog,” that’s been circulating on the Internet recently.

 

It’s a heartwarming video that outlines all the ways that dogs provide comfort, love, and companionship to people, without asking anything in return.  Whether or not you believe that God, or any other spiritual being “made” dogs, or that dogs evolved via natural selection (with or without some divine intervention), clearly dogs’ presence in our lives is an unbelievable gift.  I know I am grateful every day for the five dogs who share my home.

But is everyone who lives with a dog grateful? Obviously they aren’t.

 

If you read the recent Animals & Society Institute newsletter, or the Harvest Home Facebook page , you read about Handsome Pete, the Chihuahua I brought home from California last week who was found on the side of a rural road by a volunteer with Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary. His face had been smashed in, on at least two occasions, leaving him with a jaw disconnected from the rest of his face, a snout without any bones left in it, and a ruptured eye. The veterinarian who saw him recommended euthanasia because his injuries were so severe. But the volunteers at Harvest Home, after talking to my husband and me, decided to give him a chance at life, and we agreed to give the little guy a home if he survived. A month later, after what the veterinarian herself called a “miraculous” recovery, the dog who we are now calling Handsome Pete is now at his new home in New Mexico, living with his four new Chihuahua companions, and a house full of rabbits, three cats, and a bird who screams at him when he walks by.

How did Pete get to the place in rural Stockton where he was found? Did he get out of his house and hit by a car, and then wander the levee roads for a week or two, injured and in pain, with no one looking for him? Or even worse, did he get beaten, once or maybe twice, and then get abandoned? Or did he get thrown out of a car?

In either of these cases, he appears to be just one of millions of dogs in this country who was unlucky enough to not be appreciated. Maybe he peed on something, or barked at something, or chewed on something, or just didn’t do something right. At my house, he has peed on a couple of things, but he’s quickly learning where to pee and poop, even though he obviously doesn’t like to use the dog door, because his nose is still sensitive. I don’t know if he ever chewed something he wasn’t supposed to, but he will never do that again, because he can’t ever bite down on anything again, since his jaw will never work again. He also hasn’t barked since he’s gotten here.

But I do know that in watching the “God Made a Dog” video, Petey meets virtually every criteria that the video maker outlines—he comforts me when I’m sad, he stays up all night to watch TV with me, cuddles with me, and does everything that he possibly can (except maybe sniff out bombs and lead the blind). So why would someone possibly hurt him? And why would people—millions of people every single year, God loving and God fearing people, people who most likely DO believe that God made dogs—hurt and abandon millions of dogs?

It just doesn’t make sense.

 

Animals, Art and Death

I recently got back from the three-day Living with Animals Conference at Eastern Kentucky University, co-hosted by Bob Mitchell and Julia Schlosser. It was a fabulous conference, featuring a variety of talks covering all facets of the human-horse relationship (Kentucky is, after all, the horse capital of the United States), teaching human-animal studies, and a variety of other topics of interested to a human-animal studies scholar such as myself.

There were a number of talks I was especially taken by. Besides horses, art was heavily featured at the conference, perhaps because Julia Schlosser is an artist and art historian. She gave her talk, for example, on the use of roadkill in the work of artists Steve Baker and Craig Stecyk. Dead animals showed up in another artist’s presentation, that of Mary Shannon Johnstone, a North Carolina photographer who photographs shelter animals. One of her projects, called Discarded Property,  photographs companion animals before, during, and after their euthanasia, and her current project, Landfill Dogs, involves taking dogs who have been at her local shelter for more than two weeks, and who will soon face euthanasia, to the landfill where their bodies will be buried, and photographing them where they play joyfully on what may be their last excursion outside in their lives. The great news is that thanks to her talent and courage, most of the dogs Johnstone has photographed have since found homes, and have not ended up back at the landfill.  Another artist, Keri Cronin, spoke about the course she created in the Visual Arts Department at Brock University which combines animal studies and art in an interesting way.

While some of the artists showed dead or dying animals in their work, other scholars also talked about or showed dead animals as well. Emory University graduate student Christina Colvin, for example, presented a paper on taxidermied pets and the pet preservation industry. While most of us would never consider freeze-drying our dead companion animals so that they will remain with us forever, for some people, this act apparently brings them some sense of satisfaction. University of Mississippi English professor Karen Raber, on the other hand, showed delicately rendered drawings of dissected horses from the Renaissance, while American Studies historian Brett Mizelle discussed the ways in which butchers and slaughterhouse owners used images and text to elevate their professions at the turn of the century. And Monica Mattfeld, from the English Department at the University of Kent, discussed the memorialization of a dead performing circus horse whereby his hide was turned into a thunder drum.

