A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen Read Free Book Online Page A

impossible situation.

     
     
     
    Taking a Life
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    "Today we took a little snake. I had to apologize to her for cutting her life off so suddenly and so definitely. I did what I did knowing that my own little life will also be cut off someday in very much the same fashion, suddenly and definitely.” Jack Forbes
     

    BY NOW YOU’VE PROBABLY spotted a contradiction in my story. I suppose there's a chance you can accept the possibility of deals made with coyotes and dogs, and maybe you can even allow that stars helped me out when I was a child. But what about the chickens and ducks whose lives were bartered away in my bargain with the coyotes? Carried away by coyotes, or carried by me to a chopping block, how would that make a difference to them? They seem to be getting shafted either way.
    I do not know how they felt about dying. But I know what I have experienced. I know that there have been times when killing a bird has been traumatic and messy—much more so for him or her than for me. Some birds have fought me, and to this day I am haunted by the screams of one rooster who had been silent until the moment I placed his head on the chopping block.
    But there have been times the death—the killing—has not seemed so awful. I have had brief glimpses of death, and killing, as something that is not always frightening. It can be accepted and even celebrated, with respect, and in full cognizance of the loss, as a requisite part of a beautiful dance which necessarily ends in death for all of us. It is the bird's death now, and my death later, that allows the dance to continue.
    I remember one death in particular. It was the first after I made the deal with the coyotes. I had about a dozen ducks, and too many drakes. At one male to a half-dozen females the hens often approach the drakes, then plop down and raise their tails to be mounted. At a ratio of one-to-one the sex is neither willing nor gentle. Drakes fight each other, but the hens get the worst of it. Hens are frequently chased by drakes until they are cornered, mounted, and then mounted again. Favored hens have no feathers on the backs of their necks from being grasped so often in the bills of drakes. At these ratios, no one seems happy.
    I had to do something about that. At the same time, I was running out of food. Because I eat meat I feel it's my responsibility to acknowledge the death it requires. Besides, I don't want to support the practice of factory farming. So I raise birds, I buy part of a cow from a local rancher, I fish, and I've also gone hunting, although the only thing I ever "got" was lost.
    I was splitting wood early one afternoon, and noticed the drakes were especially aggressive. Having gained confidence from two previous successful instances of interspecies communication I said aloud, "If one of you is rough with a female again in the next thirty seconds, I'm going to kill you and eat you." I was not chastisising birds. There were simply too many drakes, and one had to die. I am fully aware as I type these words, as I was fully aware then, that I was displacing responsibility for my own choice to kill a duck "on the next offender."
    About fifteen seconds later a drake tore into a female. He was one of my favorites. There were other ducks who were normally rougher, some male muscovies (a breed of duck) especially, and a part of me hoped that one of them would have been the odd duck out. Of course another part had hoped that none of them would be aggressive, which would have allowed me once again to displace responsibility, this time for not killing any of them. This reluctance to kill is the reason I had not yet kept my end of the bargain with the coyotes.
    I turned to the duck and said, "You're the one." Next I set aside my ax to fetch the hatchet. Normally when I pick up the hatchet the birds will run toward me, because I use it mainly to split nuts for them, break open melons, and pulverize huge globs of dough