Numbed Out

Wes ðu hāl!

There’s a water feature at Splash Planet in Hastings, Hawke’s Bay. It’s been a while since I have seen it and my memory shows me some sort of composite of poles, rooftops and pipes, but its main feature was a kind of giant pirate’s-head bucket that slowly filled with water and, when it reached a tipping point, collapsed forward, dumping its contents, before swinging back upright to begin the action again.

I guess that’s as good a description as any, of my emotional process.

I was driving to town a few weeks back and saw a possum carcass near the centre line of the road attended by a large, hungry, brown hawk. He did not budge from his meal as I passed him and I (absurdly) warned him in the silence of my car, to be careful. It was a winding part of the road and, although there was time for another oncoming car to dodge him, they don’t always try.

I was late and couldn’t (or so I thought at that point) stop further along where there’d be space for my car to park, and walk back to move the carcass. I didn’t have time.

On the return trip I saw the hawk’s body lying about twenty feet away from the possum carcass. This time I stopped. He was still alive, but shattered. I picked him up, held him gently as I turned the car around to take him to a vet in town. But he arched his neck in one last silent cry, closed his eyes and died in my arm.

I pulled off the road and lost myself for a while.

Sometimes the pointless death of something beautiful just does you in. Especially after spending time trying to bring awareness about the pointless death of so many beautiful things. Take your pick- Rooks, Possums, Hares, Hedgehogs, Rabbits, Deer, Goats, Mice, Rats, Magpies…the list of the damned, the hated, the rubbished, the worthless. Only in New Zealand. The only place in the world where so many are disposed of like cigarette butts.

And here this precious animal lay at my side, still warm, no longer fierce. Because someone was going too fast to dodge him, or simply didn’t care.

Perhaps I dealt with a backlog that day.

I no longer bury birds. They’re far too light to be placed inside the earth. I took him to the top of a hill and placed him under a tree. I covered him with grass and said Yah’s prayer over him.

I’ve just learned of a school in the South Island that organised a day of children hunting to “improve the natural landscape” yesterday. There were prizes for the biggest this and the ugliest that, and the event seems to have been a jolly old community day of slaughter, brought about to “provide young people with a positive learning experience in the outdoors”.1

Not a word about using the animals for food or fur; making needles, beads and stock from the bones, teaching how to cure skins, leathercraft, filling family freezers and teaching woodland herbs that best go with stews. Not a word about man’s relationship with the earth and all the other creatures with whom we share this place. Not a word about taking only what was needed and that as quickly and skillfully as possible. Just a declaration of war on nature, for the sake of nature, and the positive experience of a bloodbath in the outdoors: for children.

That’s ok because someone branded them as ‘pests’.

But they still feel fear and pain…

…no matter what epithet bestowed by the lucrative pesticide industry, middle profiters, and nose-touching legislative enablers.

And there are way too many snouts feeding at that trough for the kind of recategorisation required to get ‘kiwis’ to stop behaving like demons.

“Animals play an important role in many New Zealanders’ lives – they offer food and fibre, income and companionship, education, research and entertainment. Animals work alongside us, entertain us, compete with us, and are even managed as pests. These relationships are accepted, as long as they are humane.”2 From MPI’s animal welfare review.

“Managed” is a funny word isn’t it? “Humane” though is apt. If ‘humane’ means poisoning, shooting, trapping, a life form for no reason other than someone stuck a word to its chest. And making a fun day of it. Very human indeed.

There are no pests in nature and there is no rubbish in nature. We bring that charming lens to the picture. Not the animals.

On that sad and angry note dear reader I will leave you to consider your own emotional process. The bucket needs emptying when it gets too full.

Farað nu gesunde and gesælige becumað.

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