While the conference certainly had plenty of wonderful talks that didn’t have to do with animal death, it was this topic that affected me the most, and I’m now ruminating on my next book project. If you love animals, and live with animals, animal death is a topic from which you will never be able to escape. And more broadly speaking, if you advocate for animals in any way, death is ever present, perhaps not in your own household or life, but for billions of animals every year. It’s what drives many animal advocates to do what they do, after all. For example, anthropologist Tamar Victoria Scoggin-McKee spoke movingly about her documentation of the people who work to save ex-racing horses from slaughter, and how the threat of death shapes the human-horse relationship.

As a rabbit rescuer, I think about death often—both the death of my own rabbits, since their lives are inevitably, and unfairly, so short. But I, and my fellow rescuers, also think about death, because we often feel as if we are the only ones who stand between rabbits, both in our own communities and even more broadly speaking, around the world, and death. It’s a difficult—and unrealistic—burden to take on, and it’s no doubt one of the reasons so many of us suffer from compassion fatigue, and use food, alcohol and other substances to cope with our messy emotions.

Living with Animals was a fantastic opportunity to hear interesting talks, to network with people doing great work, and for me personally, a good way to put some of my own thoughts and emotions about living with animals into a wider context.

Adams State College

Tonight I got to give two talks at Adams State College, one on body modification and women and one on animal bodies. Someone who attended shared with me a picture his student drew to promote my talk. Here it is--super cool!

Anmal-Centered Vacationing

I just got back from a two-week vacation. My husband, our four dogs, our parrot, and three of our rabbits packed up our little trailer and took off to visit state and national parks in Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. We visited Rocky Mountain National Park, Cheyenne Mountain State Park, Garden of the Gods, Great Sand Dunes National Park, and Arches National Park, but our favorite spots were those areas where we saw wildlife: Yellowstone National Park and Antelope Island State Park.

 

 At Yellowstone, we saw—and photographed—coyotes, marmots, a long-tailed weasel, countless bison, eagles, and elk, and at Antelope Island we saw antelope, jack rabbits, and had bison walk right by our campsite. It was heaven for animal lovers like Tom and I, and the dogs were thrilled with seeing and smelling so many animals.

 

After I got home, and went through all of my photographs, and those taken by Tom, I noticed that we hardly had any of each other. We had lots of beautiful scenery shots, and a lot of pictures of the animals enjoying their vacation, but we took a huge number of photos of the wild animals that we saw. I had to ask myself, why?

 

I know I’m not unusual. People love watching animals. At Yellowstone, there were a number of times when a half a dozen cars would be pulled off to the side of the road, as other tourists just like us were pausing to watch, and photograph, the animals grazing alongside the road.  There is something thrilling about seeing wild animals up close, engaged in their normal behaviors, but letting us see them as well.

 

But it goes beyond just watching them. I know I’m not the only person who was trying to figure out how I could possibly steal a baby bison and bring him home to raise in my house. While of course I would never do such a thing, I won’t lie: I thought a lot about how my new companion would littertrain himself (of course I would have to get him a very big box), and would watch TV with us at night.

 

Clearly, one reason Americans are so captivated by animals today is the disappearance of animals from our lives. In our post-industrial world, companion animals remain the only form of physical connection that Americans have with animals. But apparently, the dogs, cats and rabbits we share our homes with are just not interesting enough for many of us.

 

One problem with this intense need to get close to wild animals is that most of us can’t regularly go to Yellowstone to watch bison in their natural habitat. The result is that for most people who want to get close to wild animals, they will instead visit zoos, marine mammal parks, and circuses, which keep animals confined in small spaces and in unnatural conditions, so that the public can more easily see them. Visitors also like to see animals move. They become bored when animals are sleeping, even when they are nocturnal and should not be awake in the daytime. This leads to zoo patrons yelling at animals or pounding or tapping on enclosure windows.  Because just watching animals is often not enough, many zoos and marine mammal parks also provide exhibits and events that allow the public to ride, touch, feed, or get very close to animals. And of course for many people, the fantasy to own a wild animal is not just a fantasy. It is legal in most states to own wild animals, even when the conditions in which these animals live are entirely unsatisfactory, and may even pose dangers to animal and human alike.

