The other night I went out to check on the chickens and found that one of heavier breed hens had somehow managed to get herself trapped in some of the fencing and had then fallen backward into a small crevice between the fence and the laying box. By the time I got to her she was dead. Or at least that's what I thought until, after untangling her and put her outside on a snow drift, she gave a couple feeble movements. I went inside, tried to make some part of the process moderately enjoyable by taking a minute to pick the right gun, and then went back out and shot her.
I have an increasingly hard time killing animals. I have no problem with killing being part of animal husbandry or even sport (for consumption) killing like deer hunting or even varmint control or various herd management kills. It's not the philosophical so much as the emotional. But where does the one stop and the other start?
When I was in first grade my folks got a bunch of chicks as our first farm animals. The night after we first got them, their coop burned down and they all died. I still remember waking up the next morning, hearing about it, and crying hard. I think that was the first time I was aware of death in any sort of direct way.
As the years went by we got plenty of other animals and did plenty of butchering and the fact of death as part of life was fully experienced and appreciated. We did butcher the chickens and then rabbits, geese, pigs, cows, sheep ... One of my favorite times was wrapping the pork cuts in freezer paper in the kitchen and munching on diced pork loin, fresh from the hog, fried in butter.
And sometime later, as a teenager, I remember the first time I made the decision by myself to shoot one of the orphaned lambs that was clearly suffering and wouldn't amount to anything even if some miracle of life were given. It was profound and not fun. The edge of that wore soon enough though, and that pang receded somewhere below the conscious line.
But then something started to change when I was about 35. By this time I had my own beef calves and chickens and still felt nothing in particular when butchering time came. It wasn't that I liked to kill animals, and I was certainly grateful for what they provided, but the killing itself was emotionally neutral and just a part of the larger process. I think the actual change started when our large, dominant, young border collie Karl decided to herd an SUV flying down the road that passed in front of our land. He lost. So did I.
Time passed as it almost always does. We continued to do some butchering, but I found myself a little more reluctant to get out there and do it when the time came. We also bought another border collie. And we got into horses.
The first horse we bought was an old Belgian mare that was a rescue case. Dixie was an awesome first horse as she had been trained to do everything, was extremely calm and careful, and suffered no fools. While she was no danger, she also would not respond unless you exercised good horsemanship. She taught us more than 10 other horses or teachers or seminars ever could. She was also the alpha mare and an excellent stabilizing herd leader for the other horses we subsequently bought.
Eventually she got cancer and at about 24 years of age (fairly old for a Belgian) really started to deteriorate. Our vet indicated there was really nothing to stop the degradation and that we needed to make a decision about euthanizing her. The vet could inject her and then we would have to bury her. The alternative was to get the guy up from an area mink farm. For a small fee he would come and, if the animal was still alive, kill it and use it as feed for the mink. If the animal was already dead, he wouldn't take it.
I opted for the mink farm route. First of all, most of the soil on our land is less than 1' in depth. After that it is bedrock. I don't know the last time you have tried to bury a 1,900 pound animal in 12" of soil. It doesn't work as well as might be expected. In addition, I have a problem throwing away a resource like that. You know, the whole Disney cycle of life thing. At least with the mink farm there would be some value to the death.
He came fairly early in the morning. This was mostly Brynn's horse, so she had spent some of that time with Dixie saying goodbye. I sent Brynn inside. The mink guy backed his truck up to where Dixie and I were waiting in an open spot outside the paddock. He dropped the lift-gate of the truck and reached into the cab to get his short barreled .22 rifle. I actually thought twice about my decision as I couldn't imagine him using that small diameter bullet humanely on an animal that large. I asked him about it. He looked at me with a little humor and a lot of humility. I think all he said was, "She won't feel a thing."
I don't think she did. I had been holding Dixie's lead rope this entire time and I had asked if I should stand back. I didn't want to get kicked or anything. Again, his answer was quiet and a little surprising. He suggested that I stand back only if I didn't want her to fall on me. I took a step back, he raised the gun with one hand, and almost before I would have thought he had sighted, pulled the trigger. There was the small, sharp crack, distinctive to a .22 and the horse just settled down and rolled on her side. There was no gasping or kicking or death throes. She just was dead. In the midst of a really crappy morning was this act of professionalism that really humbled me. He had respect for the reality of death. His respect commanded that he do his job well. And he did.
I thought about Dixie as I walked back from the still twitching chicken. For animals, Dixie was the one killed for whom I had the strongest emotional bond. I still miss her and wish that, Enoch style, she, one day, could have been no more. That's short sighted though, as I would have missed the blessing of the mink guy and his compassion. And I decided that, other than family pets, the distinction between where the philosophical stops and the emotional starts comes down primarily to who's finger is on the trigger.
The next morning I went out to check on the chickens and to throw the hen's carcass on the fence row for some skunk or raccoon or other scavenger to Thanksgiving on. I went to where I had left her. There was some blood on the snow and a few feathers. There were also two quick and careful sets of coyote prints cutting in from the southeast, rounding the hitching post near where she had been left, and marking smoothly back to the south, around the pile of old barn boards, and off to the west to the shelter of the trees on the west fence row.
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