On Tuesday morning, I left the house to take a jog with Gabriel. We had just started out when a fox darted in front of us, running from one neighbor's yard, across the street, and into the woods behind another neighbor's house. We were flabbergasted. A fox! An enormous, red, black-tipped tailed fox! It ran with such impressive intensity - as if it were zipping through space on an invisible track - because its torso, face and tail were almost motionless, on the same horizontal plane, while its legs moved so fast they were a blur.
The day before, Gabriel and I were at a playground, killing some time before we had to pick up Frances from school. There were some other mothers and children there (it was unseasonably warm) and Gabriel was going down the slide again and again. My post was at the top of the slide, to help him sit down. Just at the moment when every blond head was bowed over a small person, to tie a shoe or offer a snack or to chastise, a deer bounded across the grassy field separating the parking lot from the playground. It came from the direction of the busy street we were but a few yards from, and ran straight into a stand of trees and then stood there, motionless, staring at us. It is strange, given how close this large wild animal was, but we were the only ones to see it. Everyone else was distracted, and Gabriel and I happened to be standing high up at the top of the slide, just the perfect viewing spot, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and I whispered: a deer. A DEER!! shouted Gabriel. Then: GALLOP, GALLOP! (It had been running pretty fast). Then: BIG. Bi-i-i-i-g. Big Deer.
The two wild animal sitings have become linked for both of us. Sometimes, apropos of nothing, Gabriel will stop what he's doing and look at me in his unblinking serious soul window kind of way. With great intention he utters the words: a fox. Yes, Gabriel, we saw a fox. A deer! Big! Yes, we saw a deer too. A fox!!! And on and on, for a little while, we relive the events and feel little spine shivers all over again.
Even before this week, I've been thinking a lot about the intensity of feeling with which children seem to regard animals. From their earliest days we sing about farm animals, and read them books about talking animals; often first loves are dogs and cats. Perhaps we condition all this - perhaps we all have this intense feeling towards animals but it seems most manageable and appropriate in small children so we foist it onto them - but I think it is something deeper. I have this intuitive sense that children and animals are supposed to live together. Work together. What does that mean? I'm not sure. I have not, by any means, been fantasizing about getting a dog. No thank you. I have, however, been dreaming of chickens and goats in the backyard.
At the risk of getting all fuzzy and "spiritual" on you, I think small children feel a connection with animals that is fundamental and real; something for grown ups to respect and honor. And having a puppy in the house that acts like one extra kid doesn't seem to get to the nature of the thing. A goat that has a role in the family, a job to do (eat scraps, keep the grass short, whatever it is that goats do) - a kid could feel that such a goat was a partner in family life and work. A goat that lives outside, thus preserving its animal-ness. Not an animal that wears a sweater and has a flannel bed, but an animal that communicates the natural world to us, that is a bridge of sorts, that we care for and respect - this is what I'm longing for, for myself and for my kids.
Sometimes we run around the yard with leftover lengths of clothesline wrapped across the kids' chests and yell Gallop!! (hence Gabriel's response to the running deer) and Neigh!! and take turns being the horse and rider. Except after a few minutes, no one really knows who is what; we're just a wild jumble of kid and (pretend) animal, running and making noise. I love that. We're trying to touch something, something beyond the world of other people and the spaces they live in.
We've been to two zoos in the last couple of months (more than I'd been to in years). The children were fascinated. In Providence, we were able to hang out in the 'giraffe house' and watch a giraffe family munch hay but a few feet away. Just us and the giraffes (the zoo was remarkably empty that day). We were wide-eyed, awed, mesmerized - utterly caught by their gaze. In DC, Frances and Gabriel would have clung to a stone wall, staring at a gorilla mama and baby all day long, had we not eventually dislodged them. In this case, I too felt the possibility of forgetting time, watching these extraordinary human-like animals do human-like things...but I was struck violently by the suspicion that I was participating in an act of voyeurism that was completely wrong. That mama gorilla looked right into my eyes and I felt her accusing me. I am a mother too. So how could I stare like this? It seemed to me she deserved privacy and space to roam. I left conflicted about what a zoo is, and what it should be - the awe and wonder my children felt before the animals seem positive things, to be nurtured - but is encountering them in captivity the way to do it?