 

Even the kind of vacation that I took is not necessarily benign for the animals. In Yellowstone, we were told that countless animals die every year when they are hit by tourists’ cars in the park. Bears who are attracted to human food and garbage are often killed when they get too close to humans. And the same bison that are protected and venerated within the park boundaries are then subject to being killed by hunters when they wander outside of the park into Montana or Wyoming. In addition, some preliminary research is beginning to emerge on whether or not animals can be harmed by ecotourism itself; one recent study, for example, found increased levels of aggression in Tibetan macaques who interact frequently with tourists; scholars think that the feeding of the animals may be the cause of the aggression.

 

Women’s studies scholar Chilla Bulbeck has studied ecotourism sites, and has interviewed attendees, and has found that many visitors experience some guilt about visiting these sites, knowing that the presence of humans is not good for the animals. Ultimately, though, self-interest (the desire to see or touch the animals) wins out, even for the more conservation-minded of the tourists—like myself. The irony is that the more wild the site, the less the animals’ movements and behaviors are controlled but the more that the visitors’ activities are constrained, increasing the animals’ freedom (including their freedom to not be present) but for many, decreasing the visitors’ pleasure.  While I was thrilled to see a herd of wild antelope on Antelope Island, I have to admit that I was frustrated that they were so far away that I could not see their faces. Obviously, they did not want me to see their faces, but I was frustrated nevertheless. But the animals grazing right alongside of the road, the ones that we got such great photos of, were those that were in the greatest risk of being hit by cars. 
 

 

I still wonder about the coyote that we saw wondering down the road one day in Yellowstone, weaving in and out of traffic as we all furiously snapped pictures of him. Is he okay? Did he make it where he was going? And did our presence in the park that day put his life in danger?

 

I truly hope not.   But maybe the more important question would be: would my behavior have changed if it did?

 All photos by Thomas Young.

 

Chick-Fil-A: Bad on Every Front

Chick-Fil-A has been in the news lately after the company’s president, Dan Cathy, gave his and his company’s views on gay people’s right to marry. He said, “I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, 'We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.'"

People who believe that gays have, just as straight people do, the right to marry were outraged that Cathy could publically support bigotry and homophobia. (Followers of this issue already knew of Cathy’s stance, as the company had donated millions of dollars to anti-gay groups previously.) Marriage, as many religious conservatives don’t realize, is much more than a religious practice. In the United States, it’s a civil practice, and it comes with thousands of federal rights which are denied to gays. Conservative figures like Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Billy Graham, and Sarah Palin have weighed in on the debate, publically supporting Cathy’s views, and asking their supporters to eat at Chick-Fil-A. On the other end of the political spectrum, politicians like Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, have told the company that it is unwelcome in their cities, and gay rights activists have called for a boycott of Chick-Fil-A.

For animal activists, there is much more to dislike about Chick-Fil-A than their position on gay marriage. It has gone unmentioned in the current debate, but Chick-Fil-A makes its profits—Chick-Fil-A is valued at $4.5 billion—off of the sale of slaughtered chickens. In 2010, the company sold over 282 million chicken sandwiches, which equals to 537 sandwiches a minute or 9 per second. Because each sandwich contains one full breast, and a chicken has two breasts, that means that 141 million chickens were killed in 2010 for Chick-Fil-A sandwiches. In other words, 268 chickens per minute or 4.5 chickens per second lost their lives to meet the demands of Chick-Fil-A’s hungry customers and to increase the profits for the Cathy family.

Obviously, Chick-Fil-A is just one of countless fast-food and regular restaurant chains to sell chicken. Americans eat 7 billion chickens per year, and as most educated consumers know, these animals spend the majority of their lives in confinement, never experiencing fresh air, green grass, or an afternoon kicking up their feet in the sun. Instead, they live and die in misery, and are not even protected by a single federal law; they are excluded from all federal animal protection laws. If you’ve ever spent time with a chicken, you probably know that they are smart, inquisitive and funny animals, who enjoy the most simple pleasures—pleasures which are denied to billions of these animals per year.

