Animals

© Kirsten Muskat

This is by way of saying that how we treat animals matters. Even those who don’t care for them, or have no natural inclination for the furred, feathered, flippered, scaled, winged, four-legged, many- or no-legged ones, are beginning to recognize that we are not alone on this planet, and how we treat others, not just other humans, is indicative of what kind of people we are.

When I worked at the ASPCA some years ago, they were beginning a program of education and cooperation with law enforcement to increase awareness and responsiveness with regard to animal cruelty. Cruelty to animals in a young person is a certain sign of psychopathic/sociopathic tendencies. From what I have read on the subject, every serial killer started at a young age torturing animals. No one paid attention. They were just dogs, or cats, or insects. So it didn’t matter. But it does matter. Animals matter.

The more I see of life, the more I believe with all my heart that we cannot say, “There are so many human problems, we don’t have the time or resources to take care of the animal problems.”

© Colleen Coy

First, they are not mutually exclusive. But most importantly, I believe what this ancient Chinese verse says. When we take care of the animals, we become better persons. Better persons make a better people. Better people make a better world. It does not happen from the top down, but from the bottom up.

© Kirsten Muskat

I have love for the footless,
for the bipeds too I have love;
I have love for those with four feet,
for the many-footed I have love.

                    -The Buddha-

Other Nations is a collection of bits about animals. The title is taken from a well known passage in The Outermost House by the philosopher, Henry Beston:

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals… We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err and err greatly. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

You may notice there’s a lot in it about cetaceans (whales, dolphins, manatees belong to this group). For a short time many years ago I was on the board of the NY/NJ American Cetacean Society. It was at one our meetings I heard a former orca trainer tell his story, which became “The Ballad of the Sad Young Man.” I went on several whale watches in Provincetown, RI. On one of those voyages out to Stellwagen Bank, I listened as the expert on board told us about whales. We were going to see humpbacks that day, and I had listened to recordings of humpbacks. I asked her how they make that sound. I’ll never forget her answer. “We don’t know.” She explained that there is no voice box, or vocal chords or chambers that they know of that account for the production of the sounds that these animals make. The songs that they sing.

That was many years ago and I have never tried to find out if people who study cetaceans now know how they make their songs. I like to think of it as magic.

Other Nations.PDF

I was born the person I am because of a horse named Dolly. She was a plow horse who saved my grandmother's life. My grandma loved horses and told me about Dolly often. I wrote the story, staying as close to the way it was told to me as I could, to honor the horse and my grandmother's memory.

Dolly

Here are two of my other pieces as .PDF documents-- easy to read or save if you'd like.

Images Copyright by their respective owners. All other content Copyright: Paulette Callen.