I've also - no surprise - been feeling drawn back towards vegetarianism. At the very least, I have resolved (again) to not participate in factory-farmed animal consumption. And I guess I feel like part of respecting the bond my children (all children?) feel with wild and domestic animals would be to keep industrial meat out of their orbits as well. They don't really eat meat anyway, but I've never suggested they shouldn't, and it has never bothered me if we're at other people's homes and meat is on offer - basically, I haven't enforced any rules. In fact, I've often thought that graciousness and flexibility with other people should trump preferences about diet. But now I'm not so sure.
All kinds of people surround their children with animals by way of pets, petting farms, zoos, animal-print clothes, animal books, music, etc. For many families, there doesn't seem to be any connection - or rather disconnection - between feeding children animals and simultaneously encouraging an intense (if arm's length) relationship with animals. But shouldn't there be? Maybe for much of our history, pre-industrial agriculture and pre-factory farming, the small scale proximity of humans and animals made for a more continuous and holistic world for children to enter in, to play and work in. I imagine that for most children growing up in Anne Arundel county 100 years ago, life presented many occasions - both mundane and spiritual - to be face to face with a horse, a deer, a fox, a rabbit. Maybe, then, eating some of those animals would not seem so very strange.
Thanks for hanging with all these disparate musings. For now, we're on the lookout for that fox.
5 comments:
I agree with the deep connection idea. Agatha has been fascinated by birds since she was a tiny infant. Now it's also cats. She's also had a couple of opportunities to be near huge taxidermied animals and she was beside herself with joy (thinking they were alive and she was that near them, I'm sure). But while I do see the connection to eating animals which were raised compassionately, I don't see the connection to vegetarianism. Henry seems quite willing to both be fascinated by animals, and to kill them and eat them. When we saw lots of deer on our vacation, I asked him, do you still want to go hunting? And he answered some equivalent of, more than ever! And he knows that the cows we see on the Millers' farm are the cows we eat. It is a complex mystery.
I feel so lucky as such a new friend to be one of the select audience of your wonderful writing! Yes keep writing for our sake please and I'm so glad that it's helping you feel more secure in your identity. Funny how being creative in mothering helps it feel energizing rather than draining. So glad to have gotten such privileged access to wonderful writing along with a wonderful new friend!
Amelia, I know what you mean - I think this is where my last thought was going, that if we led a more integrated life with the animals we would potentially be eating, there would be less of a moral problem. I don't know if there would be one at all. Maybe because being around animals reminds us that we are animals? Maybe because there is some mutuality in human relationships with domesticated animals, and eating them is part of that? I didn't know Henry was interested in hunting, but it makes sense.
Btw, where are you guys encountering huge taxidermied animals??
After I wrote this post, I read Elizabeth Kolbert's review of Jonathan Safran Foer's book 'Eating Animals' in the New Yorker. Much of it is about the strangeness of Americans' pet obsession when considered alongside factory farmed meat and our animal-eating habits. I think Elizabeth Kolbert is so smart...but unlike her (I think) at some fundamental level I'm okay with eating animals raised in a small scale, compassionate way. It is mysterious, but it seems right. But I also know it is definitely not okay to eat animals who have been raised the way most animals are for consumption - this seems a morally clear issue - and to be serious about that means not eating meat at most restaurants and most other people's homes. Which are the times I usually eat meat. So.
Of course, in golden Lancaster there is plentiful humanely-raised meat...
Yes, I know exactly what you mean-- the creepy fixation on pets as humanoids meanwhile thousands of animals are suffering so that we can have cheap hamburgers. That disconnect is horrible and perverts our fundamental human need to be with animals, as visible in our children.
Taxidermy! At someone's Adirondack cabin there were huge stuffed bears and elk and so on, and also at the North Museum, as you'll recall. I don't know where taxidermy fits in to our developing theories!
I think taxidermy might actually be kind of cool. The bear at the North Museum isn't being exploited or confined at a zoo, yet we're able to stand right next to him, in awe!
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