Boycotting Chick-Fil-A probably won’t do much to further the cause of marriage equality for all in this country. Chick-Fil-A has enough socially conservative customers, especially in the southern states, to make up for those who no longer give the company their business. But no longer eating chicken sandwiches at Chick-Fil-A, or at McDonald’s, KFC, or any of the countless other restaurants and establishments that serve chicken, could make a serious dent in the number of chickens who die each year.

How Much is One Life Worth?

One of the differences between animal rights and animal rescue is that animal rights philosophy and activities tend to focus on large numbers of animals, while animal rescue focuses on individual animals. Obviously, for those who care about animal welfare, both focuses are important.

Just focusing on individual rescues does nothing to change the public’s perception about animals or any of the countless ways that humans exploit animals. For long-term change, we must rely on those who work to change the structural conditions that allow for and enable animal exploitation.

At the same time, most people who promote animal welfare or animal rights cannot stand by while individual animals suffer, and many go out of their way to help some of those individuals. The story of animals who have suffered greatly under human control or lack of care often serves to motivate other people to see animals differently, and all of us love stories of animals who survived hardship, and then learned to thrive in a new environment filled with love and care.

But how much time, money, or effort should we spend on individual animals?

I ask this question because I recently played a role in rescuing a small rabbit named Peanut from California. Peanut, a dwarf white rabbit with striking blue eyes and deformed legs, was seen being thrown out of a window near the San Francisco Airport. The person who witnessed this horrific act got out of their car and picked up the bunny, bringing him to Peninsula Humane Society in San Mateo. There, a kind volunteer named Aida, knowing that Peanut would soon be euthanized thanks to the condition of his legs, brought him out of his cage to let him play once in the grass on the shelter grounds. Peanut was slated to be euthanized before his stray period was up.

Aida posted Peanut’s picture on her Facebook page, where it caught the attention of Donna, a long-time fosterer for House Rabbit Society, and a friend of mine. Donna knew that I was looking for a disabled rabbit to be a companion to Junior, a rabbit with a severe neurological condition that makes him fall over. Donna emailed me about Peanut, and I told her if she could get him out before he was euthanized, I would take him.

Once Aida pulled Peanut and transferred him to Donna’s care, we needed to find a way to get Peanut from California to New Mexico where I live. Once again, Facebook played a major role. I posted the story of Peanut on the House Rabbit Society and Harvest Home Animal Facebook pages, and thanks to that coverage, dozens of people volunteered to help get Peanut to me. Ultimately, it only took two very generous souls: Kim, who picked Peanut up from Donna’s in South San Francisco and drove him to Santa Barbara where Diane, who was flying to Santa Fe for a conference, would bring him on the plane with her.

Peanut is now safely living with me, and bonded with Junior even before he was neutered. He’s now been neutered and been given a clean bill of health by my veterinarian, Dr. Levenson, who donated the x-rays of Peanut’s legs and spine.   When he’s not snuggling with Junior, Peanut scoots around my floor in a diaper, which keeps his private parts safe, and interacts with the dogs, the cats, the birds, and the other rabbits in the house. He follows my husband and I around, and spends a lot of time in the kitchen where he quickly learned all snacks come from.

It took a metaphorical village to save Peanut’s life. From the woman who saw him thrown out of the car, to Aida to Donna to Kim to Diane to Dr. Levenson, and to all the people who sent Peanut good wishes and who volunteered to help, his salvation was only thanks to the money, time, and energy of lots of people.

Was it worth it?

Well, clearly, for Peanut it was. He lives a happy life with companionship, good food, freedom to play, and explore, lots of adventures—he took his first camping trip with us last weekend, visiting Bluewater Lake in western New Mexico—and all the love and care that he could ever desire.

It was also worth it for Junior, who had been left alone back in April when his previous companion, Audrey, died suddenly. Junior can rarely stand up, so his life experiences are very narrow. Having a companion who he can lick, snuggle with, and even lean on, has improved his life dramatically.

It’s also been worth it for me. Even though I live with dozens of animals, having someone who is “special needs” is immensely satisfying for me. Caring for someone who needs me brings me a lot of joy. So having Peanut here has made me very happy.

Ultimately, I feel that every life saved is a life worth saving. While every animal rescuer knows that we cannot “save them all,” there’s just no question that saving even a single life is worth it.

