Don't Kill Us

I've had my heart broken.

Its been nagging at me for ages now. This big weight on my shoulders. It feels like the weight of the world. It is the weight of the world. Its the same feeling I had when I held a dog in my arms and realized she was dying. A sense of slipping lose and helplessness.

Watching a dog's life, as much as watching any other life fade from one's arms is something that will forever resonate with a person, no matter the person. Even a killer feels it, though they may not understand how.

On the boring morning, I saw a trending article on face book. "6th extinction" It proclaimed was happening. A bitter feeling entered my heart. I've had an interest in natural history for some time. Before reading Clan of the Cave Bear and the likes I slowly started researching (and by research I mean gobble up wikipedia pages) on mega fauna long vanished from this earth. The news that we were in a 6th one, with our own hands baring the blood, was nothing short of heart breaking.

The dead and the gone.

I've always had an interest in animals, since I was young, but I was lucky enough to be raised in an area where they still existed and their eyes peered out into our town from the edges of the forest. They were always there, and while there's been warning about them, they made it to the time when we desire to preserve them, despite our fear of them.

Two years ago I moved to Scotland, and I suddenly found myself looking out on a wide landscape. Initially I marvelled at the security I felt when out walking. I didn't have to look for those eyes in the night. Nothing would harm me. Nothing would eat me.

Yet this feeling started to take on a hollow feeling in my belly. I realized the wild I walked through wasn't wild. It was like wandering through the bones of a body ravaged and destroyed. All internal organs were melted away. I often here the words, what about the farmers. So what? SO WHAT? There is always the risk in live and the more that risk is removed the more we forget. The more we forget our humanity and the eyes around us. Besides, there are other ways to adapt, we the creature who has evolved because of our intelligence should be able to figure out a way to save the bloody sheep with out the destruction of another species. Save the sheep. Save our selves. Save our pockets and our purses. Toss the new smart phone and away with the next generation of console? Why do we need more and better there, when the rest of the world, the rest of its in habitants suffer.

A thousand sad faces look out at us and we keep our own persons going, building the environment we believe we are best suited for because we are the only ones who speak. Where are the faces of the creatures around us? Why should we hold our own lives above theirs? You chose between the face of a lion and the face of a man and save the man because there will be other lions, other wolves, other bears. But that man is an individual, because that man could contribute or is contributing to someone somewhere. They are feeding a family and prospering. So was the lion. So were the bears and wolves. So were the tigers, the leopards, the rhinoceros, the whales, the deer, the stags, antelope and reptiles. You forget because they are a wordless face.

I'm not issuing a cull of humanity.  Those very words, in so many ways, are part of the problem that binds us. We are to many and still to wild. Grow and grow, and nothing, not even nature herself seems to be able to stop us. None but ourselves.