Audrey the Star

This morning I said goodbye to Audrey. She didn’t say goodbye to me, though, because she was already dead.

Today, and for a very long time to come, I will mourn her death. People who know me know that I have a house full of animals. At this count, 4 dogs, 2 cats, 1 bird, and 34 rabbits. That means that death strikes this house much more often than I would like. On the other hand, and I am not ashamed to admit this, some animals are a much more important part of my life than others, and yes, some animals I love more than I do others. That means that I grieve some more than others. Audrey was one of those animals.

Audrey was a small white rabbit with pink eyes who came to me a little less than a year ago. She was dropped off at an animal shelter with a broken back, and was rescued by a rescue group called Zooh Corner Rabbit Rescue. Zooh arranged for one of their volunteers to drive Audrey to my home in New Mexico.

Since arriving here last year, tiny Audrey has played a huge role in the life of this house. She was a brave, big-hearted, and fierce girl. Afraid of nothing, she explored the house with her custom-made cart, and, when the cart was unusable because she chewed through its harness, she simply crawled everywhere in her little athletic sock which protected her trailing feet and back end.
She loved to tease Igor, one of the living room rabbits, because she knew that he had a crush on her and that it pissed his girlfriend Charlotte off when he spent time with her. She also teased the guest room bunnies, Max and Maggie, because Maggie used to go wild with anger whenever Audrey slipped into her room in her cart. She also loved to go out into the courtyard, where the big group of rabbits plays, and watch them from her side of the rabbit gate.

But what she really loved was to go camping. I’ve written here in the past about bringing Audrey with us on camping trips, where, thanks to the protection of her sock (and a 70 square foot play area created by a set of collapsible ex-pens that we bring) she gets to explore each new campsite. In the past year, Audrey’s been to the desert, the snow, the beach, and even the Rocky Mountains, and relishes each new set of smells, sights, and experiences. Her joy on these trips adds immeasurably to my and my husband’s joy, as we watch her sniffing, eating, meditating, and even binkying in each new place.

I still can’t believe she’s gone. As a writer, my first impulse when someone close to me dies is to write about it. I don’t know how healthy it is, or whether I do so to stave off the intense pain of the grief which I know is coming, but I feel like I need to immediately put into words some of the life of the one who just left. I want everyone to know that she was here, and that her life mattered.

In the case of Audrey, she was so full of life that it seemed at times like that 2 and a half pound body just could not hold it all in. Rabbits don’t normally vocalize, but Audrey did, all the time. She wanted us to know who she was, how she was feeling, and what she wanted.
But now she’s quiet.

I have always told people that Audrey was a star. She had loads of friends on Bunspace, the social networking site for rabbits, and recently we had just signed with a new literary agency; my new agent is pitching a book about Audrey to publishers. I pictured us traveling to the Today Show and having Audrey grunt at Al Roker.

Audrey really was a star, though, even though she’ll never get to be on tv now. She was a shooting star—bright, full of light, and now gone.

47,000 Dead: Does Anyone Care?

Just this week, 47,000 creatures lost their lives and almost no one noticed.

A&L Poultry, the owner of an egg farm in Turlock, California, decided to close down its egg operations and simply left to starve all of the chickens at their plant. 47,000 of the chickens, left with no food and no water for over 2 weeks, died of starvation and dehydration. This kind of a death is slow and agonizing; according to doctors who have witnessed starvation and dehydration among children in Africa, it results in dizziness, weakness, cramping, nausea, and dry heaves. It is a horrible way to die.

And yet 47,000 chickens died this way this week. A&L Poultry said: “An attempt to arrange for delivery of the chickens to a third party in order to avoid the usual business practice of euthanizing the chickens resulted in an unacceptable situation A&L Poultry did not intend, and profoundly regrets.”

The “usual business practice,” then, when an egg-laying farm is to shut down, is to kill all of the birds. In this case, the unacceptable situation was that the birds starved slowly to death, while not a single employee of A&L Poultry noticed, or cared. A video taken inside the abandoned facility showed tens of thousands of dead and dying birds; because egg-laying chickens are stuffed tightly into cages with other hens, the survivors were sharing quarters with their dead sisters. Watching this silent, eerie video is enough to make a grown man—or woman—weep. I know I did.

This horrifying story, which has received just the tiniest bit of press, has a happy ending for some of the birds, however. Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary and Animal Place, animal sanctuaries in Stockton and Vacaville, stepped in, negotiated with the owners (who initially told the rescuers to leave the property) and rescued about 4,600 of the survivors. Farm Sanctuary will be taking some of the birds as well.

Many of these survivors are unbelievably weak; some can barely stand, but all are getting stronger and healthier thanks to the love and care of the volunteers at Harvest Home and at Animal Place. The sickest of the birds, now at Harvest Home, were left to suffocate under the manure pits at A&L. These birds will get to live the rest of their lives walking around on the grass, pecking for grubs and roots, and enjoying the California sunshine.

Is that too much to ask for the rest of this country’s chickens? If eggs are going to be enjoyed by millions of Americans, is it too much to ask that the chickens who provide them get to live a life of contentment, of peace, and of happiness? Or are we so greedy and selfish that even animals who provide so much to so many should get denied even the simplest pleasures, and must live short hellish lives of misery? And then die in agony?

Rescued deer given a new chance at life

This week I read a story about four Sitka deer who ended up in the frigid waters of Stephens Passage in Alaska last October. They were swimming through the waters, trying to find land, and were quickly becoming incapacitated by the cold and the effort of swimming against the waves.

They approached a charter fishing boat captained by Tom Satre, and began circling the boat, obviously looking for help. Satre and his family helped pull each of the deer onto the boat, where they collapsed, shivering, in exhaustion. Satre piloted the boat towards the peer, and once docked, the first deer jumped out of the boat and ran into the forest. Two more came next, but the fourth was so weak he could not walk, so Satre began to haul him a wheelbarrow, but it had a flat and would not go very far. Satre and his family then waited for the deer to regain his energy, helping him to stand up until he could move on his own, and then he too walked into the forest.

The story is both heartbreaking and inspiring--without this human family, and their efforts, the deer family would not have survived. One of his family said that the rescue was "one of those "defining moments in life," and Satre said that "it made an emotional mark on each of us."

I read through the story to find out more, and was surprised to read that Satre went further and said, "I'm a hunter and have taken a lot of flack, but (taking them) just didn't seem very sportsman like."

After reading that line, I was taken aback. The story took, in my mind, a quick turn from heartwarming to horrifying, as I began to imagine a hunter taking the opportunity to shoot to death four struggling deer begging for human help. Unsportsmanlike would be, in my mind, an understatement. True, he not only did not take the opportunity to kill them, and in fact, spent the afternoon bringing them to safety. But the fact that other hunters gave him "flack" for not killing the deer ruined my otherwise good mood.

Now I wonder, a year later, how Satre has been effected by this life-changing (and life-giving) moment. I wonder, mostly, whether he still hunts, but a search online has not answered my question. My hope is that this experience has nudged him into leaving hunting behind; it's difficult to imagine that one can go from spending hours with wild animals who put their trust into a human, only to begin killing them again.

Humanizing Sex Workers

From my guest blog at Sociological Images:

Katrin B. sent in a link to a series of ads created by an organization called Stepping Stone Nova Scotia. Their mission is to advocate on behalf of, and offer resources and services to, prostitutes in the Maritime Provinces of Canada.

The ads depict quotes by friends or family members of prostitutes (“I’m proud of my tramp, raising two kids on her own”) which are intended to humanize sex workers; the bottom of each ad reads “Sex workers are brothers/daughters/mothers too.” They’re also intended to shock the reader into really thinking about prostitutes. The juxtaposition of words like “tramp” and “hooker” with the white middle-class faces of the speakers makes the viewer question our culture’s ease with using those terms, and forces us to see the person behind the prostitute.

Stepping Stone’s executive director, Rene Ross, points out that every time a prostitute is killed—sex workers have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the Canadian national average—media accounts emphasize that the victim was a prostitute, but not that she (or he) was also a mother, daughter, friend or, for example, animal lover. By thinking of sex workers only in terms of their stigmatized occupation, we don’t have to care about them as people.

In New Mexico, where I live, the remains of eleven women (and the unborn fetus of one) were found buried on a mesa outside of Albuquerque in 2009. The women had disappeared between 2003 and 2005, and most, according to police, were involved with drugs and/or prostitution. Why did it take the police so long to find the bodies of these women, and why do their murders still remain unsolved? Some observers have suggested that because the women were—or were alleged to be—prostitutes, there was less pressure to find them after they went missing, or to solve their murders once their bodies were found. As long as the victims were sex workers, then the non-sex worker public can feel safe in the knowledge that they are not at risk. We know that prostitution is dangerous, so it’s expected that some of them will die grisly deaths, and be buried like trash on a mesa outside of town.

I love the motivation behind the ads, and they do make me smile. I hope they have the effect that Stepping Stone intends—making people think of prostitutes as people, not trash. But they’re also funny, and I wonder if they won’t also have an unintended effect, of making prostitutes seem like a joke.

This week I watched the Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen. During the roast, most of the jokes dealt with his well-known history with drug use and prostitution, and “prostitute,” “hooker” and “whore” were used as punch lines in the majority of the jokes, and each “whore” reference incited additional laughter. Sure, many of the women that Sheen paid to have sex were doubtless “high class” call girls, paid well, and not living on the street. But we also know that at least some of these women, as well as the non-prostitute females in his life, were subject to violence and threats of violence. He is alleged to have beaten, shot, shoved, and thrown to the floor a number of women over the years, but because many of these women were prostitutes (or porn stars, which is the next best thing), the women were “asking for it.”

Let’s hope that Stepping Stone’s campaign does some good, making us think about sex workers as people, rather than punch lines and faceless victims.

Violence or Art

Today, the Huffington Post reports on a controversy brewing at Paris Fashion Week, where two dresses made out of over three thousand cow and yak nipples are going to be shown by British fashion designer Rachel Freire. Animal rights activists are outraged that Freire is using body parts from slaughtered animals as art. Freire defends her use of the nipples by saying that they are “from European cows slaughtered for meat in veterinarian-approved and checked slaughter houses.” She also says that she would “happily donate my own body to be used as art by a responsible individual,” to which a commenter on Huffpo wrote, “So can I take you up on your offer then? Would you prefer to be killed with a captive bolt pistol or slaughtered kosher or halal style?"

Using the dead body parts of slaughtered animals for art is nothing new. British artist Damien Hirst’s first major piece was called A Thousand Years (1990) and consisted of a cow’s head rotting inside of a glass case, complete with flies and maggots. Other artists have used, and sometimes killed, animals in order to provoke reactions from the public. In 2003, Chilean artist Marco Evarisitti created a piece, for example, that involved live goldfish swimming in blenders full of water. Patrons were given the opportunity to press the buttons on any of the blenders, killing the goldfish within, which the artist said was an invitation for the public to “do battle with their conscience.” More controversial was Swedish photographer Nathalia Edenmont, whose work involved actually killing rabbits, mice, chickens and cats, and then photographing their chopped up bodies alongside flowers, fruit and other objects. Like Evarisitti, Edenmont has said that her work was intended to challenge the public, and claimed that those who opposed it were hypocrites for not opposing the killing of animals for makeup or for food.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the San Francisco Arts Commission gave New York City artist Tom Otterness a $750,000 grant to create public art for San Francisco’s subway system. After the city put out a press release about the grant, local animal activists recognized the artist’s name; in 1977, Otterness adopted a dog from a humane society, shot him, and filmed his death for a film he called “Shot Dog Film.” Activists led by In Defense of Animals were outraged; IDA employee Anita Carswell said “You do not let an animal shooter put up 59 sculptures in your subway system. It’s going to be offensive to everybody that rides the subway, a reminder: ‘People who shoot dogs for stupid reasons get rewarded.’”

He may not get his reward after all. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has asked that the project be put on hold; as of this writing, it is unclear whether the project will be completed, or whether Otterness will be the artist to complete it. At least in San Francisco, the city of St. Francis, most people do not see such cruelty as art.

Redemption?

You may have heard by now that Michael Vick, the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, just won a one hundred million dollar, six year contract, just two years after being released from the Leavenworth penitentiary after being caught running a dog fighting business.

Sports analysts are already saying that Vick's deal is not really for a hundred million dollars; he's only truly guaranteed $35 million over the next three years, and can lose all the rest depending on his performance, lack of injury, and the like. Still. $35 million is an awful lot of money for a convicted dog killer.

For many in the sports world, Vick's story is a storyof redemption. Not only did Vick lose his football career, his lucrative product endorsements, and his freedom, but in 2008 he filed for bankruptcy, thanks to the loss of his income and poor financial management of his assets while he was free. Yet less than two years later, Vick not only got a chance to play professional football again, being named Comeback Player of the Year in 2010, but he is now the third highest paid player in the NFL, and the first to ever sign two one hundred million dollar deals in his career. He's also gotten back his endorsements; even Nike, notoriously shy of signing controversial athletes, has given Vick a new contract.

At a press conference announcing his new contract, Vick appeared humble, and talked about the "sacrifices" he had to make to reach this point in his life, and all that he gave up--he does still owe millions to his creditors as part of his bankruptcy settlement. Sports commentators seem united in their sense that Vick is now a changed man, and that he has moved forward from his "mistakes." That may well be, and in the press conference, he seemed sincere.

But I'm still not convinced. Running a dog fighting ring that involved multiple states, gambling and racketeering, lying to police and prosecutors, and hundreds of dogs being trained, fought, and, in many cases, brutally killed (some by Vick himself) is not a "mistake." It's a sign of extreme cruelty and, some would say, pathology.

America is the land of second chances. We famously forgive our fallen celebrities for their financial, sexual, and even criminal transgressions. And if we won't allow for those who have sinned to redeem themselves, what does it say about us?

But for me, I am going to wait and see. I suspect that Vick won't--or at least won't soon, because right now he can't afford it--restart his extravagent lifestyle, and will try to keep a clean image. I certainly doubt that he will ever engage in dog fighting again. He would be insane to do so. But I wonder how a person who once tortured animals for pleasure and profit can ever truly change, especially if he continues to refer to that behavior as "mistakes."

Disability, Animals and Camping

I’ve been thinking a bit about disability lately. I have a student in my class who’s in a wheelchair, and we’ve talked in class about issues surrounding disability, including how definitions of “normality” are often socially constructed. But what of disability in non-human animals? How do other animals see or understand disability, normality, or bodily integrity?

I currently live with three disabled animals. Molly came to me three years ago with one leg missing—from what, I don’t know. She’s never been very mobile, but as she’s gotten older, she’s gone completely immobile. She just lays down wherever I put her, and scoots a little bit towards the food, but that’s it. Then there’s Audrey, who arrived here in the Spring from California with a broken back. She was surrendered to an animal shelter as a baby; I am guessing that someone in her human family dropped her, severing her fragile spine. Luckily she was rescued by the volunteers at Zooh Corner Rabbit Rescue and lovingly cared for by a veterinarian there before she was transported to New Mexico to my house. And just this last week, one of my youngest rabbits, Junior, began experiencing a lack of muscle coordination. It has now gotten so bad that he can only stand for brief amounts of time before he falls over, like a fainting goat.

When other people see that I, or friends of mine, care for disabled animals, they often feel sorry for them. Oh what a sad bunny! But what they don’t see is, at least in rabbits like Audrey, is a fierce determination and a desire to do all the same things that she sees everyone around her doing. She has a cart that she rides around the house in, although she has now chewed through her harness twice. I have to find her a new one that she can’t destroy, and in the meantime, she scoots around whenever she can on the floor.

This weekend we took out our little trailer and went for an overnight camping trip. As usual, we took our four Chihuahuas and our parrot, who began joining us last year when she got sick, and we realized at that time how much she loved traveling; now we bring her with us whenever we go. This time we also brought Audrey, Molly and Junior. While both Molly and Junior were sort of confused by the whole experience, they were good sports, and ate and drank in their new environment like always. Audrey, on the other hand, loved the trip. She spent the first couple of hours in the extra large litterbox/bed which we brought for the three bunnies, but once she realized she could climb out of it (those front legs of hers are strong!), she spent the rest of the trip on the floor of the trailer, exploring.

Another camper came by and saw Audrey through the door to the trailer, and couldn’t believe we’d brought a rabbit camping with us. She didn’t realize that she was disabled, which is good, because it saved me from having to tell the whole story about her and from having to reassure this stranger that she was okay. But on the other hand, maybe having more people see “differently abled” bunnies like Audrey out camping with the family, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air, would help to dispel the idea that disabled animals don’t enjoy life, or worse, don’t even deserve to live.